Early Life
Ben Gold was born September 8, 1898 to Israel and Sarah (Droll) Gold, Jews living in Bessarabia, a province of the Russian Empire. His father was a jeweler, active in the revolutionary movement and a member of the local Jewish self-defense corps, institutions which existed in many towns as a precaution against pogroms launched by anti-semitic Black Hundreds groups.
The Golds emigrated to the United States in 1910, where 12-year-old Ben took a variety of jobs to help support his family, working in box factories, making pocketbooks, and working in millinery shops. He eventually became an operator in a fur shop. In 1912, the 14-year-old joined the Furriers Union of the United States and Canada, which changed its name a year later to the International Fur Workers Union of the United States and Canada (IFWU). He attended Manhattan Preparatory School at night to complete his education, intending to go to law school.
The same year he joined the Furriers Union, the 14-year-old Gold was elected assistant shop chairman by his local union during the first furriers' strike in the United States.
Politically active, Gold joined the Socialist Party of America in 1916.
In 1919, at the age of 21, Gold was elected to the New York Furriers' Joint Board, a council of furriers' unions whose jurisdiction covered all of New York City. In September of that year, he joined a group which broke away from the Socialist Party to form the Communist Labor Party.
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