The Girl Who Dared to Defy

In the wake of the violent labor disputes in Colorados two-year Coalfield War, a young woman and single mother resolved in 1916 to change the status quo for girls, as well-to-do women in Denver referred to their hired help. Her name was Jane Street, and this compelling biography is the first to chronicle her defiant effortsand devastating misfortunesas a leader of the so-called housemaid rebellion. A native of Indiana, Jane Street (18871966) began her activist endeavors as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In riveting detail, author Jane Little Botkin recounts Streets attempts to orchestrate a domestic mutiny against Denvers elitist Capitol Hill women, including wives of the states national guard officers and Colorado Fuel and Iron operators. It did not take long for the housemaid rebellion to make local and national news. Despite the IWWs initial support of the housemaids fight for fairness and better pay, Street soon found herself engaged in a gender war, the target of sexism within the very organization she worked so hard to support. The abuses she suffered ranged from sabotage and betrayal to arrests and abandonment. After the United States entered World War I and the first Red Scare arose, Streets battle to balance motherhood and labor organizing began to take its toll. Legal troubles, broken relationships, and poverty threatened her very existence. In previous western labor and womens studies accounts, Jane Street has figured only marginally, credited in passing as the founder of a housemaids union. To unearth the rich detail of her story, Botkin has combed through case histories, family archives, andperhaps most significantStreets own writings, which express her greatest joys, her deepest sorrows, and her unfortunate dealings with systematic injustice. Setting Janes story within the wider context of early-twentieth-century class struggles and the womens suffrage movement, The Girl Who Dared to Defy paints a fascinatingand ultimately heartbreakingportrait of one womans courageous fight for equality.