Downloadable Content
Download audio
Other
Keyser, Dora Stoller (audio interview #2 of 4)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the second of three interviews conducted with Dora Keyser in her home for a women's oral history class at UCLA. Keyser was a willing participant and easily established rapport with the interviewer, to whom she was introduced by Sherna Berger Gluck, who was teaching the class at UCLA. A fourth interview was conducted three years later by Gluck. 1974-2
- Date
- 2021-01-27
- Resource Type
- Creator
- Campus
- Keywords
- Handle
- Language
- Notes
- *** File: refdkeyser3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:20-3:48)... Keyser was met by siblings when she arrived at Ellis Island in 1913. From there, they took her to their home in Brownsville. She started the first grade in June and moved up fairly quickly to the fifth grade. When her mother remarried, she opened a restaurant with her new husband and expected Keyser to work there. Keyser, however, decided to stay in school. She left New York a short time later to take care of her sister in Connecticut, where she started sixth grade. As soon as she was settled, her sister in Brooklyn became ill and Keyser returned to New York to take care of her, ending her public school education. (3:48-5:20)... Keyser moved to Connecticut with her sister and niece in order to avoid the polio virus, which was prevalent in New York at that time. When they arrived, she had a fever and was quarantined with her niece for two weeks. After she was released from the hospital, she returned to New York to take care of one her sisters. This sister and her husband were involved in efforts to establish a cooperative farm for twelve Russian families. When WWI broke out, however, the families were unable to leave Russia. (5:20-9:50)... When Keyser was hired at a shirtwaist factory, she was paid $1/week to run errands because "they were not interested in having me sit there and learn a trade." She rebelled by using the time to do household chores. They eventually realized what she was doing and decided it was time to teach her how to sew buttons. She moved to New York City when she was fifteen and got a job finishing dresses for $5/week. A few weeks later, a general strike was called and her shop was organized by Local 22 of the ILGWU. Although her wages increased to $8/week, working conditions did not improve. Both men and women worked in the shop as operators, but the women were not paid the same rate as men. Her experience with poor working conditions in the garment industry was the reason why she got involved in the farm workers movement many years later. (9:50-11:48)... Keyser was fluent in Yiddish and Russian when she immigrated to the US. During the brief period she went to school in New York, she learned some English. Communicating with co-workers was easy because the vast majority of them were from Eastern Europe. She also worked with a Black woman from South America who spoke English and they were able to communicate enough to become close friends. Keyser talks about this woman's background and living standards. (11:48-13:21)... Even though wages increased once a shop was unionized, workers were paid on a piecework basis, which caused variations in their earnings throughout the shop. The union discouraged take-home work, but this was the only way workers could increase their weekly income. Keyser applied for work at several shops while working in the garment industry. Most the time, she convinced shop owners that she was skilled and experienced in areas that she was not. Working a half a day here or there helped her pick up the skills she needed to get to the next shop. This was a common practice among working-class immigrants as "You were on your own and you didn't have a lift from anybody.... We knew how to struggle without getting any help from people." (13:21-14:27)... For the most part, Keyser communicated with her co-workers in broken English or in their native languages whenever it was possible. She worked with a lot of American Jews, some of which knew a little Yiddish but mostly spoke English. One woman played a joke on Keyser and taught her how to say "You're a big fool" in English and she went around the shop addressing her co-workers this way. (14:27-16:04)... Keyser refers to people as cattle when describing the working conditions in garment shops. Workers were very exploited at that time, even by people who were supposed to be looking out for them. For instance, a presser in one of the shops where she worked was a union organizer and he used his position to extort wages from workers. (16:04-16:45)... Although the working conditions and shop facilities were a little better in larger, organized shops, there really was little variation in conditions throughout the garment industry. She recalls that restroom facilities were not sanitary and the temperature in the shops was extreme depending on the season. Keyser did not work in the garment industry for too long, leaving to take care of her sisters and then her own family after she had a child. (16:45-19:53)... Keyser was involved in a general strike in 1916 and the shop she worked at was organized by Local 22 of the ILGWU. She changes direction and talks about her education and language acquisition. She had very little schooling in Russia because Jewish children were not allowed to go to school unless they bribed the teachers, so they basically learned from each other. After she left school in US and began working in the shop, she continued to educate herself by going to lectures at Cooper Union. During these lectures, she wrote down the English words she heard and studied them in her Russian-English dictionary. Eventually, she took weekly English lessons from a tutor. (19:53-25:22)... Prior to the 1916 general strike, the shop she worked at was organized by an Italian presser who was planted in the shop by the union. He later became the vice president of Local 22. The demands of the union during the strike included better wages and working conditions and an eight-hour day. General meetings were held in the union hall on a regular basis prior to the resolution of the strike. Keyser recalls that the larger shops were usually organized first followed by the smaller shops. Her entire shop went out on strike and she participated in the picketing efforts at that time. After the strike, wages in the shop increased from $5 to $8.50/week. She discusses the current conditions in the garment shops and the difficulty in organizing shops because of scab activity. (25:22-27:10)... There was a Jewish local and an Italian local that helped organize the 1916 general strike. The membership of Local 22, however, included Jews, Italians and other eastern Europeans. Local meetings were usually conducted in several different languages depending on the audience. (27:10-30:01)... Following the 1916 strike, a union chairman was elected in her shop and he was responsible for making sure that anyone new to the shop joined the union. As the union developed, people were elected to chair positions and women usually occupied these positions in the shops that manufactured women's clothes. Keyser was a member of the ILGWU from the ages of fourteen to eighteen, at which time she had a child and stopped working. She recalls leaders like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman. End of tape. *** File: refdkeyser4.mp3 (0:00-3:37)... The 1916 general strike marked a strong organizing period in the labor movement. At the time, Keyser was active in the Union of Russian Workers, an anarchist group in support of the Russian Revolution. She had problems with her boss because she liked to talk politics at work. She was surprised by his reaction because he was a socialist. He also encouraged scab activity during the strike, but when his factory was unionized he had no choice but to follow the union wage agreement. She does not recall anyone in her shop being arrested during the strike. Her brother was a union organizer and he was arrested for his union activities. (3:37-5:23)... The main organizer of the strike in Keyser's shop was a presser who was planted in the shop by the union. Other reformers in the city probably aided their organizing efforts by advocating unionism and better working conditions in newspapers. (5:23-7:40)... The poor working conditions in the shop caused people to contract illnesses like tuberculosis. Unionism was key to improving conditions and, therefore, decreasing these types of diseases. There were union people working in the shops who organized and led the strikes. For Keyser, "it was easy to go because I was with it, but I could not do anything myself nor would I speak up." (7:40-11:50)... Keyser got involved in the anarchist movement when she was fifteen years old. At the time, her sister was a member of the Union of Russian Workers and her brother was the secretary of the Anarchist Red Cross. Her exposure to politics, however, began many years earlier when she was a small girl in Russia. She recalls a cousin discussing Leo Tolstoy with her and explaining the differences between anarchism and socialism. When she came to the US, she immediately began socializing with people in the Union of Russian Workers. She attended lectures and went to "social evenings" where she socialized with people her age. (11:50-14:07)... Keyser recalls the lively political campaigns that took place between socialist and anarchist candidates running for office when she was living in Brownsville. Getting involved in these efforts was a great educational experience. In order to further educate herself, she attended lectures that covered both sides of an argument. Socialist and anarchists were also active in the rank and file of the union. (14:07-16:52)... Keyser worked with a large number of Orthodox Jews. Because of their religious beliefs, they did not align themselves with radical beliefs like anarchism because it diverged from what "God told them to believe in." However, they were not opposed to unionism and were typically strong union people. The anarchist and socialist parties in her community organized dances on Yom Kippur, which brought people together on a social level regardless of their political views. When she was a young girl, she joined the Flying Posts. The youngsters in this group entertained themselves by singing, dancing, writing love letters on postcards, and discussing what they read in newspapers and pamphlets. (16:52-19:06)... Keyser did not believe in completely assimilating into American culture because it causes foreigners to lose their ability to speak and read their native languages. She and her husband published an English anarchist paper as well as the Road to Freedom. At the Ferrer Colony, they established a library where they carried their anarchist publications. (19:06-20:05)... Most of the working-class people she knew wanted their children to go to college and pursue careers as doctors and lawyers. Education and a professional career were goals that most Jewish parents set for their children. (20:05-27:10)... Marriage was not on her mind when Keyser was young because her main focus was trying to support herself and her family. The main goal for most girls her age was "to get married and get a husband to support you.... They didn't think about careers." She always considered herself to be an independent woman and was not worried about having to make a choice between keeping her independence or getting married. After she married, "I never felt that I was a married woman and not independent. Part of it was that my husband was a liberated man." Her husband elevated her by making sure that she had opportunities to do the things that she loved and "my personality grew independently because I had a great partner." (27:10-30:08)... Keyser reiterates that she did not think about getting married because she did not have a lot of time to contemplate those things. She and her husband were brought together "by a much stronger force than marriage." Her sister cohabited with a Gentile and had two children him, which went against her Jewish upbringing. However, Keyser considered them married as she did any couple who lived together. It was not unusual for anarchists to carry on this type of relationship. Keyser met her husband during the period that her sister and brother-in-law were dying from tuberculosis. End of tape. *** File: refdkeyser5.mp3 (0:00-6:48)... Being raised in a culture of matchmakers and arranged marriages, Keyser developed a negative view towards marriage. Her grandmother was a product of an arranged marriage and after having five children with a tyrant, she died while she was pregnant with her six child after her husband kicked her in the stomach. Like her sister, Keyser never legally married her husband. They began their relationship while mourning her sister's death from tuberculosis. Even though they did not have a marriage certificate, she considered him her husband because they were partners. They raised her sister's children, both of whom went on to get married and have their own children. Keyser's mother accepted the fact that she was not legally married "as long as the neighbors didn't find out." She believed that God would forgive Keyser for her sins because she was a good mother to her nieces. (6:48-10:47)... Keyser used her family name, Stoller, until she moved to California and people began referring to as Keyser. She goes by Doris Stoller Keyser. Her sister's children, who she raised following her sister's death, were given Keyser's family name of Stoller on their birth certificates, but eventually assumed the last name of Keyser. When Keyser came to America, she wrote down her name and the date she arrived not knowing this would help her gain citizenship years later. She told the citizenship lawyer that she was married but that her marriage documents were destroyed in a fire, which was a fabrication. Keyser listed her birth day as July 4th because her birth day was based on the thirteen month Jewish calendar, which meant that her birth day fell on the fourth of either June or July. (10:47-13:20)... Keyser never listed herself as a single woman with property holdings because she never had the means to purchase anything prior to meeting her husband. All of her earnings went towards supporting her family. When she met her husband, he was working as an electrician and earning a good, union wage. After she moved in with him, she stopped working in order to raise her nieces. When they were living in the Ferrer Colony, she also took care of her brother's son for a short time because her sister-in-law was a mental case and a terrible mother. (13:20-19:43)... The Ferrer School was started in 1907 by Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish anarchist executed for advocating that the school separate from the Catholic Church. When he died, several Ferrer schools were established all over the world, including New York. Later, [in 1915] the Ferrer Colony was established in Stilton, NJ. Both communists and anarchists lived there and worked together in organizing the school; they also collaborated on political and labor matters. A schism between the two groups developed when it was learned that the communists were taking credit for supplying food to miners during a strike. Also, when a committee was established to aid in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the funds they raised were given to the Daily Worker, which caused conflict with the anarchists. (19:43-24:40)... Keyser was living in Philadelphia when WWI broke out. During the war, she attended mass meetings at which Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman lectured. An anarchist commune was located on 11th Street that was the center of their anti-war campaign. She digresses regarding the infiltration of communists in the farm workers movement, stating that communists took too much credit for their contributions to the movement. (24:40-27:22)... The anarchist meetings she attended in her youth focused on philosophy and education. When she began attending lecture by Professor Durant, he was an anarchist. When he became a communist by the time he left the Ferrer Colony, his contributions to the school at the colony dwindled. Keyser disliked his wife and was embarrassed by the statements she made about the anarchist movement during a recent fundraising event. (27:22-30:10)... Keyser thinks that all of the women involved in the anarchist movement were feminists, stating, "there was no women's lib because we were all liberated." Even though she supported woman's suffrage, she does not think that women gained very much after they got the vote because they were not liberated to begin with. Keyser did not vote until she became a citizen in her sixties. Her husband became a citizen in the 1930s and voted when Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas ran for president. End of tape. *** File: refdkeyser6.mp3 (0:00-4:35)... The women who organized the suffrage movement were from upper and middle-class backgrounds. It was well known that the women's movement was led by bourgeois women who had nothing in common with the working-class and knew nothing of their struggles. Keyser was far more interested in efforts that dealt with "poverty and injustice for the women and men and children." In addition to supporting Emma Goldman's activities, Keyser was interested in Margaret Sanger's birth control crusade. Although Goldman was courted by wealthy club women and often gave lectures at their request, "she gave it the way she saw it and wasn't patronizing to anyone." Regardless of their economic standing, liberals supported liberal movements and Goldman's audiences were often filled with "intellectual snobs" and wealthy people. (4:35-6:32)... Keyser was not shy about expressing her political views even when she knew the people around her might not agree. While taking a ceramics class, she overheard a classmate criticizing the union for organizing a strike involving clerks. Although Keyser did not like to discuss politics in class, she told the woman that had her husband not belonged to a union, they would have had difficulty supporting their children. The following week, this woman told Keyser that she was a "great humanitarian" for standing up for what she believed. (6:32-8:22)... Many people supported the anarchist movement even though they were not anarchists themselves. Keyser was friendly with both men and women in the movement regardless of their political views. People developed friendships based on personal commonalties rather than politics. End of tape.
- SUBJECT BIO - Dora Stoller Keyser was a lifelong anarchist activist, starting from the age of fifteen, two years after she arrived in the US. Born in the Ukraine, the 17th of 18 children, Dora Keyser was the last of her family to emigrate to the US with her mother in 1913 after her father's death. She recalls not only the pogroms in her native village, but also the protection that Gentile neighbors provided for her family. Like most of her siblings, she had very little education in Russia. After arriving in New York, at the age of thirteen, she started in the first grade. Within two years, she finished through the sixth grade. However, she dropped out of school to care for her sick sister and then went to work in the garment industry, participating in the 1916 strike of the ILGWU, Local 22. Gaining a political education from the lectures and activities in her Brownsville neighborhood, Keyser joined the anarchist movement when she was fifteen, following in the footsteps of some of her siblings. After her sister's death, she and her common law "husband" took over the care of her two children. Later, they had two children of their own. The Keyser family lived for a while first at the Ferrer Colony in Stilton, NJ and then later at the Sunrise Farm in upstate Michigan. Keyser and her partner played an active role in the activities of the two anarchist colonies, particularly in setting up a school. Keyser was close to many of the more prominent figures in the anarchist movement, including Rudolf Rocker, whose papers she helped to organize in later years in Los Angeles. She also provided housing for other anarchists and after the death of one of her roomers, she began to produce ceramic busts of Voltarine deCleyre from the molds that he had left. She remained a staunch anarchist and advocate of vegetarianism all her life. At the time of the interview she was still singing with the ILGWU Mandolin Orchestra and continuing to raise funds for the United Farm Workers. The interviews with Keyser were conducted by a women's oral history student at UCLA in conjunction with the Feminist History Research Project. An additional short interview about Rudolf Rocker was conducted later by project director Sherna Berger Gluck at the behest of the Minnesota Libertarian Society. TOPICS - immigration; schooling; siblings; family relationships; garment work; wages and working conditions; ILGWU; 1916 strike; worker relationships; ILGWU, ethnic locals; language acquisition; education; gender discrimination;working conditions in garment shops; union organizing; 1916 ILGWU strike; Union of Russian Workers; introduction to anarchist movement; Anarchist Red Cross; political education; socials and activities; attitude towards cultural assimilation; Road to Freedom; career and marriage expectations; attitudes about marriage and relationships; gender expectations and independence;views on marriage; family history; matchmaking in Jewish culture; courtship; assuming guardianship of sister's two children; mother's attitude towards Keyser's common law marriage; citizenship; husband's work history; Ferrer School in New York; Ferrer Colony in Stilton, NJ; relationship between anarchists and communists at Ferrer Colony; anti-war activism; feminism and anarchism; and attitude towards woman's suffrage and women's liberation;woman's suffrage movement; Emma Goldman's relationship with reformers and wealthy club women; expressing political views; and developing friendships with fellow anarchists
- Rights Note
- This repository item may be used for classroom presentations, unpublished papers, and other educational, research, or scholarly use. Other uses, especially publication in any form, such as in dissertations, theses, articles, or web pages are not permitted without the express written permission of the individual collection's copyright holder(s). Please contact the CSULB Library Administration should you require permission to publish or distribute any content from this collection or if you need additional information or assistance in using these materials: https://www.csulb.edu/university-library/form/questionssuggestions-the-digital-repository-group
| Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Visibility | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
3154429234224795-refdkeyser3.mp3 | 2023-10-20 | Public | Download |
|
|
7593048251805382-refdkeyser4.mp3 | 2023-10-20 | Public | Download |
|
|
6217983624285517-refdkeyser5.mp3 | 2023-10-20 | Public | Download |
|
2327753311387250-refdkeyser6.mp3 | 2023-10-20 | Public | Download |