Pauline Newman; Organizer for Garment Workers

Pauline M. Newman, one of the first women organizers for the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, has died after a stroke. She was 98.

Miss Newman, of New York City, died Tuesday at the home of friends.

Her long involvement with the union began in 1918 when she was appointed the union’s director of health education. She remained active in that post until the last few years and also had served on numerous federal Labor Department advisory boards in the 1930s and 1940s.

Fire Killed 146

She was identified throughout her career with the March 25, 1911, fire in New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory that killed 146 workers. She had gone to work in that sweatshop as a girl of 13 in 1901, shortly after her family emigrated from Lithuania. She came to the attention of union officials after a strike at Triangle in 1909, and was hired as a union organizer.

Miss Newman often said afterward that the union job had saved her life. She was organizing workers in Philadelphia when the fire swept through the factory killing many of her friends.

“You don’t forget a day like that,” she said several years ago.

She was a principal speaker at every annual memorial observance of the fire except the 75th, two weeks ago. On those occasions she focused on the need for adequate sanitary codes and health standards in the workplace.