The Red Nurse

This historical novel tells the story of the 1912 textile strike in Little Falls, New York from the perspective of one of its leading participants, M. Helen Schloss. She was a public health nurse and an active socialist before she came to Little Falls at the invitation of a group of wealthy women. When workers at the Phoenix and Gilbert textile mills struck against wage cuts in October, she was ready to support them in every way she could. Over the next three months, Little Falls was the national focus for the growing labor movement as Socialist Party and IWW activists from around the country joined the battle. But it was not the radical celebrities of the era who won the strike. It was the largely female, immigrant workers and the two women who led them: Helen Schloss and Matilda Rabinowitz.

The book also contains an excerpt from Matilda’s unpublished memoir, courtesy of her granddaughter Robbin Legere Henderson. Matilda went on from Little Falls to lead strikes across the country and was an active writer until very late in life. Helen, who organized medical care at the great Paterson and Ludlow strikes, vanishes from history after she went to Russia in 1921.