Sidney Hillman
| Sidney Hillman | |
|---|---|
Sidney Hillman c. 1940
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| Born |
March 23, 1887 Žagarė, Lithuania |
| Died | July 10, 1946 (aged 59) Point Lookout, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Labor leader |
| Spouse(s) | Bessie Abramowitz Hillman (1916-1946), his death |
| Children | Sally Kraft; Sept 29,1921 and Philoine Fried 1918 |
Sidney Hillman (March 23, 1887 – July 10, 1946) was an American labor leader. Head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, he was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and in marshaling labor's support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.
Sidney Hillman was born in Žagarė, Lithuania, then part of the Russian empire, on March 23, 1887, the son of Lithuanian Jewish parents. Sidney's maternal grandfather was a small-scale merchant, his paternal grandfather was a rabbi known for his piety and lack of concern for material possessions. Hillman's father was himself an impoverished merchant, more concerned with reading and prayer than with his faltering business.
From a young age Sidney had shown great academic promise, mastering the rote memorization upon which the cheder education of the day was based. By the age of 13, Hillman had memorized several volumes of the Talmud. The next year he was chosen by the Hillman rabbinical clan to go away to attend yeshiva in Vilijampolė, a small town across the river from the city of Kaunas. It was hoped that Sidney would follow in the Hillman family tradition by becoming a rabbi.
Things did not proceed as planned, however. While in Slobodka, Hillman began to regularly attend the secret meetings of an illegal study circle headed by a local druggist. The study circle's members read radical literature and books on political economy, and Hillman was here exposed to the works of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer in Russian translation.
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