Kate Hyndman, Stella Nowicki, and Sylvia Wood discuss their experiences as labor organizers in Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Sylvia’s father was a skilled roofer in New Orleans, Louisiana, and taught his daughter about the importance of unions. Stella grew up on a farm near Kalamazoo, Michigan, and her father taught her the socialist belief: “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” Kate hopes she inherited some of the spirit of her paternal grandmother, who stood up to her in-laws and social forces by refusing to be their servant. The women’s activism was inspired early in their lives. Sylvia’s father was a follower of Marcus Garvey and he raised her to be a leader and a public speaker. She moved to Chicago as the Great Depression was taking hold and jobs were difficult to find. Around the same time, Stella arrived in Chicago from Michigan and found work in the stockyards where women were paid thirty-seven-and-a-half cents an hour compared to fifty-two cents per hour that men earned. Sylvia eventually worked in a laundry, a job she got after returning day-after-day until the foreman hired her. Kate, who arrived in Chicago several years before the other women, went to various factories, lying about her age, until she landed a job at a manufacturer of medical supplies and athletic supporters. The women remember the severe conditions they worked under. Sylvia recalls that blacks and whites did different work and received different pay. Each woman stepped into a leadership role, with Stella passing out leaflets demanding safety precautions, Sylvia inspiring a rebellion to protest the employment of a white forelady with no experience, and Kate losing her job after writing an article for the Daily Worker opposing layoffs. Later, her best friend informed her that her former co-workers had joined a union. In the mid-1930s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) would not organize the nation’s many unskilled laborers. To fill the void, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was formed and the women were part of that movement. Stella helped publish a newspaper, the Yards Worker, that reported on labor conditions and was covertly distributed throughout Chicago’s meatpacking plants. Kate recalls businesses forcing workers to sign pledges that they were not union members and their avowals that they would not join one. Criminals and “stool pigeons” were hired to intimidate workers who attempted to organize, and Stella recounts a meeting of 400-500 slaughterhouse employees to start the United Packing House Workers (UPHW). When asked what a socialized society would be like, Stella responds that it would be a more equitable society, with all children receiving the same educational opportunities, and without economic disparity. Initially, Sylvia was disappointed with the ineffectiveness of the organizers, so she took to recruiting members herself. Stella recalls that by the early 1940s, organized labor was strong, but big business fought back and it took a long-time to sign up the majority of workers. Sexism was also rampant in the unions. Sylvia remembers being forced to provide a written reason for absences. She convinced her co-workers, who worked seven days a week in addition to caring for their families, to write “just tired” and the requirement was dropped. Stella found that even within the movement, men dominated the leadership positions and women were often relegated to secretarial duties. Providing childcare was not given serious consideration, because it did not directly affect the men. Kate once worked as a district official in a union and the men in her office never invited her to join them for lunch. When she ate with the stenographers instead, her supervisor told her that it was undignified, but she told him to “Go to hell.” Despite the sexism, Sylvia found it necessary to cooperate with men since they worked side-by-side. During turbulent times, Stella recalls that the most spirited union meetings often occurred at the shop gates. Workers asserted their power through strikes. In the meatpacking plants, the starting point was on the “kill floor,” because when the men there stopped, all work in the factory came to a halt. Sylvia says she did not care about white workers until one white woman took a stand to get a black man hired in a tool shop. Sylvia supported the woman, the man was hired, and three months later, he was shop steward. Sylvia's attitude changed when she learned that all the workers, regardless of race, had to pull together. Stella claims that while there was racial discrimination in society, it did not exist within the union because the people had to work together. Kate found organizing was needed outside of the unions as well and she helped unemployed workers fight evictions. Police brutality was common and many protesters died, but the violence brought the community together. Stella compares large, modern-day industrial unions to the AFL in the 1930s and says they are too conservative. They fail to organize the unorganized, and forget the needs of the workers. She believes the conservatism began when the CIO expunged the more radical unions in the 1940s and the Joseph McCarthy era caused an “atrophy of creativity” within the labor movement. Kate was later labeled a communist, but says she has no regrets about her devotion to organizing workers, even though family members have told her she wasted her life. Sylvia is also proud of her contributions to organized labor and sees progress being made. Stella later joined the women’s movement, which she found to be a “long-time overdue.” Despite the revolutionary work of feminists, Stella worries that young women often cannot relate to working-class women. Kate still believes in socialism, though she sees no modern European country that fits her ideal. Stella retains her faith in the American working class.