SOURCE: Hobson, Christopher Z. “The Radicalism of Felix Holt: George Eliot and the Pioneers of Labor.” Victorian Literature and Culture 26, no. 1 (1998): 19-39.

In the following essay, Hobson claims that Eliot was the first major writer to invest a labor activist character with social importance and moral value, and to recognize that class divisions would not disappear with industrialization and modernization.

With the death of Michael Zametkin last week at the age of 76 another of the thinning ranks of pioneers of the Jewish Socialist and Labor movements passed away. Few, indeed, are left of the gallant band of idealists, mainly immigrants from Russia, who came to the exploited and sweated Jewish workers in the congested Ghettoes of New York and other cities, brought them the inspiration of Socialism and organized them into great trade unions.

(“Michael Zametkin, Socialist Pioneer” [1935])

Mrs. Zametkin came to the United States to continue her...