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With Pickets, Baskets, and Ballots A few nights ago I spoke to 1,500 women—women who work picking walnuts out of shells. It was one of the most amazing meetings I’ve ever attended. . . . The employers recently took their hammers away from them—they were making “too much money.” For the last two months . . . they have been cracking walnuts with their fists. Hundreds of them held up their fists to CJAREY McWilliams wrote these lines in a 1937 letter to his friend Louis Adamic. Describing these Eastern European and Mexican workers, he observed, “And such extraordinary faces—particularly the old women. Some of the girls had been too frequently to the beauty shop, and were too gotten up—rather amusingly dressy.”2 I would argue that dressing up for a union meeting could be interpreted as an affirmation of individual integrity. They had not surrendered their self-esteem as evidenced by their collective action and personal appearance. These women worked in sweatshops. Shells littered the shop floor, causing t