We've got a really massive stack of historical
documents in front of us today, and I've been
waiting all week to get into this one. Oh yeah,
this is a big one. It really is. We are launching
right into a brand new deep dive for you, looking
at the incredibly complex, completely fascinating
life of Ella Reeve Bloor. Right. Or, as a lot
of people in history knew her, simply Mother
Bloor. It's a sweeping story to take on, honestly.
I mean, her life spanned from 1862 all the way
to 19... Which is just a massive chunk of time.
Exactly. It covers some of the absolute most
volatile, transformative decades in modern history.
Yeah. So our mission today, we are pulling from
excerpts of her Wikipedia biography, and we really
want to extract the most important nuggets of
knowledge from those sources. We want to figure
out how this one woman navigated, shaped, and
just relentlessly challenged the American labor
and radical political landscapes. of the late
19th and early 20th centuries. It's a massive
undertaking, but a vital one if you want to understand
the mechanics of that era. Definitely. Now, before
we jump into the history, there's something very
important we need to establish right up front
with you. Yes. The disclaimer. Right. This deep
dive covers some highly politically charged topics.
We are going to be talking about the history
of socialist and communist movements, both here
in the United States and abroad. And we need
to be very clear here. Absolutely clear to you.
our listener, that we are not taking any sides
here. Yeah. Neither left wing nor right wing.
That is a crucial point. We are not endorsing
any of the viewpoints, the platforms or the ideologies
that are going to come up in this conversation.
Not all. Our role today is strictly to be your
impartial guides. We are just conveying the factual
history and the ideas exactly as they are contained
within our original source material. We're just
here for the history and the human story. Exactly.
So. With that established, why should we be paying
attention to Ella Reeve Bloor? Out of all the
figures from that era, why dedicate a whole deep
dive to her? You should care because Mother Bloor's
life is really a masterclass in how grassroots
movements evolve over time. Okay. If you want
to understand the historical roots of tying political
rights specifically, the right to vote directly
to workplace safety and labor rights, her story
is the blueprint. She really loved it. She did.
She didn't just theorize from a desk somewhere.
She was on the front lines, often at great personal
cost. Okay, let's unpack this. We have to start
at the very beginning, which is actually a million
miles away from those radical front lines. It
really is. She was born Ella Reeve on Staten
Island in July 1862. So this is right in the
middle of the American Civil War. And she ends
up growing up in Bridgerton, New Jersey. A very,
very different world than the one she would eventually
help shape. I mean, the societal expectations
for a woman in the 1870s and 80s were incredibly
rigid. Completely different. And her early personal
life reflects that intensity, I think. In 1882,
when she was just 19 years old, she married a
man named Lucian Bonaparte Ware. Who was quite
a bit older. Yeah, he was 27 at the time. And
over the next 10 years, they had seven children.
Seven kids in 10 years. But the heartbreak here
is immense. She lost three of those children
by the time they were three years old. Oh, wow.
Yeah, Pauline, Charles, and one of her twins,
Lucian Jr. It's a profound amount of tragedy
for a young mother to experience in such a short
window of time. I can't even imagine. The infant
mortality rates of the era were higher, of course,
but that doesn't lessen the personal devastation
at all. No, not at all. And the four children
who did survive went on to live these incredibly
diverse, vibrant lives. They really did. Her
daughter Helen became a concert violinist. Her
son Harold became an agriculture expert and later
on an activist in the Communist Party of America,
just like his mother. Following in her footsteps.
Exactly. And another son, Hamilton, who went
by Buzz, became an artist and a really prominent
leader in the village of Arden, Delaware, which
is actually where Ella lived for many years later
on. It paints a picture of a household that was
clearly very dynamic. You have this fostering
of both intense creativity and a strong sense
of civic or political duty. But her own civic
duty didn't start out radical at all. I was actually
surprised by this in the sources. Oh, her early
activism. Yeah. She was initially involved in
reform movements like the Women's Christian Temperance
Union, the WCTU and women's suffrage. Right.
Plus, she was a published children's book author.
She wrote a book in 1895 called Three Little
Lovers of Nature and another in 1899 called Talks
About Authors and Their Work. What's fascinating
here is the sheer distance she travels ideologically.
You have a temperance advocate and children's
author who eventually becomes converted to socialism.
It's quite the pivot. According to her later
FBI files, the catalyst for this conversion was
a man named Dr. M .V. Ball of Philadelphia. Right.
a student of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Wait, pause for a second. Going from writing
children's books about nature and campaigning
against alcohol to reading Marx and Engels, how
does that leap even happen? If we connect this
to the bigger picture, it actually starts to
make a lot of sense. Okay, how so? Put yourself
in her shoes. You have a grieving mother who
has suffered immense personal loss. She is already
advocating for women's suffrage and temperance.
Right. The WCTU. And at that time, temperance
wasn't just about banning alcohol for moral reasons.
It was seen by many women as a way to protect
families from the ravages of poverty, domestic
violence and addiction. Which were huge issues.
Huge issues which they felt were exacerbated
by the industrial working conditions of the time.
So she's already looking at. social problems
and try to fix them. Precisely. She's treating
the symptoms. But when someone like Dr. Ball
introduces her to a systemic critique of society,
like the economic frameworks offered by Marx
and Engels, it provides a broader vocabulary
for the injustices she's already fighting against.
It gives her a framework. Yes. She evolved from
a reformer into a fierce political radical because
she started looking for the root causes of that
poverty and suffering. That reframing helps a
lot. She was looking for assistance. And she
really threw herself into finding the right vehicle
for those new beliefs. She definitely didn't
do things halfway. No kidding. In 1897, she divorced
Lucian. married her second husband, Lewis Cohen,
who was also a socialist, and became a founding
member of the Social Democracy of America. Which
was a very big deal. Yeah, this was a group set
up by Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger. Eugene
V. Debs being one of the most famous, influential
labor organizers in American history. Working
alongside him was massive. But her memoir reveals
a really telling anecdote about her time there,
which shows she wasn't just a blind follower.
Not at all. Debs had this grand plan to form
a utopian colony out west. The idea was to build
an ideal community to show everyone, by example,
that this economic model could work. Right. A
proof of concept. Exactly. And Ella was writing
a children's column for their paper, The Social
Democrat. And kids were actually mailing her
pennies to fund this utopian colony. You can
see the ethical dilemma forming right there.
It sparked a massive crisis of conscience for
her. She felt it was completely unfair to collect
money from children for something that didn't
even exist yet. It bothered her deeply. She looked
at this whole colonization scheme and called
it unscientific and unsound. She essentially
told her local group it wasn't real socialism
at all. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind.
Clearly. Because when the party held a convention
in Chicago in 1898 and officially voted to continue
with the colony plan, she abruptly resigned.
That is a crucial moment for understanding her
character. Eugene Debs was basically a rock star
in this movement. Walking away from him was a
huge risk. But she possessed a very sharp critical
thinking ability. She needed something grounded
in reality, not a fantasy colony out west. And
she thought she found that reality shortly after,
when she attended a meeting of the Socialist
Labor Party in New York. The SLP? Right. The
speaker was Daniel DeLeon, the editor of the
party's newspaper. She described him as small,
slight, prematurely gray, but speaking very deliberately
and convincingly. He was a powerful intellectual
force. He was analyzing capitalism and tearing
down the idea of isolated utopian colonies. And
Ella was sold. She thought, finally, scientific
socialism. And she joined the SLP. She was looking
for a rigorous theoretical approach and DeLeon
certainly provided that strict framework. He
did. But here's where it gets really interesting.
Oh, this story. So good. Ellen DeLeon became
friends and she started working with the New
York Labor News Company. which was managing the
translation of revolutionary books and pamphlets
into English. She worked with the manager, Julian
Pierce, to proofread the pamphlets that DeLeon
himself had translated. But apparently, DeLeon's
English translations were incredibly rough. Unreadable,
even. It's completely clunky. So Ella and Julian
would secretly reconstruct and fix DeLeon's English
behind his bag before they went to print. And
they never let him know they were doing it. It's
a brilliant detail. It shows a real grounded
pragmatism. Yeah. She wasn't interested in bruising
the leader's ego or having a theoretical debate
about language. She just wanted the material
to be readable and effective for the workers
on the street. She just wanted it to work. Exactly.
But her time with DeLeon wasn't destined to last
either. And this raises an important question
about her overall philosophy, the constant tension
between ideological purity and practical results.
Let's dig into that because she ended up walking
away from the SLP, too. She did. She had been
elected to the general executive board of the
SLP's union affiliate, which was called the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance. The STNLA. Yes. And
she was out there organizing streetcar workers
in Philadelphia and Essex County, New Jersey.
But she started to see a massive strategic flaw.
By trying to build a separate, ideologically
pure, radical union, they were engaging in what's
called sectarianism. Let me make sure I'm following.
Can you break down why that was such a problem
for her on the ground? Think of it like a massive
company where the workers want better conditions.
You have a main union in this case, the American
Federation of Labor, the AFL. Okay, the big mainstream
union. Right. The SLP decides the AFL isn't radical
enough, so they start their own splinter union.
To be more pure. Yes. But by pulling all the
most passionate, radical vocal workers out of
the mainstream union to form their own pure club,
they accidentally handed all the power in the
main union over to the conservative leaders.
Oh, wow. They were isolating themselves from
the vast majority of. everyday workers. So they
were basically preaching to the choir in an empty
room. Exactly. While the actual power remained
untouched. That makes total sense. She realized
this sectarianism was a dead end. She believed
organizers needed to be working within the massive
AF of L to create a united trade union movement,
not sitting in isolated purity. And she confronted
DeLeon about this. She told DeLeon this directly.
He didn't get angry, but he flat out refused
to change his methods. So, true to form, she
walked away. She just kept moving through whatever
was most practical. She even rejected another
splinter group in Pennsylvania called the Logical
Center, led by Lucien Samuel. Because it was
more of the same. Exactly. Instead, in 1901,
she swallowed her pride and went back to her
old friend Eugene Debs to join the newly formed
Socialist Party of America. The S .P .A. But
theory only gets you so far. Eventually, she
had to test these ideas in the real world, which
brings us to her fieldwork. And this brings us
to 1905, which is a legendary piece of her story.
This is the year she gets her famous nickname.
Yes. Ella teamed up with a fellow Socialist Party
member, Upton Sinclair. Sinclair was writing
a book about the horrific conditions in the Chicago
stockyards, a book that would become the massive
bestseller, The Jungle. A book that literally
changed American food safety laws. But gathering
that information was incredibly dangerous work.
It was. Ella went undercover right into the visceral,
dangerous reality of the stockyards to help him
gather the information. She was right in the
thick of it. To pull this off, she partnered
up with a colleague named Richard Bloor. They
pretended to be a married couple to avoid suspicion
from the factory bosses. And it worked. It did.
And the wildest part, they never actually married,
but she kept his last name. Bloor for the rest
of her life. She became Mother Bloor. It's a
fantastic origin story for a legendary organizer.
And her organizing was relentless from that point
on. Relentless almost feels like an understatement
when you look at the record. Our sources list
her organizing strikes across Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Colorado, Ohio, and New York. All over the country.
We were talking about miners, hatters, steel
workers, and needle workers. She was constantly
in the trenches. And the physical toll. Must
have been staggering because our source notes
a crazy statistic. She was arrested 36 times
over the course of her career. 36 times. Think
about the physical and emotional endurance that
requires. It's unbelievable. Jail time for radical
organizers in the 1910s and 20s wasn't just a
slap on the wrist. It meant facing awful conditions,
intimidation and real danger. Yeah. But it's
crucial to understand that for organizers like
her, an arrest wasn't just a consequence to be
avoided. It was often a strategic tool to draw
public attention to the strikes and the working
conditions. Which is wild when you think about
it from the perspective of a mother with surviving
children at home. Very true. But that fieldwork
deeply shaped her ideology, particularly her
legacy as a prominent socialist feminist. Yes,
she made what she called a direct connection
between the ballot and our work. She was out
there seeing the conditions marginalized working
women were facing in these factories. She argued
that because these women had absolutely no political
voice, their only weapon was protest. And as
her own 36 arrests proved, relying solely on
protest was dangerous. Dangerous and often ineffective
at creating lasting systemic change. She believed
that until these working women had the ballot,
Until they could vote on the actual laws that
govern their working conditions, they would always
be at the mercy of their employers. So it wasn't
just an abstract democratic ideal. Not at all.
Suffrage wasn't just a philosophical debate for
her. It was a matter of workplace survival. It
was about having a legally binding contract versus
just begging a boss for a safer machine. So the
vote was literally a tool for safety. And she
didn't just advocate for the vote. She ran for
office herself. repeatedly to force these issues
into the public eye. She was a trailblazer there,
too. In 1908, she was the very first woman to
run for state office in Connecticut when she
ran for secretary of state. Later, she ran for
lieutenant governor of New York in 1918 and even
for governor of Pennsylvania in 1938. And again.
Keeping our neutrality disclaimer in mind, we're
detailing these political campaigns not to endorse
the specific party platforms, but to illustrate
her tactics. Exactly. She knew she wasn't going
to win those races. She was using the electoral
system as a megaphone for the marginalized workers
she was organizing. A megaphone she kept using
as she moved into the next phase of her life,
the communist era, where she stepped onto the
global stage. Things really shift gear here.
She was one of the founders of the Communist
Labor Party of America, which... emerged from
the left wing of the Socialist Party. And by
the early 1920s, she started traveling internationally.
In 1921 and 1922, she went to Moscow for the
Comintern Conventions. The Comintern being the
Communist International, a global gathering of
these political parties. And there's this incredible
cloak and dagger detail from the 1921 Red International
of Labor Unions Convention. I love this part.
She attended using the pseudonym Emmons. And
she voted using credentials that were issued
to her by three locals of the International Association
of Machinists. She was a known radical who had
been arrested dozens of times. Aliases were simply
a practical necessity for her to cross borders
and operate at that point. But she certainly
didn't stay hidden when she came back home. This
is honestly one of my favorite details in the
source material. It's so good. Upon returning
from the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, when
she would have been around 60 years old, by the
way, this grandmother hitchhiked all the way
across the United States. Incredible. She was
writing articles about her travels for the Daily
Worker newspaper. Just the sheer stamina of hitchhiking
across the country in the 1920s is mind -boggling.
It speaks to her absolute refusal to stop moving.
Her later years are just as packed as her early
years. They really are. From 1932 to 1948, she
served on the Central Committee of the Communist
Party USA. She was touring the Midwest, giving
speeches and leading strikes for farmers during
the Great Depression. Still on the ground. She
even returned to Russia for a few months at the
end of 1937. And what's interesting is how her
political stance has kept adapting to the global
situation, especially during World War II. This
is a critical pivot. After Germany invaded the
Soviet Union in June 1941, her geopolitical calculus
completely shifted. She became a highly vocal
advocate for the United States and into the war,
right? Yes. She pushed hard for an early invasion
of Europe to create a second front against the
Axis powers. This is pragmatism on a global scale.
You have a lifelong labor organizer who spent
decades fighting against the American industrial
machine, suddenly advocating for that same machine
to gear up for a massive global war. It seems
like a contradiction at first. It does. But she
was looking at the geopolitical chessboard, figuring
out what action was necessary right at that moment
to defeat fascism, which she saw as the ultimate
existential threat to workers everywhere. She
adapted to the reality in front of her. And she
stayed active, practically until the end. We
wrap up her timeline in the summer of 1951. Ella
Reeve Bloor died on August 10, 1951, in Richlandtown,
Pennsylvania. She was 89 years old. Yes. She
had married for the final time in 1930 to a man
named Andrew Almholt. Today, she is buried in
Harley Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. It's a
quiet resting place for someone who caused so
much noise in her lifetime. And the cultural
footprint she left behind is massive. In 1940,
she published her autobiography called We Are
Many. That book actually inspired the legendary
folk singer Woody Guthrie to write his famous
song 1913 Massacre. That's a huge cultural touchstone.
And when she died, her public funeral reception
in Harlem was a huge event. It was photographed
by Life magazine. Right. And the famous American
painter Alice Neel actually painted a piece called
The Death of Mother Bloor, showing her beer and
the line of mourners. Which is a brilliant painting.
It is. That painting was even featured in a major
retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York City recently in 2021. Oh, and one
more fun fact from the culture side. Her granddaughter,
her to where? became a well -known actress. She
permeated so many different layers of American
history and culture, from the factory floors
to the art world. So what does this all mean?
That's the big question. When we look at all
these pieces, the utopian colonies she walked
away from because they were unrealistic, the
unions she abandoned because they were too isolated,
the 36 arrests, the undercover work in the stockyards,
the hitchhiking, the global conventions, we see
a woman who was a... deeply restless fiercely
pragmatic organizer yes she completely refused
to settle for beautiful utopian dreams if they
didn't practically tangibly help the workers
standing right in front of her on the ground
that pragmatism is her defining trait and it
actually brings up something really fascinating
to think about in our modern context okay what's
that Well, if you're looking at your own modern
workplace, you might take basic safety regulations
or H .R. departments for granted. But Mother
Bloor had to fight tooth and nail for those concepts
to even be discussed. True. She deeply believed
that marginalized workers had absolutely no power
to change their conditions without the ballot.
She saw the right to vote as the ultimate weapon
for workplace safety. Because protests were too
dangerous and easily dismissed without legal
backing. Exactly. So I'll leave you, our listener,
with this final concept to mull over on your
own. Now that universal suffrage is a legal reality
in our society, how do you think a pragmatist
like Mother Bloor would view the effectiveness
of the ballot today? That's a great question.
Wow. That is a fantastic question to chew on.
Is the ballot the shield she hoped it would be
or just a different kind of trench? Thank you
for walking through this incredible history with
us today and helping break down these massive
historical shifts. It was a pleasure to explore
it. Thank you for listening. Keep questioning
the systems around you and keep learning. Keep
that curiosity alive and we will catch you next
time for another deep dive.