Women's Trade Union League Papers on Microfilm

The Women's Trade Union League was founded in Boston in 1903 during the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor. In 1907 its name became the National Women's Trade Union League of America. Local branches were organized within a year in Boston, Chicago and New York. The League sought to counter the exploitation of working women by organizing them into trade unions and by securing protective legislation regulating their hours and working conditions and setting minimum wage standards. The three main goals of the League were the organizing of women workers, education and legislation Its dual membership of working and middle class women made the WTUL unique among social reform organizations of its day. The WTUL established the first residential workers' education program in the U.S. in Chicago in 1914, the Training School for Women Organize

As the League's president from 1907 to 1922, Margaret Dreier Robins, the well-to-do daughter of a Brooklyn businessman, guided it through the period of its most active work. Among her close associates were several working class women who served as officers of the national or local Leagues, including Leonora O'Reilly of New York and Agnes Nestor and Mary Anderson of Chicago. After 1922, working women took over the leadership; Rose Schneiderman, a veteran leader of strikes in the needle trades, served as national president from 1926 to 1950.