During the Second Great Awakening earlier in the 19th century, its frontier had been a center of evangelizing and much religious excitement, which resulted in the founding of such beliefs as Millerism and Mormonism.

[7] The group, including Ida Rauh, Inez Milholland, Floyd Dell, and Doris Stevens, also spent summers and weekends in Croton-on-Hudson, where Max bought a house in 1916.

[8] Eastman graduated from Vassar College in 1903 and received a Master of Arts degree in sociology (then a relatively new field) from Columbia University in 1904.

[9] While pursuing her graduate degree, Eastman worked nights as a recreation leader at the Greenwich House Settlement, where she encountered Paul Underwood Kellogg.

[9] Social work pioneer and journal editor Paul Kellogg offered Eastman her first job: investigating labor conditions for The Pittsburgh Survey.

[9] Her report, Work Accidents and the Law (1910), became a crucial tool in the fight for occupation health and safety and an early weapon in the ongoing battle.

This model became the standard for the U.S.[9] During Woodrow Wilson's presidency, she continued to campaign for occupational safety and health while working as an investigating attorney for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations from 1913 to 1914.

She also delivered the speech "Now We Can Begin" after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment;it outlined the work that needed to be done in the political and economic spheres to achieve gender equality.

[15] In 1916, Eastman married the British editor and antiwar activist Walter Fuller, who had come to the United States to direct his sisters' singing of folksongs.

[5] The publication of her 1923 confessional article titled Marriage Under Two Roofs caused an uproar as Eastman revealed the specifics of their unconventional living arrangement.

[17] After Max Eastman's periodical The Masses was forced to close by government censorship in 1917, he and Crystal co-founded a radical journal of politics, art, and literature: the Liberator, in early 1918.

[citation needed] Eastman has been called one of the most neglected leaders in the United States because although she wrote pioneering legislation and created long-lasting political organizations, she disappeared from history for 50 years.

[15] Freda Kirchwey, the editor of The Nation, wrote at the time of her death, "When she spoke to people—whether it was to a small committee or a swarming crowd—hearts beat faster.