Rose Cohen’s “Out of the Shadow discusses about a Russian Jew who immigrated to the U. S. for equality and opportunities. She provides her personal aspect of immigration in the late 1800s. It also addresses the effects of rapid growth of industry, population, role of women in the social and economic system and also the complications of religion and society in America. However our other textbook “Give me Liberty” by Eric Foner has a lot of similarities to Out of the Shadow, Foner talked about many historical events that we can relate to Cohen’s.
One important historical event I want to discuss about would be how Jewish women on the lower East side played a role in working, in Out of the Shadow Rose explains that her father had sent her and her other sister to New York so that they could find a steady employment in the tenement stitching shop, her father also worked in the garment trade but he knew the demand was greater for women workers who were hired at lower wages than men. At least it was an improvement for women, women were gradually taking over the workforce.
In Foner’s textbook chapter fifteen “The Making of of Radical Reconstruction also talks about women’s rights and how destruction of slavery led women to search for ways to make the promise of free labor for real women. Rose Cohen had gone from being a resisting traditionalist to an enthusiastic Americanizer in the first year being in the U. S. During a depression period. The great Drepression in 1893 was one of the worst in American history with the unemployment rate throughout a half decade, domestic and political causes of the depression.
Rose was not employed for long during the great depression years, she had explained to us in the book that one by one the men in her shop were getting laid off, soon came Rose’s turn she stayed home and her fathers shop was closed altogether. Three months had passed since they earned any money and finally when Rose was getting a job her position was to be a servant and she would six dollars a month but her mother refused to let her do a job like this. Everything they had saved up was gone and soon they had to borrow money to pay for their home.
Rose Cohen’s “Out of the Shadow is a very appealing autobiography as she looks back on her family’s journeys, struggles and her growing up at such a young age understanding the real world so quickly without having a choice. They were an immigrant Jewish family trying to fit in an alien culture. And her story continues with issues as a domestic servant, and increasing health problems. During one illness, she was visited by the settlement worker Lillian Wald, through the settlement, she was referred to the uptown Presbyterian Hospital, and there she met wealthy non-Jews who sponsored summer outings for children of the Lower East Side.
She worked successive summers at a Connecticut retreat established for immigrant children and like others she found herself torn between the immigrant world of her family and the American culture. Her story inspires many people and is also a life learning experience, after reading her book I was amused by how she lived her life at such a young age, nowadays we get everything so easy, our economic industry has received a huge boost because of their hard work I believe. And we don’t have to go face half as much hardships they did.
This book gives us many reasons on why we shouldn’t be taking a lot of what we have for granted and shows us how our history once used to live. The reason we are going so corrupt is because we don’t see what we do have and keep on being greedy, I agree America is a wonderful place to be for many reasons why should be take those reasons for granted and put us back to where we started, maybe if we did go through a depression now we would be more thankful of what we would earn and be wise on how to handle our economic, social and political situations.
