Boston Manufacturing Company records, 1813-1930 (Digitized)Textile firm established in Waltham, Mass. in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell and Patrick Tracy Jackson. Operated the first mill in the world to combine all aspects of the manufacture of cotten cloth under one roof. Its establishment marks the start of the factory system in the United States.
Vertical file collection on labor unions, 1923-1950Consists of unbound manuscripts of less than a volume in size including material on the following individuals, unions, and commissions: Baltimore Agreement Commission, Maryland, 1923; American Arbitration Tribunal, concerning the American Federation of Radio Artists, 1940; Ralph F. Albert, arbitrator, Boston, Mass., 1944-1948; and International Chemical Workers Union, papers on Lever Brothers, soap manufacturers in Cambridge, Mass., 1948-1950.
Boston Women's Trade Union League Records, 1924-1945The Boston Women's Trade Union League was founded in 1904. Although it seldom had a paid secretary or a fully functioning headquarters, it aided strikers and worked with local unions on organizing campaigns.
Boston Women's Trade Union League Records, 1923-1933The Boston Women's Trade Union League was founded in 1904. Although it seldom had a paid secretary or a fully functioning headquarters, it aided strikers and worked with local unions on organizing campaigns.
Maida Springer Kemp Papers, 1942-1981Kemp was born in Panama, Central America, in 1910 and moved to New York City with her mother, Diane Stewart, in 1917. In 1932 Kemp went to work as a pinker and hand finisher in a garment factory in New York. She joined Local 22 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) in 1933; this was the beginning of her involvement in the American trade union movement, which eventually included participation in the workers' education movement, African trade union movements, labor education worldwide (particularly for women), and the women's movement.
Jewish Unions
Judaica ephemera collection : Series B : United States : Collection 29Includes: Governor's Advisory Committee : Cloak, Suit, and Skirt Industry (Employment and earnings of workers by Morris Kolchin, 1925);
Includes: American Federation of Labor (Agreement recognizing union, 1956; Samuel Gompers Centennial, 1950; Morally Sound : Religious leaders view the union shop, [195_?]).
Includes: Jewish Labor Committee (Los Angeles Women's Division, 1946; Research on anti-Semitism in the USSR, 1959; Statement on the United Jewish Appeal resolution, 1946; Annual report, 1947; Souvenir Journal honoring Isidor Stenzor, 1963; Jewish Labor Committee presents Moshe Oysher : Stage, screen, and radio artist, [194_?]).
Includes: National Jewish Workers' Alliance (Arlazaroff Branch Fifth anniversary banquet and dance, 1938; Judith Club: Seventh annual ball. Philadelphia, PA: 1931; Tenth annual ball, Philadelphia, PA: [1934]; Parris-Friendship Branch 350: 14th annual ball, 1934; Camp Kindervelt, 1936; Oneg Shabbat, NYC, [193_?]; Self-Help and Mutual Aid, NYC, [193_?]; miscellaneous Yiddish ephemera).
Judaica ephemera collection : Series B : United States : Collection 43Collection of 247 items of ephemera from the following American Jewish organizations: Foundation for Jewish Studies (24 items); Freedom Center (3 items); Hadassah (27 items); HASC (11 items); Haazinu (3 items); HIAS (27 items); JCPA (7 items); JESNA (13 items); Jewish Book Council (4 items); Jewish Children's Fund (10 items); Jewish Communal Fund (9); Jewish Family & Children Services (JF&CS) (8 items); Jewish Fund for Justice (18 items); Jewish Labor Committee (3 items); Jewish War Veterans (11 items); Jewish Women's International (15 items); Jewish Women's Archive (41 items); Jewish Women's Foundation (13 items).
Judaica ephemera collection : Series B : United States : Collection 69Collection of 349 items of ephemera, from the following organizations: United Palestine Appeal (29 items), 1930s-1940s; United Jewish Appeal, primarily 1940s-1950s, 1970s-1980s (30 items); National Jewish Welfare Board (including Jewish Book Council), primarily 1970s (193 items), and Workmen's Circle, primarily 1940s, 1960s-1970s (80 items), Jewish Labor Committee, 1970s-1980s(8 items).
Judaica ephemera collection : Series B : United States : Collection 99Collection includes : American Jewish World Service (40) ; Good People Fund (2) ; Jewish Labor Committee (3) ; Mazon (10) ; Met Council on Jewish Poverty (17) ; Project Ezrah (9) ; Jewish Communal Fund (3) ; Jewish Funds for Justice (5) ; Combined Jewish Philanthropies (4) ; Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (15) ; Kulanu (3) ; Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (3) ; Year of Civil Discourse Initiative (2) ; American Jewish Committee (24) ; Jewish Funders Network (2) ; Jewish Council for Public Affairs (4) ; social justice misc (5) ; charities misc. (15).
Collection includes : National Jewish Outreach Program (20) ; Union for Traditional Judaism (2) ; Orthodox Union (6) ; Kesher (12) ; The Jewish Foundation (30) ; JESNA (11) ; ORT America (8) ; Hidabroot from Heart (7) ; Isabella Freedman Retreat Center (9) ; Institute for Jewish Spirituality (9) ; ITIM (4) ; Clal (4) ; Gesher (8) ; Tanenbaum (19) ; Yad L'Achim (13) ; Jewish outreach misc. (2).
National Women's Trade Union League of America Records, 1904-1950 (digitized)The Trade Union League was established in Boston in 1903 to organize women workers into unions, thereby helping them to "secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work." The League was dissolved in 1950.
National Women's Trade Union League of America Records, 1910-1934 (digitized)The Trade Union League was established in Boston in 1903 to organize women workers into unions, thereby helping them to "secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work." The League was dissolved in 1950.
Living wage survey. Typescript reports regarding living conditions of women surveyed, [ca. 1907] (Digitized)Bosworth, daughter of a bank president, grew up in Illinois, graduated from Wellesley College in 1907, and was a social worker. She worked for a number of settlement houses and participated in surveys of workers' living conditions, including the Women's Educational and Industrial Union survey (1907-1909) of incomes and expenditures of women workers, the results of which she published as The Living Wage of Women Workers; a survey (1911) of available housing in Philadelphia, which she later published as Housing Conditions in Main Line Towns; and an investigation (1914) of living costs, under the auspices of the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation.
Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and its principal leaders, 1855-1964The Women's Trade Union League was founded in Boston in 1903 during the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor. Local branches were organized within a year in Boston, Chicago and New York. The League worked through unionization campaigns, educational programs, and legislative lobbying to improve the working conditions of women in the industrial labor force. The organization was dissolved in 1950.
Personal Papers: Maida Springer Kemp (Digitized)Kemp was born in Panama, Central America, in 1910 and moved to New York City with her mother, Diane Stewart, in 1917. In 1932 Kemp went to work as a pinker and hand finisher in a garment factory in New York. She joined Local 22 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) in 1933; this was the beginning of her involvement in the American trade union movement, which eventually included participation in the workers' education movement, African trade union movements, labor education worldwide (particularly for women), and the women's movement.
Personal Papers: Esther PetersonActive in the fields of labor, education, women's rights, and consumer affairs, (Brigham Young University, B.A., 1927; Columbia University Teachers College, 1930) Peterson was involved in union organizing, worker education, and labor and consumer legislation lobbying. She was head of the Women's Bureau (1961-1964), Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor Standards (1961-1969), executive vice chairman of the President's Commission on the Status of Women (1961-1963), Special Assistant to the President for Consumer Affairs (1964-1967, 1977-1981), legislative representative for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1969-1970), consumer adviser to Giant Food, Inc. (1970-1977), and representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council for the International Organization of Consumers Unions (1983-1993). Descended from Danish immigrants, she married Oliver Peterson in 1932. They had four children. For further information see Who's Who of American Women, 1982-1983. She died in Washington, D.C., in 1997.
Personal Papers: Frances PerkinsSocial reformer Perkins was the first woman appointed to the Cabinet. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College (1902), was a teacher and a volunteer for social organizations, and worked for various agencies concerned with labor issues before being appointed Secretary of Labor by Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933). For further biographial information, see Notable American Women: The Modern Period (1980).
Personal Papers: Frances SiegelFrances Siegel, labor activist, graduated from Radcliffe College (A.B. 1931), and held secretarial positions in Cambridge, Massachusetts at ISIS magazine (1934-1952) where she worked for George Sarton, and with Harvard chemistry professor Arthur Lamb. She later worked in the biochemistry department of Brandeis University. Her major interests and activities lay in the labor movement and in peace and social justice organizations. She was volunteer secretary for the Labor Research Association, 1934-1939, a Communist sympathizer, and frequent contributor to the Daily Worker (now The People's Weekly.) She travelled frequently abroad to the Soviet Union, Cuba, and South America and within the United States. Her wide circle of correspondents included Anant Pandya (from India), Hu and Tsi Pei (from China), Ruth Rubin, servicemen Joel Rothschild and Hy Gordon, her sisters Mary Siegel Russak and Fanny Siegel Jacobs, and many friends she met on her travels.
Personal Papers: Josephine Clara and Pauline Dorothea GoldmarkJosephine Clara Goldmark and Pauline Dorothea Goldmark (1874-1962) were born in Brooklyn, N.Y., two of the eleven children of Regina Wehle and Joseph Goldmark, political refugees from the Revolution of 1848 in Austria. Both sisters graduated from Bryn Mawr, were associated with the National and New York Consumers' Leagues, investigated industrial working conditions particularly for women workers, and were published authors. J. Goldmark researched labor laws on hours of work for her brother-in-law, Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, was on the committee investigating the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, advocated upgrading the standard of education for nurses, and worked with Florence Kelley in the 1920s to safeguard workers against radium poisoning. P. Goldmark investigated conditions in the canneries in New York State, was assistant director of social research for the Russell Sage Foundation, a member of the industrial board of the N.Y. State Labor Dept. (1913-1915), executive secretary of the Committee on Women in Industry during WWI, manager of the Women's Service Section of the U.S. Railroad Administration (1918-1920) for which she toured the country studying working conditions of women and children, an expert in the research dept. at American Telephone and Telegraph on women's employment and health problems (1919-1939), vice-chair of the N.Y.C. Child Labor Commission, and director of the National Consumers' League.
Personal Papers: Leonora O'ReillyCorrespondence, diaries, notebooks, speeches, articles, pamphlets, leaflets, and clippings reflect her career. O'Reilly wrote speeches and articles on equal rights, suffrage, socialism, labor conditions, and the employment of women. Some subjects of the material are the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in N.Y., where she taught sewing, the National Women's Trade Union League, the labor movement, the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire, strikes, peace, and the 1915 International Congress of Women. Correspondents include Mary Ritter Beard, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Mary Ware Dennett, Mary and Katherine Dreier, Laura Greshheimer, Harriet H. King, Margaret Dreier Robins, Olivia B. Strohm, and Mary Wolfe.
Personal Papers: Pauline NewmanLabor organizer, union official, and socialist, Newman (ca.1890-1986), an immigrant from Lithuania and a factory worker when very young, was the first woman organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Director of Health Education at its Union Health Center, and an active member of the National and New York Women's Trade Union League. She represented the ILGWU and the WTUL at numerous committees and conferences on the state, national, and international levels. After 1924 she lived usually with Frieda S. Miller; together they raised Miller's adopted daughter.
Personal Papers Mary Elizabeth DreierChiefly correspondence; also financial records, day books, poems, and photos. The bulk of the collection concerns family and friends, mostly since 1920. Administrative papers of the N.Y. WTUL include minutes, reports and financial records. Few records are from the early years of Dreier's presidency, but the financial problems of the last fifteen years are well documented. Also includes several accounts of work and living conditions by women who worked in the garment industry; extensive correspondence between Dreier and her close friend, arbitration expert Frances Kellor; and documentation of Katherine Dreier's work with Marcel Duchamp and the Société Anonyme, and her interest in spiritualism.