The Parlor Provocateur or From Salon to Soap-Box

Kate Crane Gartz delighted in describing herself as the first 'parlor Bolshevik.' The daughter of Chicago industrialist and philanthropist Richard T. Crane, sister of Chicago Socialist and strike activist Frances Crane Lillie, Gartz moved from reform to revolution with the currents of the Russian Revolution and World War I. Her unique form of protest was letter-writing.