Grace Hutchins

Grace Hutchins (August 19, 1885 – July 15, 1969) was an American labor reformer and researcher, journalist, political activist and communist. She spent many years of her life writing about labor and economics, in addition to being a lifelong dedicated member of the Communist Party, along with Anna Rochester, a Marxist economist and historian and her companion of 45 years. although Hutchins was also regularly involved in strikes, demonstrations and labor disputes.

Background Grace Hutchins was born in an upper-class family in Boston in 1885, the third daughter of five children to Susan (née Barnes-Hurd) and Edward Hutchins. Her ancestors, originally from England, had settled in Massachusetts during the colonial period. Her father was an attorney who helped found the Legal Aid Society, while her mother was involved in various hospitals in the city; they were both actively involved in the Episcopal Trinity Church.

Career Academics Within a few years of leaving college, Hutchins became an Episcopalian missionary teacher for Church Missionary Society in China and taught at St. Hilda's school in South China in 1912, later becoming a headmistress. Both Rochester and Hutchins were firm adherents to the doctrine of nonviolence, and in 1920 Hutchins joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which promoted pacifism in the United States. She served as a press secretary from 1924 to 1926, during which time she also served as a business executive while actively contributing to the monthly magazine.

From 1940 to 1956, Hutchins was a shareholder in the communist Daily Worker newspaper. and their relationship lasted forty years, living in New York's Greenwich Village. along with Rochester's. It has been suggested that what brought the two women together was "the waged and political work" that they shared.

Works

Hutchins's writings focus primarily on labor conditions for women and children. She co-edited several reference series for the group, as well as editing the group's own magazine, Railroad Notes between 1937 and 1962.

Books Hutchins published three books: Jesus Christ and the World Today with Anna Rochester (1922) and re-published three times