In 1888, a St. Paul Globe exposé of women's working conditions penned by "Eva Gay" launched the career of Eva McDonald Valesh, a young writer. During the time that she lived in the state, Valesh left a big impression on Minnesota journalism, politics, and labor organizing.
Born in Maine in 1866, Eva McDonald moved to Minnesota as a child. One of her early jobs was as a typesetter in a print shop, where she joined a typographer's union. Her interest in labor issues was sparked by her work experience and by her upbringing as the daughter of a politically active carpenter.
The first of her numerous Globe articles, written under the name "Eva Gay," was titled "'Mong the Girls Who Toil." It revealed the long hours, unhealthy conditions, and low wages faced by women who worked in a local garment factory, the Shotwell, Clerihew and Lothmann firm. When the women at that factory went on strike less than a month later, McDonald's article was credited with setting off the protest. She continued writing for the Globe for more than a year, going undercover as a factory worker, a domestic worker, and a store clerk. Although employers across the Twin Cities swore they would not be tricked, McDonald's youth, tomboyish appearance, and ragged costumes always got her in the door.
McDonald quickly became a star in the Minnesota labor movement. Her intelligence, passion, and poise made her a popular public speaker. She spoke across Minnesota in support of the Knights of Labor and their movement for an eight-hour workday. She was also elected State Lecturer of the Farmers' Alliance. As she lectured across the state, McDonald continued to work for the Globe as the editor of their labor section. She directed their coverage of the violent 1889 street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
In 1888, McDonald became the first woman to run for the Minneapolis School Board for the Democratic Party. Women could vote in school board races but most did not support McDonald. Her working-class allegiances made her suspect in the eyes of many middle- and upper-class women.
McDonald's 1891 marriage to Frank Valesh did not slow down her career. However, her public life was significantly limited after she nearly died giving birth to their only child, Frank, in 1892. After recovering, she edited a labor column for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was also was chosen to introduce Populist presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan when he spoke in the Twin Cities in 1896.
In 1896, Eva McDonald Valesh left Minnesota for New York City and lived the rest of her life on the East Coast. After leaving the state, McDonald Valesh worked for Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor. She also worked as a reporter, published her own magazine with her second husband, and became involved with charitable and relief work. She died in Connecticut in 1956, at age 90. She spent the last decades of her life as a proofreader for the New York Times.
Chronology
1866
Mary Eva (Eva) McDonald is born in Orono, Maine.
1886
Under the alias "Eva Gay," Eva McDonald publishes a sensational column for the St. Paul Globe that exposes the poor labor conditions of working women. Shortly after her first column is published, the women she profiled go on strike.
1889
McDonald edits the labor news column of the Globe, overseeing its coverage of the violent street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul. She lectures across the state for the Knights of Labor and the Eight-Hour League.
1890
McDonald becomes involved with the Farmers' Alliance and begins writing for the St. Paul labor newspaper Great West.
1891
McDonald is elected to be a lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and travels all over the US. She marries Frank Valesh. (June 2)
1892
Eva McDonald Valesh nearly dies giving birth and retreats from active public life, although she writes and edits labor columns for the Minneapolis Tribune until 1895.
1896
She moves to New York City with her son Frank and younger sister Blanche.
1919
Valesh has a heart attack at age 53 and lives a low-key life as a proofreader until her death.
1956
Eva McDonald Valesh dies in Connecticut at age 90.
Bibliography/Sources-
Faue, Elizabeth. Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Gay, Eva. "Mong the Girls Who Toil." St. Paul Daily Globe, March 25, 1888.
Gilman, Rhoda R. "Eva McDonald Valesh: Minnesota Populist." In Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays, edited by Barbara Stuhler and Gretchen Kreuter, 55–76. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.
M575
Eva McDonald Valesh Papers, 1891–1983
Manuscript Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/P0039.xml
Description: Microfilm and typed transcript of an oral history conducted by Columbia University and a few personal papers.
http://www.mnopedia.org/person/valesh-eva-mcdonald-1866-1956
===============================
Her husband, Frank Valesh, a Czech-born cigarmaker, was the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor.
SOURCE-http://www.placeography.org/index.php/Eva_McDonald_Valesh_House,_796_Jackson_Street,_Saint_Paul,_Minnesota_(Razed)
============================================
Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism
Author(s): Faue, Elizabeth
Reviewer(s): Friedman, Gerald
Published by EH.NET (October 2003)
Elizabeth Faue, Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv + 249 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8014-3461-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Eva Valesh was different from most other women of her time. Born Eva McDonald in 1866 to a respectable but far from affluent working-class family, her Minneapolis public school education prepared her for that most traditional of American women's professional occupations: teaching elementary school. But McDonald "didn't like school teaching." Instead her father helped her to submit her writings to a struggling reform newspaper where she then found employment as an apprentice compositor and occasional contributor. Thus began a career that would lead her in and out of the labor reform movement of the 1880s through World War I. As a journalist, traveling lecturer for the Farmer's Alliance and Populist Party, owner of a Washington D. C. political newsletter, editor of the American Federationist, leader of the Women's Trade Union League, and pioneer red-baiter: Eva McDonald led an extraordinary public life. And her private life was just as unusual.
Elizabeth Faue, a historian at Michigan's Wayne State University, tells the story of this remarkable woman in an absorbing biography. Following her life chronologically, Faue recounts MacDonald's early struggles to learn the compositing trade, her first writings on the condition of women workers in Minneapolis, and her involvement in an 1888 strike of Minneapolis garment workers. Her involvement in this strike launched MacDonald's career as labor journalist, and she would write extensively on labor issues for the St. Paul Globe and, later, the Minneapolis Tribune. The strike also led to her work as lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance, and her marriage in 1891 with a local labor leader, Frank Valesh.
At first a happy marriage of two dedicated labor activists, this marriage, and its progeny, Frank Jr., became an encumbrance to Eva Valesh's growing ambitions. Faue reports that by the mid-1890s, Eva Valesh feared she had run up against the limits of what she could accomplish in the Midwest. She wanted to move East, to parley her talents into a place in broad national movements. But Frank wanted to stay. He had ties with the Minnesota labor movement; he had served as the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor and was assistant labor commissioner for the State of Minnesota. He also suffered declining health and feared the fate of his brother and sister who died of tuberculosis within hours of each other in 1895.
Eva Valesh waited only a little while for her family before moving East in 1897. At first, she lived in the Washington D. C. home of Samuel and Sophie Gompers. But she soon moved out on her own. She used an earlier association with Minnesota Senator Nelson to secure an interview with President McKinley for the New York Journal; this story and a recommendation from Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy then led to a position at the Journal. After two years there, she borrowed money from Murphy to launch a political newsletter and publicity service. Next, Gompers recruited her to the American Federation of Labor where she worked for him as editor of the American Federationist. After eight years there, years longer than she had remained in any previous job, she quit to work as a free-lance lecturer and well-paid advisor to the silk-stockinged women in the National Civic Federation's Woman's Committee and the reform-minded New York Colony Club. Throughout she moved to the right, rejecting in turn the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. Finally, in 1910 she burned her bridges to the labor movement by attacking the striking International Ladies Garment Workers Union, accusing its socialist leadership of prolonging the strike for their own "dangerous purposes." Expelled from the Women's Trade Union League, her relationship with the reform-minded club women also fizzled. Having formally divorced Frank Valesh in 1906, in 1910 she married Ben Cross, a wealthy playboy. Using his family money, the two ran a mildly successful women's magazine for a decade. After that failed, they divorced and this remarkable woman, Eva Valesh, spent the next twenty-seven working as copy editor for the New York Times.
The chronological presentation makes Faue's biography a page turner, a mystery where the reader wonders what MacDonald/Valesh will pull off next. But it also reflects an admitted bafflement on Faue's part. She admits, looking "in vain for the moral to Valesh's story. Abandoning the idealism of her working-class youth for the pragmatic adjustments of middle age brought her neither ultimate victory nor tragic defeat" (p. 195). In the end Faue admits that she sought only "to tell a good story" leaving it to the reader "to draw the rest of the conclusions yourself." Well we might: and I would suggest three:
First, gender was a surprisingly permeable barrier to advancement. Prejudice did notably little to slow Valesh's rise. Not only were the Populists and trade unionists willing to listen to a woman, they even paid to hear her. And so did the Twin-City newspaper-reading public. As she herself noted about Washington D. C., "If you had anything to offer intellectually, you were well received in Washington. It doesn't make any difference if you've got a dollar to your name or not, and no one is critical of your dress" (p. 141).
If gender was not a barrier to Valesh's advancement, it was because so many men stepped forward to help her. Eva Valesh's successes show how important it was for a woman to have support from the men around her. And her men were remarkably helpful! Even after she deserted him, Eva's husband Frank Valesh accepted legal responsibility for the breakup in order to let her out of the marriage without prejudice to her career. Also, to free Eva Valesh for her work, Frank cared for their son during the summer and paid for him to attend boarding school. Other men in Eva MacDonald/Valesh's life were just as ready to support her. Her father helped her to become a journalist and compositor; longtime labor activist John P. 'Jack' McGauhey taught her to speak in public; Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy "put her through a course of analysis training that no college would have" and he "let me try everything on the paper." Later, he recommended her for jobs and loaned her money to launch her newsletter. Repeatedly, Eva succeeded because she was helped by a succession of men who saw her potential and helped her to unlock it. One may wonder how many other women ever received such generous help.
In the end it was class, not gender, that cut off Valesh's career. She rose to club woman status because she could interpret the class struggle for her upper-class friends as a member of the working class and participant in the labor movement. But this required that she walk a fine line between the demands of an increasingly radical labor movement and the moderate vision of her club friends. With one foot in each camp, it is not surprising that Valesh lost her balance. When the New York garment workers strikers rejected her mediation proposals, she had to explain to her upper-class friends why they turned down what she had presented as a reasonable compromise. Her attack on the ILGWU's socialist leadership preserved her position with her rich friends, but at the cost of her position as a labor leader. But it was that position that made her interesting and valuable to her upper-class friends.
Elizabeth Faue has told a remarkable story, one with implications that extend well beyond Eva Valesh. Eva Valesh's remarkable story shows what is possible in an society open to talent. But her life also shows the compromises that may be demanded of even a remarkably talented child of the working class. There may be a moral here after all.
Gerald Friedman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The author of State Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999), he is currently preparing studies of the decline of the modern labor movement, and the development of modern economics provisionally entitled "Ambition and Ideals: Richard Ely and the Creation of Modern Economics."
SOURCE- http://eh.net/book_reviews/writing-the-wrongs-eva-valesh-and-the-rise-of-labor-journalism/
==============================
Name Eva McDonald Valesh
Residence Year 1897
Residence Place Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Occupation Reporter, Minneapolis Tribune
SOURCE- Minneapolis, Minnesota, City Directory, 1897
NOTE- Living alone, renting in St. Paul
==============================
Name Eva M Valesh
Age 33
Birth Date Sep 1866
Birthplace Maine, USA
Home in 1900 Washington, Washington, District of Columbia
Street Thirteenth Street
House Number 1908
Sheet Number 2
Number of Dwelling in Order of Visitation 21
Family Number 23
Race White
Gender Female
Relation to Head of House Lodger
Marital Status Married
Marriage Year 1891
Years Married 9
Father's Birthplace Canada English
Mother's Birthplace Maine, USA
Mother: number of living children 1
Mother: How many children 1
Occupation Journalist
Months Not Employed 0
Can Read Y
Can Write Y
Can Speak English Y
Household Members (Name) Age Relationship
Charles Holmes 48 Head
Alice Holmes 37 Wife
Edward Holmes 18 Son
Edith L Holmes 15 Daughter
Virginia E Hellen 60 Lodger
Eva M Valesh 33 Lodger
SOURCE- 1900 Census
==============================
==========================
Name Eva M Valesh
Gender Female
Race White
Marital Status Divorced
Birth Date abt 1866
Residence Westport, Fairfield, Connecticut
Death Date 7 Nov 1956
Death Place Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut
Age 90 Years
Spouse Fran
State File # 18955
SOURCE- Connecticut Death Index
========================
NORWALK, Nov. 9, Mrs. Eva MacDonald Valesh; 90, long-time New York Times proofreader and International Typographical Union leader, died yesterday.
SOURCE- The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 25
November 10, 1956
======================
Born in Maine in 1866, Eva McDonald moved to Minnesota as a child. One of her early jobs was as a typesetter in a print shop, where she joined a typographer's union. Her interest in labor issues was sparked by her work experience and by her upbringing as the daughter of a politically active carpenter.
The first of her numerous Globe articles, written under the name "Eva Gay," was titled "'Mong the Girls Who Toil." It revealed the long hours, unhealthy conditions, and low wages faced by women who worked in a local garment factory, the Shotwell, Clerihew and Lothmann firm. When the women at that factory went on strike less than a month later, McDonald's article was credited with setting off the protest. She continued writing for the Globe for more than a year, going undercover as a factory worker, a domestic worker, and a store clerk. Although employers across the Twin Cities swore they would not be tricked, McDonald's youth, tomboyish appearance, and ragged costumes always got her in the door.
McDonald quickly became a star in the Minnesota labor movement. Her intelligence, passion, and poise made her a popular public speaker. She spoke across Minnesota in support of the Knights of Labor and their movement for an eight-hour workday. She was also elected State Lecturer of the Farmers' Alliance. As she lectured across the state, McDonald continued to work for the Globe as the editor of their labor section. She directed their coverage of the violent 1889 street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
In 1888, McDonald became the first woman to run for the Minneapolis School Board for the Democratic Party. Women could vote in school board races but most did not support McDonald. Her working-class allegiances made her suspect in the eyes of many middle- and upper-class women.
McDonald's 1891 marriage to Frank Valesh did not slow down her career. However, her public life was significantly limited after she nearly died giving birth to their only child, Frank, in 1892. After recovering, she edited a labor column for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was also was chosen to introduce Populist presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan when he spoke in the Twin Cities in 1896.
In 1896, Eva McDonald Valesh left Minnesota for New York City and lived the rest of her life on the East Coast. After leaving the state, McDonald Valesh worked for Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor. She also worked as a reporter, published her own magazine with her second husband, and became involved with charitable and relief work. She died in Connecticut in 1956, at age 90. She spent the last decades of her life as a proofreader for the New York Times.
Chronology
1866
Mary Eva (Eva) McDonald is born in Orono, Maine.
1886
Under the alias "Eva Gay," Eva McDonald publishes a sensational column for the St. Paul Globe that exposes the poor labor conditions of working women. Shortly after her first column is published, the women she profiled go on strike.
1889
McDonald edits the labor news column of the Globe, overseeing its coverage of the violent street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul. She lectures across the state for the Knights of Labor and the Eight-Hour League.
1890
McDonald becomes involved with the Farmers' Alliance and begins writing for the St. Paul labor newspaper Great West.
1891
McDonald is elected to be a lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and travels all over the US. She marries Frank Valesh. (June 2)
1892
Eva McDonald Valesh nearly dies giving birth and retreats from active public life, although she writes and edits labor columns for the Minneapolis Tribune until 1895.
1896
She moves to New York City with her son Frank and younger sister Blanche.
1919
Valesh has a heart attack at age 53 and lives a low-key life as a proofreader until her death.
1956
Eva McDonald Valesh dies in Connecticut at age 90.
Bibliography/Sources-
Faue, Elizabeth. Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Gay, Eva. "Mong the Girls Who Toil." St. Paul Daily Globe, March 25, 1888.
Gilman, Rhoda R. "Eva McDonald Valesh: Minnesota Populist." In Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays, edited by Barbara Stuhler and Gretchen Kreuter, 55–76. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.
M575
Eva McDonald Valesh Papers, 1891–1983
Manuscript Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/P0039.xml
Description: Microfilm and typed transcript of an oral history conducted by Columbia University and a few personal papers.
http://www.mnopedia.org/person/valesh-eva-mcdonald-1866-1956
===============================
Her husband, Frank Valesh, a Czech-born cigarmaker, was the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor.
SOURCE-http://www.placeography.org/index.php/Eva_McDonald_Valesh_House,_796_Jackson_Street,_Saint_Paul,_Minnesota_(Razed)
============================================
Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism
Author(s): Faue, Elizabeth
Reviewer(s): Friedman, Gerald
Published by EH.NET (October 2003)
Elizabeth Faue, Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv + 249 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8014-3461-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Eva Valesh was different from most other women of her time. Born Eva McDonald in 1866 to a respectable but far from affluent working-class family, her Minneapolis public school education prepared her for that most traditional of American women's professional occupations: teaching elementary school. But McDonald "didn't like school teaching." Instead her father helped her to submit her writings to a struggling reform newspaper where she then found employment as an apprentice compositor and occasional contributor. Thus began a career that would lead her in and out of the labor reform movement of the 1880s through World War I. As a journalist, traveling lecturer for the Farmer's Alliance and Populist Party, owner of a Washington D. C. political newsletter, editor of the American Federationist, leader of the Women's Trade Union League, and pioneer red-baiter: Eva McDonald led an extraordinary public life. And her private life was just as unusual.
Elizabeth Faue, a historian at Michigan's Wayne State University, tells the story of this remarkable woman in an absorbing biography. Following her life chronologically, Faue recounts MacDonald's early struggles to learn the compositing trade, her first writings on the condition of women workers in Minneapolis, and her involvement in an 1888 strike of Minneapolis garment workers. Her involvement in this strike launched MacDonald's career as labor journalist, and she would write extensively on labor issues for the St. Paul Globe and, later, the Minneapolis Tribune. The strike also led to her work as lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance, and her marriage in 1891 with a local labor leader, Frank Valesh.
At first a happy marriage of two dedicated labor activists, this marriage, and its progeny, Frank Jr., became an encumbrance to Eva Valesh's growing ambitions. Faue reports that by the mid-1890s, Eva Valesh feared she had run up against the limits of what she could accomplish in the Midwest. She wanted to move East, to parley her talents into a place in broad national movements. But Frank wanted to stay. He had ties with the Minnesota labor movement; he had served as the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor and was assistant labor commissioner for the State of Minnesota. He also suffered declining health and feared the fate of his brother and sister who died of tuberculosis within hours of each other in 1895.
Eva Valesh waited only a little while for her family before moving East in 1897. At first, she lived in the Washington D. C. home of Samuel and Sophie Gompers. But she soon moved out on her own. She used an earlier association with Minnesota Senator Nelson to secure an interview with President McKinley for the New York Journal; this story and a recommendation from Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy then led to a position at the Journal. After two years there, she borrowed money from Murphy to launch a political newsletter and publicity service. Next, Gompers recruited her to the American Federation of Labor where she worked for him as editor of the American Federationist. After eight years there, years longer than she had remained in any previous job, she quit to work as a free-lance lecturer and well-paid advisor to the silk-stockinged women in the National Civic Federation's Woman's Committee and the reform-minded New York Colony Club. Throughout she moved to the right, rejecting in turn the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. Finally, in 1910 she burned her bridges to the labor movement by attacking the striking International Ladies Garment Workers Union, accusing its socialist leadership of prolonging the strike for their own "dangerous purposes." Expelled from the Women's Trade Union League, her relationship with the reform-minded club women also fizzled. Having formally divorced Frank Valesh in 1906, in 1910 she married Ben Cross, a wealthy playboy. Using his family money, the two ran a mildly successful women's magazine for a decade. After that failed, they divorced and this remarkable woman, Eva Valesh, spent the next twenty-seven working as copy editor for the New York Times.
The chronological presentation makes Faue's biography a page turner, a mystery where the reader wonders what MacDonald/Valesh will pull off next. But it also reflects an admitted bafflement on Faue's part. She admits, looking "in vain for the moral to Valesh's story. Abandoning the idealism of her working-class youth for the pragmatic adjustments of middle age brought her neither ultimate victory nor tragic defeat" (p. 195). In the end Faue admits that she sought only "to tell a good story" leaving it to the reader "to draw the rest of the conclusions yourself." Well we might: and I would suggest three:
First, gender was a surprisingly permeable barrier to advancement. Prejudice did notably little to slow Valesh's rise. Not only were the Populists and trade unionists willing to listen to a woman, they even paid to hear her. And so did the Twin-City newspaper-reading public. As she herself noted about Washington D. C., "If you had anything to offer intellectually, you were well received in Washington. It doesn't make any difference if you've got a dollar to your name or not, and no one is critical of your dress" (p. 141).
If gender was not a barrier to Valesh's advancement, it was because so many men stepped forward to help her. Eva Valesh's successes show how important it was for a woman to have support from the men around her. And her men were remarkably helpful! Even after she deserted him, Eva's husband Frank Valesh accepted legal responsibility for the breakup in order to let her out of the marriage without prejudice to her career. Also, to free Eva Valesh for her work, Frank cared for their son during the summer and paid for him to attend boarding school. Other men in Eva MacDonald/Valesh's life were just as ready to support her. Her father helped her to become a journalist and compositor; longtime labor activist John P. 'Jack' McGauhey taught her to speak in public; Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy "put her through a course of analysis training that no college would have" and he "let me try everything on the paper." Later, he recommended her for jobs and loaned her money to launch her newsletter. Repeatedly, Eva succeeded because she was helped by a succession of men who saw her potential and helped her to unlock it. One may wonder how many other women ever received such generous help.
In the end it was class, not gender, that cut off Valesh's career. She rose to club woman status because she could interpret the class struggle for her upper-class friends as a member of the working class and participant in the labor movement. But this required that she walk a fine line between the demands of an increasingly radical labor movement and the moderate vision of her club friends. With one foot in each camp, it is not surprising that Valesh lost her balance. When the New York garment workers strikers rejected her mediation proposals, she had to explain to her upper-class friends why they turned down what she had presented as a reasonable compromise. Her attack on the ILGWU's socialist leadership preserved her position with her rich friends, but at the cost of her position as a labor leader. But it was that position that made her interesting and valuable to her upper-class friends.
Elizabeth Faue has told a remarkable story, one with implications that extend well beyond Eva Valesh. Eva Valesh's remarkable story shows what is possible in an society open to talent. But her life also shows the compromises that may be demanded of even a remarkably talented child of the working class. There may be a moral here after all.
Gerald Friedman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The author of State Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999), he is currently preparing studies of the decline of the modern labor movement, and the development of modern economics provisionally entitled "Ambition and Ideals: Richard Ely and the Creation of Modern Economics."
SOURCE- http://eh.net/book_reviews/writing-the-wrongs-eva-valesh-and-the-rise-of-labor-journalism/
==============================
Name Eva McDonald Valesh
Residence Year 1897
Residence Place Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Occupation Reporter, Minneapolis Tribune
SOURCE- Minneapolis, Minnesota, City Directory, 1897
NOTE- Living alone, renting in St. Paul
==============================
Name Eva M Valesh
Age 33
Birth Date Sep 1866
Birthplace Maine, USA
Home in 1900 Washington, Washington, District of Columbia
Street Thirteenth Street
House Number 1908
Sheet Number 2
Number of Dwelling in Order of Visitation 21
Family Number 23
Race White
Gender Female
Relation to Head of House Lodger
Marital Status Married
Marriage Year 1891
Years Married 9
Father's Birthplace Canada English
Mother's Birthplace Maine, USA
Mother: number of living children 1
Mother: How many children 1
Occupation Journalist
Months Not Employed 0
Can Read Y
Can Write Y
Can Speak English Y
Household Members (Name) Age Relationship
Charles Holmes 48 Head
Alice Holmes 37 Wife
Edward Holmes 18 Son
Edith L Holmes 15 Daughter
Virginia E Hellen 60 Lodger
Eva M Valesh 33 Lodger
SOURCE- 1900 Census
==============================
==========================
Name Eva M Valesh
Gender Female
Race White
Marital Status Divorced
Birth Date abt 1866
Residence Westport, Fairfield, Connecticut
Death Date 7 Nov 1956
Death Place Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut
Age 90 Years
Spouse Fran
State File # 18955
SOURCE- Connecticut Death Index
========================
NORWALK, Nov. 9, Mrs. Eva MacDonald Valesh; 90, long-time New York Times proofreader and International Typographical Union leader, died yesterday.
SOURCE- The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 25
November 10, 1956
======================
In 1888, a St. Paul Globe exposé of women's working conditions penned by "Eva Gay" launched the career of Eva McDonald Valesh, a young writer. During the time that she lived in the state, Valesh left a big impression on Minnesota journalism, politics, and labor organizing.
Born in Maine in 1866, Eva McDonald moved to Minnesota as a child. One of her early jobs was as a typesetter in a print shop, where she joined a typographer's union. Her interest in labor issues was sparked by her work experience and by her upbringing as the daughter of a politically active carpenter.
The first of her numerous Globe articles, written under the name "Eva Gay," was titled "'Mong the Girls Who Toil." It revealed the long hours, unhealthy conditions, and low wages faced by women who worked in a local garment factory, the Shotwell, Clerihew and Lothmann firm. When the women at that factory went on strike less than a month later, McDonald's article was credited with setting off the protest. She continued writing for the Globe for more than a year, going undercover as a factory worker, a domestic worker, and a store clerk. Although employers across the Twin Cities swore they would not be tricked, McDonald's youth, tomboyish appearance, and ragged costumes always got her in the door.
McDonald quickly became a star in the Minnesota labor movement. Her intelligence, passion, and poise made her a popular public speaker. She spoke across Minnesota in support of the Knights of Labor and their movement for an eight-hour workday. She was also elected State Lecturer of the Farmers' Alliance. As she lectured across the state, McDonald continued to work for the Globe as the editor of their labor section. She directed their coverage of the violent 1889 street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
In 1888, McDonald became the first woman to run for the Minneapolis School Board for the Democratic Party. Women could vote in school board races but most did not support McDonald. Her working-class allegiances made her suspect in the eyes of many middle- and upper-class women.
McDonald's 1891 marriage to Frank Valesh did not slow down her career. However, her public life was significantly limited after she nearly died giving birth to their only child, Frank, in 1892. After recovering, she edited a labor column for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was also was chosen to introduce Populist presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan when he spoke in the Twin Cities in 1896.
In 1896, Eva McDonald Valesh left Minnesota for New York City and lived the rest of her life on the East Coast. After leaving the state, McDonald Valesh worked for Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor. She also worked as a reporter, published her own magazine with her second husband, and became involved with charitable and relief work. She died in Connecticut in 1956, at age 90. She spent the last decades of her life as a proofreader for the New York Times.
Chronology
1866
Mary Eva (Eva) McDonald is born in Orono, Maine.
1886
Under the alias "Eva Gay," Eva McDonald publishes a sensational column for the St. Paul Globe that exposes the poor labor conditions of working women. Shortly after her first column is published, the women she profiled go on strike.
1889
McDonald edits the labor news column of the Globe, overseeing its coverage of the violent street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul. She lectures across the state for the Knights of Labor and the Eight-Hour League.
1890
McDonald becomes involved with the Farmers' Alliance and begins writing for the St. Paul labor newspaper Great West.
1891
McDonald is elected to be a lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and travels all over the US. She marries Frank Valesh. (June 2)
1892
Eva McDonald Valesh nearly dies giving birth and retreats from active public life, although she writes and edits labor columns for the Minneapolis Tribune until 1895.
1896
She moves to New York City with her son Frank and younger sister Blanche.
1919
Valesh has a heart attack at age 53 and lives a low-key life as a proofreader until her death.
1956
Eva McDonald Valesh dies in Connecticut at age 90.
Bibliography/Sources-
Faue, Elizabeth. Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Gay, Eva. "Mong the Girls Who Toil." St. Paul Daily Globe, March 25, 1888.
Gilman, Rhoda R. "Eva McDonald Valesh: Minnesota Populist." In Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays, edited by Barbara Stuhler and Gretchen Kreuter, 55–76. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.
M575
Eva McDonald Valesh Papers, 1891–1983
Manuscript Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/P0039.xml
Description: Microfilm and typed transcript of an oral history conducted by Columbia University and a few personal papers.
http://www.mnopedia.org/person/valesh-eva-mcdonald-1866-1956
===============================
Her husband, Frank Valesh, a Czech-born cigarmaker, was the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor.
SOURCE-http://www.placeography.org/index.php/Eva_McDonald_Valesh_House,_796_Jackson_Street,_Saint_Paul,_Minnesota_(Razed)
============================================
Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism
Author(s): Faue, Elizabeth
Reviewer(s): Friedman, Gerald
Published by EH.NET (October 2003)
Elizabeth Faue, Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv + 249 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8014-3461-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Eva Valesh was different from most other women of her time. Born Eva McDonald in 1866 to a respectable but far from affluent working-class family, her Minneapolis public school education prepared her for that most traditional of American women's professional occupations: teaching elementary school. But McDonald "didn't like school teaching." Instead her father helped her to submit her writings to a struggling reform newspaper where she then found employment as an apprentice compositor and occasional contributor. Thus began a career that would lead her in and out of the labor reform movement of the 1880s through World War I. As a journalist, traveling lecturer for the Farmer's Alliance and Populist Party, owner of a Washington D. C. political newsletter, editor of the American Federationist, leader of the Women's Trade Union League, and pioneer red-baiter: Eva McDonald led an extraordinary public life. And her private life was just as unusual.
Elizabeth Faue, a historian at Michigan's Wayne State University, tells the story of this remarkable woman in an absorbing biography. Following her life chronologically, Faue recounts MacDonald's early struggles to learn the compositing trade, her first writings on the condition of women workers in Minneapolis, and her involvement in an 1888 strike of Minneapolis garment workers. Her involvement in this strike launched MacDonald's career as labor journalist, and she would write extensively on labor issues for the St. Paul Globe and, later, the Minneapolis Tribune. The strike also led to her work as lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance, and her marriage in 1891 with a local labor leader, Frank Valesh.
At first a happy marriage of two dedicated labor activists, this marriage, and its progeny, Frank Jr., became an encumbrance to Eva Valesh's growing ambitions. Faue reports that by the mid-1890s, Eva Valesh feared she had run up against the limits of what she could accomplish in the Midwest. She wanted to move East, to parley her talents into a place in broad national movements. But Frank wanted to stay. He had ties with the Minnesota labor movement; he had served as the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor and was assistant labor commissioner for the State of Minnesota. He also suffered declining health and feared the fate of his brother and sister who died of tuberculosis within hours of each other in 1895.
Eva Valesh waited only a little while for her family before moving East in 1897. At first, she lived in the Washington D. C. home of Samuel and Sophie Gompers. But she soon moved out on her own. She used an earlier association with Minnesota Senator Nelson to secure an interview with President McKinley for the New York Journal; this story and a recommendation from Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy then led to a position at the Journal. After two years there, she borrowed money from Murphy to launch a political newsletter and publicity service. Next, Gompers recruited her to the American Federation of Labor where she worked for him as editor of the American Federationist. After eight years there, years longer than she had remained in any previous job, she quit to work as a free-lance lecturer and well-paid advisor to the silk-stockinged women in the National Civic Federation's Woman's Committee and the reform-minded New York Colony Club. Throughout she moved to the right, rejecting in turn the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. Finally, in 1910 she burned her bridges to the labor movement by attacking the striking International Ladies Garment Workers Union, accusing its socialist leadership of prolonging the strike for their own "dangerous purposes." Expelled from the Women's Trade Union League, her relationship with the reform-minded club women also fizzled. Having formally divorced Frank Valesh in 1906, in 1910 she married Ben Cross, a wealthy playboy. Using his family money, the two ran a mildly successful women's magazine for a decade. After that failed, they divorced and this remarkable woman, Eva Valesh, spent the next twenty-seven working as copy editor for the New York Times.
The chronological presentation makes Faue's biography a page turner, a mystery where the reader wonders what MacDonald/Valesh will pull off next. But it also reflects an admitted bafflement on Faue's part. She admits, looking "in vain for the moral to Valesh's story. Abandoning the idealism of her working-class youth for the pragmatic adjustments of middle age brought her neither ultimate victory nor tragic defeat" (p. 195). In the end Faue admits that she sought only "to tell a good story" leaving it to the reader "to draw the rest of the conclusions yourself." Well we might: and I would suggest three:
First, gender was a surprisingly permeable barrier to advancement. Prejudice did notably little to slow Valesh's rise. Not only were the Populists and trade unionists willing to listen to a woman, they even paid to hear her. And so did the Twin-City newspaper-reading public. As she herself noted about Washington D. C., "If you had anything to offer intellectually, you were well received in Washington. It doesn't make any difference if you've got a dollar to your name or not, and no one is critical of your dress" (p. 141).
If gender was not a barrier to Valesh's advancement, it was because so many men stepped forward to help her. Eva Valesh's successes show how important it was for a woman to have support from the men around her. And her men were remarkably helpful! Even after she deserted him, Eva's husband Frank Valesh accepted legal responsibility for the breakup in order to let her out of the marriage without prejudice to her career. Also, to free Eva Valesh for her work, Frank cared for their son during the summer and paid for him to attend boarding school. Other men in Eva MacDonald/Valesh's life were just as ready to support her. Her father helped her to become a journalist and compositor; longtime labor activist John P. 'Jack' McGauhey taught her to speak in public; Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy "put her through a course of analysis training that no college would have" and he "let me try everything on the paper." Later, he recommended her for jobs and loaned her money to launch her newsletter. Repeatedly, Eva succeeded because she was helped by a succession of men who saw her potential and helped her to unlock it. One may wonder how many other women ever received such generous help.
In the end it was class, not gender, that cut off Valesh's career. She rose to club woman status because she could interpret the class struggle for her upper-class friends as a member of the working class and participant in the labor movement. But this required that she walk a fine line between the demands of an increasingly radical labor movement and the moderate vision of her club friends. With one foot in each camp, it is not surprising that Valesh lost her balance. When the New York garment workers strikers rejected her mediation proposals, she had to explain to her upper-class friends why they turned down what she had presented as a reasonable compromise. Her attack on the ILGWU's socialist leadership preserved her position with her rich friends, but at the cost of her position as a labor leader. But it was that position that made her interesting and valuable to her upper-class friends.
Elizabeth Faue has told a remarkable story, one with implications that extend well beyond Eva Valesh. Eva Valesh's remarkable story shows what is possible in an society open to talent. But her life also shows the compromises that may be demanded of even a remarkably talented child of the working class. There may be a moral here after all.
Gerald Friedman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The author of State Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999), he is currently preparing studies of the decline of the modern labor movement, and the development of modern economics provisionally entitled "Ambition and Ideals: Richard Ely and the Creation of Modern Economics."
SOURCE- http://eh.net/book_reviews/writing-the-wrongs-eva-valesh-and-the-rise-of-labor-journalism/
==============================
Name Eva McDonald Valesh
Residence Year 1897
Residence Place Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Occupation Reporter, Minneapolis Tribune
SOURCE- Minneapolis, Minnesota, City Directory, 1897
NOTE- Living alone, renting in St. Paul
==============================
Name Eva M Valesh
Age 33
Birth Date Sep 1866
Birthplace Maine, USA
Home in 1900 Washington, Washington, District of Columbia
Street Thirteenth Street
House Number 1908
Sheet Number 2
Number of Dwelling in Order of Visitation 21
Family Number 23
Race White
Gender Female
Relation to Head of House Lodger
Marital Status Married
Marriage Year 1891
Years Married 9
Father's Birthplace Canada English
Mother's Birthplace Maine, USA
Mother: number of living children 1
Mother: How many children 1
Occupation Journalist
Months Not Employed 0
Can Read Y
Can Write Y
Can Speak English Y
Household Members (Name) Age Relationship
Charles Holmes 48 Head
Alice Holmes 37 Wife
Edward Holmes 18 Son
Edith L Holmes 15 Daughter
Virginia E Hellen 60 Lodger
Eva M Valesh 33 Lodger
SOURCE- 1900 Census
==============================
==========================
Name Eva M Valesh
Gender Female
Race White
Marital Status Divorced
Birth Date abt 1866
Residence Westport, Fairfield, Connecticut
Death Date 7 Nov 1956
Death Place Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut
Age 90 Years
Spouse Fran
State File # 18955
SOURCE- Connecticut Death Index
========================
NORWALK, Nov. 9, Mrs. Eva MacDonald Valesh; 90, long-time New York Times proofreader and International Typographical Union leader, died yesterday.
SOURCE- The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 25
November 10, 1956
======================
Born in Maine in 1866, Eva McDonald moved to Minnesota as a child. One of her early jobs was as a typesetter in a print shop, where she joined a typographer's union. Her interest in labor issues was sparked by her work experience and by her upbringing as the daughter of a politically active carpenter.
The first of her numerous Globe articles, written under the name "Eva Gay," was titled "'Mong the Girls Who Toil." It revealed the long hours, unhealthy conditions, and low wages faced by women who worked in a local garment factory, the Shotwell, Clerihew and Lothmann firm. When the women at that factory went on strike less than a month later, McDonald's article was credited with setting off the protest. She continued writing for the Globe for more than a year, going undercover as a factory worker, a domestic worker, and a store clerk. Although employers across the Twin Cities swore they would not be tricked, McDonald's youth, tomboyish appearance, and ragged costumes always got her in the door.
McDonald quickly became a star in the Minnesota labor movement. Her intelligence, passion, and poise made her a popular public speaker. She spoke across Minnesota in support of the Knights of Labor and their movement for an eight-hour workday. She was also elected State Lecturer of the Farmers' Alliance. As she lectured across the state, McDonald continued to work for the Globe as the editor of their labor section. She directed their coverage of the violent 1889 street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
In 1888, McDonald became the first woman to run for the Minneapolis School Board for the Democratic Party. Women could vote in school board races but most did not support McDonald. Her working-class allegiances made her suspect in the eyes of many middle- and upper-class women.
McDonald's 1891 marriage to Frank Valesh did not slow down her career. However, her public life was significantly limited after she nearly died giving birth to their only child, Frank, in 1892. After recovering, she edited a labor column for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was also was chosen to introduce Populist presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan when he spoke in the Twin Cities in 1896.
In 1896, Eva McDonald Valesh left Minnesota for New York City and lived the rest of her life on the East Coast. After leaving the state, McDonald Valesh worked for Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor. She also worked as a reporter, published her own magazine with her second husband, and became involved with charitable and relief work. She died in Connecticut in 1956, at age 90. She spent the last decades of her life as a proofreader for the New York Times.
Chronology
1866
Mary Eva (Eva) McDonald is born in Orono, Maine.
1886
Under the alias "Eva Gay," Eva McDonald publishes a sensational column for the St. Paul Globe that exposes the poor labor conditions of working women. Shortly after her first column is published, the women she profiled go on strike.
1889
McDonald edits the labor news column of the Globe, overseeing its coverage of the violent street railway strike of Minneapolis and St. Paul. She lectures across the state for the Knights of Labor and the Eight-Hour League.
1890
McDonald becomes involved with the Farmers' Alliance and begins writing for the St. Paul labor newspaper Great West.
1891
McDonald is elected to be a lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and travels all over the US. She marries Frank Valesh. (June 2)
1892
Eva McDonald Valesh nearly dies giving birth and retreats from active public life, although she writes and edits labor columns for the Minneapolis Tribune until 1895.
1896
She moves to New York City with her son Frank and younger sister Blanche.
1919
Valesh has a heart attack at age 53 and lives a low-key life as a proofreader until her death.
1956
Eva McDonald Valesh dies in Connecticut at age 90.
Bibliography/Sources-
Faue, Elizabeth. Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
Gay, Eva. "Mong the Girls Who Toil." St. Paul Daily Globe, March 25, 1888.
Gilman, Rhoda R. "Eva McDonald Valesh: Minnesota Populist." In Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays, edited by Barbara Stuhler and Gretchen Kreuter, 55–76. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.
M575
Eva McDonald Valesh Papers, 1891–1983
Manuscript Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/P0039.xml
Description: Microfilm and typed transcript of an oral history conducted by Columbia University and a few personal papers.
http://www.mnopedia.org/person/valesh-eva-mcdonald-1866-1956
===============================
Her husband, Frank Valesh, a Czech-born cigarmaker, was the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor.
SOURCE-http://www.placeography.org/index.php/Eva_McDonald_Valesh_House,_796_Jackson_Street,_Saint_Paul,_Minnesota_(Razed)
============================================
Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism
Author(s): Faue, Elizabeth
Reviewer(s): Friedman, Gerald
Published by EH.NET (October 2003)
Elizabeth Faue, Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv + 249 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8014-3461-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Eva Valesh was different from most other women of her time. Born Eva McDonald in 1866 to a respectable but far from affluent working-class family, her Minneapolis public school education prepared her for that most traditional of American women's professional occupations: teaching elementary school. But McDonald "didn't like school teaching." Instead her father helped her to submit her writings to a struggling reform newspaper where she then found employment as an apprentice compositor and occasional contributor. Thus began a career that would lead her in and out of the labor reform movement of the 1880s through World War I. As a journalist, traveling lecturer for the Farmer's Alliance and Populist Party, owner of a Washington D. C. political newsletter, editor of the American Federationist, leader of the Women's Trade Union League, and pioneer red-baiter: Eva McDonald led an extraordinary public life. And her private life was just as unusual.
Elizabeth Faue, a historian at Michigan's Wayne State University, tells the story of this remarkable woman in an absorbing biography. Following her life chronologically, Faue recounts MacDonald's early struggles to learn the compositing trade, her first writings on the condition of women workers in Minneapolis, and her involvement in an 1888 strike of Minneapolis garment workers. Her involvement in this strike launched MacDonald's career as labor journalist, and she would write extensively on labor issues for the St. Paul Globe and, later, the Minneapolis Tribune. The strike also led to her work as lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance, and her marriage in 1891 with a local labor leader, Frank Valesh.
At first a happy marriage of two dedicated labor activists, this marriage, and its progeny, Frank Jr., became an encumbrance to Eva Valesh's growing ambitions. Faue reports that by the mid-1890s, Eva Valesh feared she had run up against the limits of what she could accomplish in the Midwest. She wanted to move East, to parley her talents into a place in broad national movements. But Frank wanted to stay. He had ties with the Minnesota labor movement; he had served as the first president of the Minnesota State Federation of Labor and was assistant labor commissioner for the State of Minnesota. He also suffered declining health and feared the fate of his brother and sister who died of tuberculosis within hours of each other in 1895.
Eva Valesh waited only a little while for her family before moving East in 1897. At first, she lived in the Washington D. C. home of Samuel and Sophie Gompers. But she soon moved out on her own. She used an earlier association with Minnesota Senator Nelson to secure an interview with President McKinley for the New York Journal; this story and a recommendation from Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy then led to a position at the Journal. After two years there, she borrowed money from Murphy to launch a political newsletter and publicity service. Next, Gompers recruited her to the American Federation of Labor where she worked for him as editor of the American Federationist. After eight years there, years longer than she had remained in any previous job, she quit to work as a free-lance lecturer and well-paid advisor to the silk-stockinged women in the National Civic Federation's Woman's Committee and the reform-minded New York Colony Club. Throughout she moved to the right, rejecting in turn the Knights of Labor and the Populist Party. Finally, in 1910 she burned her bridges to the labor movement by attacking the striking International Ladies Garment Workers Union, accusing its socialist leadership of prolonging the strike for their own "dangerous purposes." Expelled from the Women's Trade Union League, her relationship with the reform-minded club women also fizzled. Having formally divorced Frank Valesh in 1906, in 1910 she married Ben Cross, a wealthy playboy. Using his family money, the two ran a mildly successful women's magazine for a decade. After that failed, they divorced and this remarkable woman, Eva Valesh, spent the next twenty-seven working as copy editor for the New York Times.
The chronological presentation makes Faue's biography a page turner, a mystery where the reader wonders what MacDonald/Valesh will pull off next. But it also reflects an admitted bafflement on Faue's part. She admits, looking "in vain for the moral to Valesh's story. Abandoning the idealism of her working-class youth for the pragmatic adjustments of middle age brought her neither ultimate victory nor tragic defeat" (p. 195). In the end Faue admits that she sought only "to tell a good story" leaving it to the reader "to draw the rest of the conclusions yourself." Well we might: and I would suggest three:
First, gender was a surprisingly permeable barrier to advancement. Prejudice did notably little to slow Valesh's rise. Not only were the Populists and trade unionists willing to listen to a woman, they even paid to hear her. And so did the Twin-City newspaper-reading public. As she herself noted about Washington D. C., "If you had anything to offer intellectually, you were well received in Washington. It doesn't make any difference if you've got a dollar to your name or not, and no one is critical of your dress" (p. 141).
If gender was not a barrier to Valesh's advancement, it was because so many men stepped forward to help her. Eva Valesh's successes show how important it was for a woman to have support from the men around her. And her men were remarkably helpful! Even after she deserted him, Eva's husband Frank Valesh accepted legal responsibility for the breakup in order to let her out of the marriage without prejudice to her career. Also, to free Eva Valesh for her work, Frank cared for their son during the summer and paid for him to attend boarding school. Other men in Eva MacDonald/Valesh's life were just as ready to support her. Her father helped her to become a journalist and compositor; longtime labor activist John P. 'Jack' McGauhey taught her to speak in public; Minneapolis Tribune editor William Murphy "put her through a course of analysis training that no college would have" and he "let me try everything on the paper." Later, he recommended her for jobs and loaned her money to launch her newsletter. Repeatedly, Eva succeeded because she was helped by a succession of men who saw her potential and helped her to unlock it. One may wonder how many other women ever received such generous help.
In the end it was class, not gender, that cut off Valesh's career. She rose to club woman status because she could interpret the class struggle for her upper-class friends as a member of the working class and participant in the labor movement. But this required that she walk a fine line between the demands of an increasingly radical labor movement and the moderate vision of her club friends. With one foot in each camp, it is not surprising that Valesh lost her balance. When the New York garment workers strikers rejected her mediation proposals, she had to explain to her upper-class friends why they turned down what she had presented as a reasonable compromise. Her attack on the ILGWU's socialist leadership preserved her position with her rich friends, but at the cost of her position as a labor leader. But it was that position that made her interesting and valuable to her upper-class friends.
Elizabeth Faue has told a remarkable story, one with implications that extend well beyond Eva Valesh. Eva Valesh's remarkable story shows what is possible in an society open to talent. But her life also shows the compromises that may be demanded of even a remarkably talented child of the working class. There may be a moral here after all.
Gerald Friedman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The author of State Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999), he is currently preparing studies of the decline of the modern labor movement, and the development of modern economics provisionally entitled "Ambition and Ideals: Richard Ely and the Creation of Modern Economics."
SOURCE- http://eh.net/book_reviews/writing-the-wrongs-eva-valesh-and-the-rise-of-labor-journalism/
==============================
Name Eva McDonald Valesh
Residence Year 1897
Residence Place Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Occupation Reporter, Minneapolis Tribune
SOURCE- Minneapolis, Minnesota, City Directory, 1897
NOTE- Living alone, renting in St. Paul
==============================
Name Eva M Valesh
Age 33
Birth Date Sep 1866
Birthplace Maine, USA
Home in 1900 Washington, Washington, District of Columbia
Street Thirteenth Street
House Number 1908
Sheet Number 2
Number of Dwelling in Order of Visitation 21
Family Number 23
Race White
Gender Female
Relation to Head of House Lodger
Marital Status Married
Marriage Year 1891
Years Married 9
Father's Birthplace Canada English
Mother's Birthplace Maine, USA
Mother: number of living children 1
Mother: How many children 1
Occupation Journalist
Months Not Employed 0
Can Read Y
Can Write Y
Can Speak English Y
Household Members (Name) Age Relationship
Charles Holmes 48 Head
Alice Holmes 37 Wife
Edward Holmes 18 Son
Edith L Holmes 15 Daughter
Virginia E Hellen 60 Lodger
Eva M Valesh 33 Lodger
SOURCE- 1900 Census
==============================
==========================
Name Eva M Valesh
Gender Female
Race White
Marital Status Divorced
Birth Date abt 1866
Residence Westport, Fairfield, Connecticut
Death Date 7 Nov 1956
Death Place Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut
Age 90 Years
Spouse Fran
State File # 18955
SOURCE- Connecticut Death Index
========================
NORWALK, Nov. 9, Mrs. Eva MacDonald Valesh; 90, long-time New York Times proofreader and International Typographical Union leader, died yesterday.
SOURCE- The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 25
November 10, 1956
======================
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