Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes by Adam Hochschild

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes by Adam Hochschild Ashley Walters (bio) Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes. By Adam Hochschild. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. 303 pp. On April 6, 1905, the American press was consumed by news of the young millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes's engagement to a twenty-five year old former factory worker and Jewish immigrant named Rose Pastor. Newspapers recounted in detail the unlikely origins of Stokes's intended—a working-class Jew from the Polish region of the Russian Empire—and waxed poetic about the couple's shared mission to ameliorate [End Page 85] the plight of the immigrant poor. At a time when the US was undergoing immense social and economic dislocation and being torn apart by heated debates about inequality, immigration, and the future character of the country, the story of a kindly aristocrat falling in love with an immigrant factory worker was one that the American public was eager to digest. Adam Hochschild's recent biography of Rose Pastor Stokes is a welcome arrival given the relative dearth of publications about one of the most captivating early twentieth-century Americans. Born in Augustowa, a shtetl in the northeastern region of Polish Russia, Pastor spent eight years living in extreme poverty in London's notorious East End before immigrating to Cleveland. At the age of eleven, Pastor went to work in the first of several cigar factories, where she would spend twelve years in order to support her mother, an alcoholic stepfather, and six siblings. Chance took her to New York when an editor at the Jewish Daily News discovered her literary talents and offered her a job. Several months later, she was assigned to investigate rumors of turmoil at the University Settlement on the Lower East Side, where she met its most prominent resident worker, the fabulously wealthy Stokes. In July 1905, the two wed at the Phelps Stokes family's estate in Connecticut amidst an unusual mix of guests hailing from the upper crust of Madison Avenue and the tenements of the Lower East Side. Hochschild explains that the Pastor-Stokes marriage immediately became the stuff of legend—a veritable Cinderella story similar to the romantic plots of the cheap dime novels that Pastor's fellow factory workers would have read—and catapulted the two to instant celebrity status. It was the postnuptial activities of the couple, Hochschild notes, that are actually the more interesting part of the story. Shortly after their wedding they joined the Socialist Party and quickly became two of its most popular speakers, dedicating the prewar years to traversing the country and speaking about the injustices of capitalism. They even established a retreat on a private island off the coast of Stamford, Connecticut, where they hosted an illustrious array of socialist intellectuals, writers, and artists. Hochschild deftly uses the constraints placed upon radical intermarriages like Pastor and Stokes (there were several such couples) as a window into the complicated attitudes that Americans harbored toward capitalism, global warfare, and the Russian Revolution. He is clearly most in his element when situating their story in the broader context of Progressive Era politics. He recounts in detail the various major labor disputes in which Pastor assumed an active role, such as the Uprising of 20,000 (1909) and the New York City Waiters' Strike (1912), in addition [End Page 86] to the dramatic 1916 birth control rally at Carnegie Hall where Pastor incited a mob. Additionally, he captures the spirit of America's entry into the First World War and its devastating impact on the radical left from 1917 onward. Hochschild's rich narration of major world events at times overshadows Pastor and her own various doings. America's entry into the war in 1917 marked a pivotal moment when members of the radical left were forced to choose between hewing to a nationalist party line or risk becoming an enemy of the state. While Stokes wholeheartedly embraced the US war effort, Pastor became a vocal critic and began her descent from America's sweetheart to national threat...