Women's Trade Union League
Encyclopedia
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) was a U.S.
organization of both working class and more well-off women formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop
conditions. The WTUL played an important role in supporting the massive strikes in the first two decades of the twentieth century that established the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
and in campaigning for women's suffrage among men and women workers.
The roots of the WTUL come from a British organization of the same name
founded thirty years earlier. The British League had originally supported the creation of a separate women’s labor movement but, by the 1890s, merged its own aims with the mainstream British labor movement and functioned as an umbrella organization of women’s trade unions. Its first American supporter was the socialist William English Walling
who met with British WTUL leaders in 1902. He returned to the United States and began to generate support for a similar American organization
Organized in 1903 at the American Federation of Labor
convention, the WTUL spent much of its early years trying to cultivate ties with the AFL leadership. By 1907, the WTUL saw its purpose as supporting the AFL and encouraging women’s membership in the organization. In its constitution that year, the WTUL defined its purpose in assisting “in organizing women into trade unions...such unions to be affiliated, where practicable, with the American Federation of Labor.” In response, the AFL leadership generally ignored the League. When the WTUL decided to hold its annual conference at a different location than the AFL in 1905, Samuel Gompers
was furious and refused to attend. Still, the League did push the AFL towards a pro-suffrage
position and did manage to organize more women into the Federation than at any previous time.
It also drew on the earlier work of activists in the settlement house movement
, such as Jane Addams
and Florence Kelley
, and budding unions in industries with a large number of women workers, such as garments and textiles. The WTUL leadership comprised both upper-class philanthropists and working-class women with experience organizing unions, including a significant portion of the most important female labor leaders of the day, including Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Rose Schneiderman
.
But the heyday of the League came between 1907 and 1922 under the presidency of Margaret Dreier Robins
. During that period, the WTUL led the drive to organize women workers into unions, secured protective legislation, and educated the public on the problems and needs of working women.
, the New York City
and Philadelphia shirtwaist workers' strike, by providing a headquarters for the strike, raising money for relief funds, soup kitchens and bail for picketers, providing witnesses and legal defense for arrested picketers, joining the strikers on the picket line, and organizing mass meetings and marches to publicize the shirtwaist workers' demands and the sweatshop conditions they were fighting. Some observers made light of the upper-class women members of the WTUL who picketed alongside garment workers, calling them the "mink brigade". These distinctions split strikers from their upper-class benefactors as well: a contingent of strikers challenged Alva Belmont
concerning her reasons for supporting the strike.
The strike was, however, less than wholly successful: Italian
workers crossed the picket lines in large numbers and the strikers lacked the resources to hold out longer than the employers. In addition, although activists within the WTUL, including William E. Walling and Lillian D. Wald, were also among the founders of the NAACP that year and fought the employers' plan to use African-American strikebreakers to defeat the strike, others in the black community actively encouraged black workers to cross the picket lines. Even so, the strike produced some limited gains for workers, while giving both the WTUL and women garment workers a practical education in organizing.
The WTUL played a similar role in the strike of mostly male cloakmakers in New York City and men clothing workers in Chicago
in 1910, in the 1911 garment workers strike in Cleveland and in many other actions in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri and Wisconsin. By 1912, however, the WTUL began to distance itself from the labor movement, supporting strike action selectively when it approved of the leadership's strategy and criticizing the male-dominated leadership of the ILGWU that it saw as unrepresentative of women workers. The WTUL's semi-official relationship with the American Federation of Labor
was also strained when the United Textile Workers, an AFL affiliate, insisted that it stop providing relief for Lawrence, Massachusetts
textile workers who refused to return to work during the strike
led by the Industrial Workers of the World
; some WTUL leaders complied, while others refused, denouncing both the AFL and the WTUL for its acquiescence in strikebreaking activities.
The League had a closer relationship with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the union formed by the most militant locals of mostly immigrant workers in the men's clothing industry in Chicago, New York and other eastern urban centers, which was outside the AFL. The WTUL trained women as labor leaders and organizers at its school founded in Chicago in 1914 and played a key role in bringing Italian garment workers into the union in New York.
, the minimum wage and protective legislation. Because of the hostility of the United States Supreme Court toward economic legislation at the time, only legislation that singled out women and children for special protections survived challenges to its constitutionality. Ironically, Samuel Gompers
and the conservative leadership of the AFL also viewed such legislation with hostility, but for a different reason: they believed by that point that legislation of this sort interfered with collective bargaining
, both by usurping the role of unions in obtaining better wages and working conditions and in setting a precedent for governmental intrusion into the area.
The WTUL was also active in demanding safe working conditions, both before and after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
in 1911 in which 145 workers were killed. That fire, which had been preceded by a similar fire in Newark, New Jersey
in which twenty-five garment workers were killed, not only galvanized public opinion on the subject, but also exposed the fissures between the League's well-heeled supporters and its working class militants, such as Rose Schneiderman
. As Schneiderman said in her speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911:
The WTUL also began to work actively for women's suffrage, in close coalition with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in the years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
in 1920. The WTUL saw suffrage as a way to gain protective legislation for women and to provide them with the dignity and other less tangible benefits that followed from political equality. Schneiderman coined an evocative phrase in campaigning for suffrage in 1912:
Her phrase "bread and roses", recast as "We want bread and roses too", became the slogan of the largely immigrant, largely women workers of the Lawrence textile strike.
The WTUL was, on the other hand, mistrustful of the National Woman's Party
, with its more individualistic, rights-oriented approach to woman's equality. The WTUL was strongly opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment
drafted by the NWP after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on the ground that it would undo the protective legislation that the WTUL had fought so hard to obtain.
The WTUL focused increasingly on legislation in the 1920s and thereafter. Its leadership, in particular Schneiderman, were supporters of the New Deal
and had a particularly close connection to the Roosevelt administration through Eleanor Roosevelt
, a member of the WTUL since 1923. The WTUL dissolved in 1950.
A related organization was the Women's Education and Industrial Union (WEIU), which employed female researchers such as Louise Marion Bosworth
to research the working conditions of women.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
organization of both working class and more well-off women formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop
Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...
conditions. The WTUL played an important role in supporting the massive strikes in the first two decades of the twentieth century that established the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s...
and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations...
and in campaigning for women's suffrage among men and women workers.
Origins
Women's Trade Union League (United Kingdom)
The Women's Trade Union League, founded in 1874 and briefly known as the Women's Protective and Provident League, was a British trade union for women workers. It was established by Emma Paterson, who had seen unions managed by working women in America....
founded thirty years earlier. The British League had originally supported the creation of a separate women’s labor movement but, by the 1890s, merged its own aims with the mainstream British labor movement and functioned as an umbrella organization of women’s trade unions. Its first American supporter was the socialist William English Walling
William English Walling
William English Walling was an American labor reformer and socialist born in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the grandson of William Hayden English, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1880, and was born into wealth. He was educated at the University of Chicago and at Harvard Law School...
who met with British WTUL leaders in 1902. He returned to the United States and began to generate support for a similar American organization
Organized in 1903 at the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
convention, the WTUL spent much of its early years trying to cultivate ties with the AFL leadership. By 1907, the WTUL saw its purpose as supporting the AFL and encouraging women’s membership in the organization. In its constitution that year, the WTUL defined its purpose in assisting “in organizing women into trade unions...such unions to be affiliated, where practicable, with the American Federation of Labor.” In response, the AFL leadership generally ignored the League. When the WTUL decided to hold its annual conference at a different location than the AFL in 1905, Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
was furious and refused to attend. Still, the League did push the AFL towards a pro-suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
position and did manage to organize more women into the Federation than at any previous time.
It also drew on the earlier work of activists in the settlement house movement
Settlement movement
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community...
, such as Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...
and Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley was an American social and political reformer. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.-Family:...
, and budding unions in industries with a large number of women workers, such as garments and textiles. The WTUL leadership comprised both upper-class philanthropists and working-class women with experience organizing unions, including a significant portion of the most important female labor leaders of the day, including Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman was a prominent United States labor union leader, socialist, and feminist of the first part of the twentieth century...
.
But the heyday of the League came between 1907 and 1922 under the presidency of Margaret Dreier Robins
Margaret Dreier Robins
Margaret Dreier Robins was an American labor leader. Born in Brooklyn to prosperous German immigrants in 1868, in her teens Robins suffered from physical ailments which left her depressed and weak. She was privately educated. At age nineteen, she began doing charity work at Brooklyn Hospital and...
. During that period, the WTUL led the drive to organize women workers into unions, secured protective legislation, and educated the public on the problems and needs of working women.
Support for union organizing
After supporting a number of strikes in the first few years of its existence, the WTUL played a critical role in supporting the Uprising of the 20,000New York shirtwaist strike of 1909
The New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, also known as the Uprising of the 20,000, was a labor strike primarily involving Jewish women working in New York shirtwaist factories. Led by Clara Lemlich and supported by the National Women's Trade Union League of America , the strike began in November 1909...
, the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Philadelphia shirtwaist workers' strike, by providing a headquarters for the strike, raising money for relief funds, soup kitchens and bail for picketers, providing witnesses and legal defense for arrested picketers, joining the strikers on the picket line, and organizing mass meetings and marches to publicize the shirtwaist workers' demands and the sweatshop conditions they were fighting. Some observers made light of the upper-class women members of the WTUL who picketed alongside garment workers, calling them the "mink brigade". These distinctions split strikers from their upper-class benefactors as well: a contingent of strikers challenged Alva Belmont
Alva Belmont
Alva Erskine Belmont , née Alva Erskine Smith, also called Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896, was a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the women's suffrage movement...
concerning her reasons for supporting the strike.
The strike was, however, less than wholly successful: Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
workers crossed the picket lines in large numbers and the strikers lacked the resources to hold out longer than the employers. In addition, although activists within the WTUL, including William E. Walling and Lillian D. Wald, were also among the founders of the NAACP that year and fought the employers' plan to use African-American strikebreakers to defeat the strike, others in the black community actively encouraged black workers to cross the picket lines. Even so, the strike produced some limited gains for workers, while giving both the WTUL and women garment workers a practical education in organizing.
The WTUL played a similar role in the strike of mostly male cloakmakers in New York City and men clothing workers in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1910, in the 1911 garment workers strike in Cleveland and in many other actions in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri and Wisconsin. By 1912, however, the WTUL began to distance itself from the labor movement, supporting strike action selectively when it approved of the leadership's strategy and criticizing the male-dominated leadership of the ILGWU that it saw as unrepresentative of women workers. The WTUL's semi-official relationship with the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
was also strained when the United Textile Workers, an AFL affiliate, insisted that it stop providing relief for Lawrence, Massachusetts
Lawrence, Massachusetts
Lawrence is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States on the Merrimack River. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a total population of 76,377. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and North Andover to the southeast. It and Salem are...
textile workers who refused to return to work during the strike
Lawrence textile strike
The Lawrence Textile Strike was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World. Prompted by one mill owner's decision to lower wages when a new law shortening the workweek went into effect in January, the strike spread rapidly through the...
led by the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
; some WTUL leaders complied, while others refused, denouncing both the AFL and the WTUL for its acquiescence in strikebreaking activities.
The League had a closer relationship with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the union formed by the most militant locals of mostly immigrant workers in the men's clothing industry in Chicago, New York and other eastern urban centers, which was outside the AFL. The WTUL trained women as labor leaders and organizers at its school founded in Chicago in 1914 and played a key role in bringing Italian garment workers into the union in New York.
Support for legislative reforms
At this time the WTUL also began to work for legislative reforms, in particular the eight-hour dayEight-hour day
The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the short-time movement, had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories transformed working life and imposed long hours and poor working conditions. With working conditions...
, the minimum wage and protective legislation. Because of the hostility of the United States Supreme Court toward economic legislation at the time, only legislation that singled out women and children for special protections survived challenges to its constitutionality. Ironically, Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
and the conservative leadership of the AFL also viewed such legislation with hostility, but for a different reason: they believed by that point that legislation of this sort interfered with collective bargaining
Collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between employers and the representatives of a unit of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions...
, both by usurping the role of unions in obtaining better wages and working conditions and in setting a precedent for governmental intrusion into the area.
The WTUL was also active in demanding safe working conditions, both before and after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history...
in 1911 in which 145 workers were killed. That fire, which had been preceded by a similar fire in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
in which twenty-five garment workers were killed, not only galvanized public opinion on the subject, but also exposed the fissures between the League's well-heeled supporters and its working class militants, such as Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman was a prominent United States labor union leader, socialist, and feminist of the first part of the twentieth century...
. As Schneiderman said in her speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911:
- I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.
- This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.
- We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
- Public officials have only words of warning to us – warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
- I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.
The WTUL also began to work actively for women's suffrage, in close coalition with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in the years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920....
in 1920. The WTUL saw suffrage as a way to gain protective legislation for women and to provide them with the dignity and other less tangible benefits that followed from political equality. Schneiderman coined an evocative phrase in campaigning for suffrage in 1912:
- What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
Her phrase "bread and roses", recast as "We want bread and roses too", became the slogan of the largely immigrant, largely women workers of the Lawrence textile strike.
The WTUL was, on the other hand, mistrustful of the National Woman's Party
National Woman's Party
The National Woman's Party , was a women's organization founded by Alice Paul in 1915 that fought for women's rights during the early 20th century in the United States, particularly for the right to vote on the same terms as men...
, with its more individualistic, rights-oriented approach to woman's equality. The WTUL was strongly opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...
drafted by the NWP after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on the ground that it would undo the protective legislation that the WTUL had fought so hard to obtain.
The WTUL focused increasingly on legislation in the 1920s and thereafter. Its leadership, in particular Schneiderman, were supporters of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and had a particularly close connection to the Roosevelt administration through Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, a member of the WTUL since 1923. The WTUL dissolved in 1950.
A related organization was the Women's Education and Industrial Union (WEIU), which employed female researchers such as Louise Marion Bosworth
Louise Marion Bosworth
Louise Marion Bosworth was an American researcher at the Women's Educational and Industrial Union who extensively surveyed working women in order to learn about their working and living conditions...
to research the working conditions of women.
Further reading
- Foner, Philip S., Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I. 1979.
- Orleck, Annelise, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. 1995.