Nicholas Klein

Nicholas Klein (1884–1951) was an American labor union advocate and attorney whose public life moved through journalism, socialist politics, labor organizing, civil rights work, and city government. Born in Cincinnati, he became an orphan at 16. In 1904, he began his career as a European reporter for the magazine of Los Angeles socialist Gaylord Wilshire. He later wrote for the Hobo News, placing him close to the working-class and radical circles that shaped much of his public voice.

Klein entered electoral politics in 1907, when he ran in Ohio’s 2nd congressional district as a third-party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives on the Socialist Party of America ticket. He lost to Republican incumbent Herman P. Goebel. Three years later, in 1910, he became an attorney after graduating from Nashville YMCA Night Law School. He also worked as an adviser for James Eads How, another sign of his connection to causes centered on workers and people outside the usual seats of power.

He is best known for a speech delivered in May 1918 to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Speaking during the First World War, Klein warned that when the war ended, munition plants would close and “millions of munitions workers” would be thrown into the labor market. He urged strikers and delegates to stand “one hundred per cent” for organized labor. In the same address, he gave the line that made his name travel far beyond the meeting hall: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

Those words are often shortened to “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” a form frequently misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi. The source of the confusion is understandable, since Gandhi made different remarks to a similar effect in a 1920 speech at Muzaffarabad, later included in Freedom’s Battle. A related earlier saying is also tied to Arthur Schopenhauer, though the familiar version is itself a misquotation. Klein’s own wording, however, came from a concrete labor struggle and from his appeal to clothing workers facing hard days.

In the 1920s, Klein was affiliated with the Universal Negro Improvement Association and provided legal counsel to Marcus Garvey before Garvey’s deportation in 1927. In 1935, Klein was elected to the Cincinnati City Council and went on to serve three terms. During his last term, from 1940 to 1941, he served as vice mayor of Cincinnati. Away from public office, he married Eva Chassin in June 1916. They had two daughters, named Peace and Liberty, and lived in Bond Hill. He was also a Free Mason.

Klein’s words still carry because they name a pattern many reformers and workers have recognized: new movements are dismissed before they are opposed, and sometimes honored only after the fight has changed public opinion. His 1918 speech was not a polished slogan detached from events. It was a call to labor unity at a tense moment, spoken by a man whose life had already crossed journalism, socialism, law, and public service.