Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) was a vocal proponent of and participant in the labor movement during the first two decades of the 20th century. During a time when women were often dismissed and silenced, she traveled across the U.S. and Europe writing stories about the ugly underbelly of the industrialized working world.
Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) reported on the ugly underbelly of the industrialized working world.
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Our final journalist was a vocal proponent of and participant in the labor movement during the first two decades of the 20th century. During a time when women were often dismissed and silenced, she traveled across the U.S. and Europe writing stories about the ugly underbelly of the industrialized working world. She believed elevating workers rights was imperative for the success of the country. Let’s talk about Mary Heaton Vorse!
Mary Heaton Vorse was born in New York City on October 11, 1874. Her mother, Ellen Heaton, had five children from a previous marriage, but Mary was her only child with Mary’s father, Hiram Heaton. Hiram was an Innkeeper in Massachusetts, but the majority of the family wealth came from the large sum of money Ellen inherited from her late first husband. As a result, Mary benefitted from an upper-class privileged lifestyle that she deeply resented.
For most of Mary’s childhood, the family lived in a 24-room house in Amherst, Massachusetts. But throughout her formative years, her family spent time traveling across Europe. As a precocious young girl with an ear for languages, Mary became fluent in German, French, and Italian.
That said, traditional schooling did not agree with Mary and when she was 19, she forewent college, instead choosing to study art in Paris. Mary yearned for independence, but much to her dismay her mother traveled with her. .
Nevertheless, Mary’s confidence and intelligence attracted many men, including a fellow art student. Their relationship was passionate but tarnished by her partner’s overbearing nature. The dynamic of a woman longing for freedom against a domineering man would continue to follow Mary throughout her life and was evidenced in her work.
In 1896, Mary moved to Manhattan to attend the progressive Art Students’ League. But Mary recognized her lack of artistic ability in comparison to her classmates and she chose to embrace the persona of the “Bachelor Girl” while in the city. She spent her nights socializing and drinking with male writers and rebelling against the norms for a young woman at that time.
During her years of rebellion, Mary secretly married Albert White Vorse in 1898. Three years later, she gave birth to a baby boy. Mary struggled to find a balance between desiring a husband and a family and maintaining her independence. She used writing as an outlet for her internal conflict. Writing as a hobby soon evolved into writing as a career. Through her work writing of book reviews, Mary stepped into the role of the breadwinner of the family.
In 1903, in an effort to resolve some marital issues and Albert’s infidelity, the family moved to Europe, first France and then Italy. There, Mary’s fiction writing blossomed. She also, for the first time, was exposed to the stresses of the white-collar, working class.
In 1907, Mary gave birth to her second child. Her writing at that time focused on the struggle of balancing motherhood and career.
Mary provided for the family by selling popular fiction stories to magazines about domestic life and the evolving nature of heterosexual relationships. Men and women were beginning to question their long-established roles as the dominant provider and the submissive homemaker, and Mary catered to that self-examination. In her mid to late thirties, she published many novels including, “The Breaking-In of a Yachtsman’s Wife”, “Autobiography of an Elderly Woman”, and “The Very Little Person” that all entertainingly explored parental love, gender norms, and marital disputes.
The same-day death of Mary’s husband and her mother in 1910 altered the course of her life. With the heavy responsibility of providing for two young children, Mary pursued a career as a labor journalist. Her first experience covering worker’s rights was at the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This event solidified Mary’s affiliation with the have-nots, despite being born a have.
The strike at Lawrence not only helped reunite Mary with purpose but also with Joe O’Brien, a jovial and spirited reporter she’d met the year before. After a 3 month courtship, the two married and had a son. The family lived well and enjoyed summers with their theater friends in Provincetown, Massachusetts. But the marriage was short-lived as Joe was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died in 1915.
Despite this tragedy, Mary remained steadfast in her commitment to fighting for worker’s rights. Her journalism focused on the human interest story often found amid the protests and war zones she traveled to. She covered the Mesabi Range Copper Miners’ strike in Minnesota, the nationwide steel strike of 1919, the coal strikes in Kentucky, and the General Motors sit-down strike in Michigan. Mary set herself apart from other journalists by working hand in hand with unions and joining workers on the frontlines of their protests. Her accounts were intimate and thoughtful.
As a pacifist, Mary scrutinized both World Wars. Alongside 3,000 other outspoken women, Mary formed the Women’s Peace Party on January 10, 1915, in opposition to the onset of World War I. In April of that year, she attended a meeting in The Hague for the International Women’s Peace Party as the New York delegate. Her recognition of the costs of war and her advocacy for peace often led her to places where women were not welcome or expected. Later, she was one of the oldest, if not the oldest American foreign correspondent covering World War II.
In 1922, Mary once again showed her propensity for resilience when her partner Robert Minor left her for another woman after Mary suffered a miscarriage in her second trimester. The trauma of both losses caused Mary to turn to drugs and alcohol before kicking the habit four years later.
Mary did not compromise her values for financial gain. While she continued to write short stories for women for quick cash, she also wrote for The Masses, a radical, socialist journal, that was eventually shut down by the government due to its anti-war stance. Government intimidation did not deter Mary. In the end, she published over 400 articles on child labor, affordable housing, the right to vote, and infant mortality for a variety of publications including The New Yorker, Harper’s Weekly, and Atlantic Monthly.
Mary was honored for her activism in 1962 when the United Auto Workers awarded her with the union’s first Social Justice Award.
Mary died from a heart attack on June 14, 1966, at the age of 92 at her beloved home in Provincetown.
This was our final episode of our month of Journalists. On Monday, we’re starting a brand new monthly theme.
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