She was born in Ruza Wenclawska in Poland but immigrated to the United States when she was an infant. She started working in a Philadelphia textile mill at the age of 11. When she was 19 years old she had tuberculosis and became disabled. She became a trade union organizer with the National Consumers’ League and the National Women’s Trade Union League in New York City and a factory inspector. The lack of resources and protection at such a young age allowed her to become an advocate for the rights of working women. She represented the workers and was one of the few industrial women organizers in the Women’s Political Union. She was an important contributor to the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage campaign through her powerful speeches and activism. She was also supporting the Congressional Union’s campaign against the Democratic Party, which fought to persuade the Democratic Party into supporting a federal suffrage amendment. In 1917 she joined the silent protests at the White house in Washington D.C. she was arrested and served time in the District jail and the Occoquan Workhouse. On October of that same year she refused to eat or work while she was in prison. This was her way of demonstrating that she was a political prisoner who was exercising her First Amendment right to public assembly and that she was not a criminal. Her actions inspired many more suffragists who took part in civil disobedience in order to place more pressure on the White House so that they could accede to suffrage demands.

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