Emma Goldman Second Workplace

Emma Goldman resigned from her first employer (the garment-maker Garson, Meyer). A few days later, she took a job at the smaller tailor shop of Louis Rubenstein located at 30 Henry Street. (In her autobiography she misspells the name as "Rubinstein.") In contrast to the factory setting at Garson, Meyer, Rubenstein's operation was located in a home and was less regimented. "It was a small shop, not far from where I lived," Emma wrote in her autobiography. "The house stood in a garden, and only a dozen men and women were employed in the place. The Garson discipline and drive were missing." And the pay was better: four dollars a week! Even so, Emma eventually came to see even Rubenstein's as just another sweat shop.

It was also at Rubenstein's that the fifteen-year-old Emma would meet coworker Jacob Kershner, with whom she would soon enter into a brief and unsatisfactory marriage.

The Building and Site. 30 Henry Street remains a residential lot today, and the two-story frame house that occupies it might well have stood there in 1886. Still, whether this is the actual Rubenstein house or a successor remains unknown.

Thanks to Timothy Binga and Christopher Philippo for research assistance.