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(Kaplan) Spitzer, Lottie (audio interview #6 of 9)

INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is one of eight interviews with Lottie Kaplan Spitzer conducted over the course of four months as part of a Senior Honors project in collaboration with the Feminist History Research Project. This interview was conducted after a two month hiatus. The interviews were conducted at the ACWA Retirees Center, which probably helped Spitzer to remember and focus on her union experiences. On the other hand, it might have reinforced only positive sentiments about the union, particularly since at the time of the interview visits there constituted Spitzer's main social excursion. There is a great deal of overlap and repetitiousness between the interviews, partially because of Spitzer's tendency to go off into different directions in response to the interviewer's question. Clearly, certain events and people represent more salient memories and these are the ones she tends to repeat. Despite some of the repetitiousness, however, the interviews provide a nice picture of the kind of grass roots union organizing that women like her carried out, especially in the 1910s. TOPICS - living arrangements; classism; family businesses in Russia; overall factory; wages; living expenses; move to Chicago; living arrangements; and family background;family background and history; pressures to marry; living arrangements; religious practices; Hull House; Women's Educational Club at Hull House; family life; and family relationships;living arrangements; dating; marriage expectations; courtship; wedding; birth control; pregnancies and children; husband's work history and wages; family fur shop; living conditions; domesticity; and husband's position as a foreman at Turner Brothers;husband's work and relationship to management; family fur business; Spitzer's responsibilities in business; husband's return to work and joining the union after retirement; return to work, 1930s; Depression job scarcity; Frank Rosenblum; jobs at Mandel Brothers, Boston Department Store and Bonds Clothing Store; wages; educational aspirations for children; and husband's gender ideology;wages; children's college; socialism in the ACWA; Workmen's Circle; anarchism; Sidney Hillman; Jane Addams; Hull House; women reformers, 1915 strike; ethnic differentiations, Italians and Jews; 11/11/1974