Research Guides: Industrial Labor: Home

Images from Schlesinger Library

Get Started

Start your archival research on Women in Industrial Labor with this guide. The material in this guide was found by doing as "keywords anywhere" search in HOLLIS on "labor rights" and also searching in HOLLIS on narrowing terms such as Child labor; Labor activism; Labor unions; Labor laws and regulations; Industrial relations; Industrial safety; Minimum wage; Women in the labor movement; Working class.

The archival collections in this guide are divided into three categories:

Labor Activism features the collections of individuals or organizations where the bulk of the material involves labor rights activism which was aimed at improving the lives and working conditions of workers through non-government means, such as strikes, unions, or other organization.

Labor Law and Regulation highlights individuals or organizations where the bulk of the material involves the individual or organization's work regarding labor within the government, such as through state or federal Departments of Labor, government labor oversight committees, or securing labor rights legislation.

Life Experiences features material documenting the daily lives of working class women.

Use the menu on the left to view additional material related to this topic.

Take Note

Many of our collections are stored offsite and/or have access restrictions. Be sure to contact us in advance of your visit.

This guide was originally posted by Hayley Mercer.

Labor Activism

This section features the collections of individuals or organizations where the bulk of the material involves labor rights activism aimed at improving the lives and working conditions of workers through non-government means, such as strikes, unions, or other organization.

Fran Leeper Buss (b. 1942)
Fran Leeper Buss is an oral historian, teacher, activist, and former minister with United Church of Christ. She has interviewed numerous lower income women, union activists, and immigrant women throughout the United States and is the author of several books, many of which focus on these women's stories. The collection contains diaries, correspondence, clippings, an autobiography, and unpublished writings of Buss. Also included are notes and transcripts of some of Buss’s oral history interviews, including transcripts of interviews with Mexican-American labor leader Maria Elena Lucas and civil rights and labor activist Mary Robinson.
Ellen Cantarow
Ellen Cantarow has taught American studies and women's studies at a number of colleges. As a Radcliffe Institute fellow, she studied the labor movement and the women's movement in Italy and has since written on women in the labor force, social activism, and the Middle East. The collection consists primarily of critiques (one by Cantarow), statements, organizational material, etc., of the New University Conference, a national organization of radical graduate students, staff, and faculty that opened a chapter at the University of Chicago in 1968. The group was intended to serve as a collective organizing body to support anti-war, feminist, civil rights, labor, and student autonomy movements. Also included is a constitution, statements from the gay and women's caucuses, candidate statements, etc., mostly from the early 1970s.
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
Scholar, author, and black feminist philosopher Angela Yvonne Davis is one of the most recognized political activists of the 1960s and 1970s. The papers document Angela Y. Davis's work as a scholar, critical theorist, public intellectual, and political activist. The collection includes articles, essays, and research notes relating to labor rights, particularly prison labor reform and the intersections of race, gender, and class in labor.
Mary Elisabeth Dreier (1875-1963)
Labor reformer and suffragist, Dreier was active in the New York Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) throughout its existence (1903-1950), serving as president from 1906 to 1914. The collection contains administrative papers of the New York WTUL, including minutes, reports and financial records. There are 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.
Mae Eberhardt (b. 1915) [in the Black Women Oral History Project]
Mae Massie Eberhardt was a union activist for over 35 years. Eberhardt worked at Orange and Domestic Laundry where she became active in Local 284, AFL, and led the fight for better pay and improved working conditions. Then employed as an electronics worker for Kuthe Laboratories in Newark, she took an active part in the successful organizing campaign for the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (CIO). Elected president of the local, she also served as chief negotiator, chairperson of the grievance committee, and member of the district executive board. Eberhardt went to work for IUE in 1963 as civil rights director for District 3, which included the states of New Jersey and New York; in that position she was instrumental in persuading the IUE to sponsor a scholarship program--now nation-wide--for college students. Elected executive vice-president of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council, she was the first Black woman ever elected as an officer in a state labor organization.
Elizabeth Glendower Evans (1856-1937)
Elizabeth Glendower Evans was involved in prison reform, support of striking workers, and the Massachusetts campaign for the first minimum wage act for women, and actively participated in the Lawrence, Massachusetts Mill Workers' Strike of 1919. She was a contributing editor and financial supporter of La Follette's Magazine (later renamed The Progressive), and national director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1920 to 1937. The collection contains correspondence, diaries, memoirs, and other manuscripts, speeches, articles, notes, clippings, and photos relate to her work, family, and colleagues.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
A socialist and deist, Gilman was an independent thinker, author, and speaker who was an intellectual leader of the women's movement from the late 1890s through the mid-1920s. An advocate of economic independence for women, Gilman considered the ballot of secondary importance. Her interests ranged from sensible dress for women, physical fitness, more rational domestic architecture, and professionalized housework, and she was active in labor reform.The collection contains several articles and pamphlets written by Gilman on the labor movement and records related to her involvement with the National Child Labor Committee. This collection has been digitized and can be access online. Please see the Gilman research guide for more information.
International Federation of Working Women
First called by the National Women's Trade Union League, congresses concerning the employment of women were held in Washington, D.C., in 1919, in Geneva in 1921, and in Vienna in 1923. Stenographic reports of the 1st and 2nd congresses, and calls, programs, articles, clipings, and speeches by Margaret Dreier Robins, the president, from all three congresses.
Maida Springer Kemp (1910-2005)
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, and the women's movement. In 1945 she became the first Black woman to represent the American Federation of Labor (AFL) abroad, serving as its delegate on a trip to observe wartime conditions for workers in Great Britain. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, reports, clippings, printed material, and photographs documenting some of Kemp's trade union activity in the United States and her extensive work on behalf of the emerging trade union movement in Africa.
Florence Luscomb (1887-1985)
Florence Hope Luscomb was a social and political activist based in Massachusetts. In the early 1920s Luscomb began to serve on the boards of civil rights, civil liberties, and other organizations. In addition to picketing for several labor organizations, she also helped organize and was president of a Boston local of the United Office and Professional Workers of America. The bulk of this collection is in series III, which documents Luscomb's social and political activism. Series III, Subseries E in particular focuses on Luscomb's labor rights activism. See also the Additional Papers of Florence Luscomb.
Leon Malmed (1881-1956) and Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
Emma Goldman was an anarchist, writer, and lecturer, and agitated for free speech and radical causes in the U.S., Canada, and Europe after emigrating from Russia. Leon Malmed, the collector of these papers, was born Leon Bass in Russia and emigrated to the United States in about 1895. Malmed was a supporter of anarchist and radical causes and a friend and lover of Goldman. The collection is almost entirely correspondence, with a small number of photos of Goldman, Malmed, and Alexander Berkman, printed ephemera, and writings of Goldman and others. There are more than 450 letters, postcards and telegrams from Goldman to Malmed, 1900-1939, many including carbon copies of correspondence between Goldman and others. The collection includes several letters regarding specific labor cases in the U.S.
The National Consumers' League
The League was founded in 1898 to rally public opinion in support of improving conditions for workers. Records include a constitution; correspondence; clippings; invitations to, minutes, 1938-1949, and copies of addresses before annual meetings; and minutes of the executive committee, 1937-1942, and of the committee on cooperation, 1917-1919. See also the records of the Consumers' League of Connecticut, Consumers' League of Massachusetts, and the National Consumers' League's founder, John Graham Brooks (1846-1938).
Pauline Newman (1887-1986)
Pauline Newman was a labor organizer, union official, and socialist. She 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. Reports, correspondence, position papers, articles, and minutes document Newman's work with the WTUL, ILGWU and its health center, the Women's Bureau, and other government agencies. Newman's travels through the Midwest, 1911-1918, to organize union locals and strikes are discussed in letters to other socialists and in articles Newman wrote. Her articles also reflect her support of protective legislation, equal pay, improved working conditions, and the minimum wage, and her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. A microfilm of clippings by and about Newman and some photographs are also included. See also the Additional Papers of Pauline Newman .
Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (1864-1943)
O'Sullivan, labor organizer, factory worker and inspector, became the first woman general organizer of the American Federation of Labor in 1892, was one of the founders of the National Women's Trade Union League in 1903, and was an inspector for the Massachusetts Board of Labor and Industries, 1914-1929. She was also active in the prohibition and women's suffrage movements, and in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Collection contains correspondence, clippings, and memorabilia reflecting O'Sullivan's activities, especially in the movements for women's suffrage and trade unionism for women. Also included are short stories, an article, correspondence, and clippings of Barnum. See also the Additional Papers of Mary Kenney O'Sullivan.
Cynthia Rich(b. 1933) and Barbara MacDonald(1913-2000)
Cynthia Rich and Barbara MacDonald were writers, activists in lesbian feminist politics, and partners for 26 years. Rich and MacDonald helped organize protests of the Miss California pageants, worked to end apartheid in South Africa, and protested in support of the United Farm Workers' 1989 grape boycott. Additionally, Rich was an active member of the Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers (SCMW), an organization dedicated to improving the conditions of Latin American factory workers. Series IV contains board minutes, correspondence, leaflets, press releases, grant proposals, clippings, and fact sheets related to SCMW's activities and operation.
Ellen R. Schaffer
Ellen R. Shaffer is co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis which conducts policy research, analysis, and advocacy on women's reproductive health and rights, access to health care, and on globalization and health. She worked for the labor movement in California, in health care and community organizing, and wrote chapters on politics for various editions of Our Bodies Ourselves. Collection consists largely of print material, notes, study group and organizing documents from her work with the Bay State Socialist Organizing Committee, Union of Marxist Social Scientists, and the Northern California Alliance, among others. Also included are records regarding unions and health care workers, restructuring of the health care system, tax reform etc., and newsletters, etc., of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the San Francisco Socialist Coalition, Health/PAC, etc.
Schlesinger Library Luncheon Series Audio Collection
Beginning in 1979, the Schlesinger Library initiated a series of luncheons featuring as speakers women who had given papers to the library. Many of the speeches in the series are from labor activists or women otherwise involved in industrial labor, including former Secretary of Labor under John F. Kennedy Esther Peterson, labor law and U.S. Department of Labor member Clara M. Beyer, working mothers' advocate Elinor Guggenheimer, and Diane Goldman of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. The collection consists of audiotapes of talks given by speakers featured during the Schlesinger Library luncheon series from 1979 to 1987. Most of the speakers are donors of manuscript collections housed at the library.
Frances Siegel (1909-2006)
Frances Siegel was an activist whose 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, a Communist sympathizer, and frequent contributor to The Daily Worker (now The People's Weekly.) The collection contains correspondence spanning Frances Siegel's lifetime containing political opinions of events and labor issues in the United States and abroad. Also includes her FBI file, clippings, travel diaries, awards, photographs, books, pamphlets, and music illustrating her travels and progressive pursuits.
Miriam Tane Siporin (1916-2007)
Miriam Tane Siporin was born in 1916 on the Lower East Side of New York City. She attended Hunter College briefly before her belief in radical politics and awareness of the dire circumstances facing working people during the Depression led her to give up her studies. In 1937 she helped organize the Ford Automobile Plant workers in Somerville, Massachusetts, on behalf of the United Auto Workers. A few years later, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union sent her to Illinois, where she organized workers and agitated for improved conditions in towns which were hostile to unions. She took part in violent protests and faced police armed with billy clubs. Dubbed the "poet laureate" of the ILGWU, Siporin produced over a hundred poems for the newsletter Justice, as well as theatricals, lyrics, and a radio soap opera. The collection includes correspondence (including with fellow union workers, editors, and publishers); articles by and about Siporin and her union activities; poems (published and unpublished), stories, and drafts of novels; scrapbooks; and advertising copy for women's and girls' fashions.
The Women's Trade Union League and Its Principal Leaders
The 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. This microfilmed collection consists of correspondence, reports and printed material (1904-1955) of the National and New York, Chicago, and Boston chapters of the Women's Trade Union League; personal papers (1855-1964) of Margaret Dreier Robins, Mary Anderson, Leonora O'Reilly, Rose Schneiderman, and Agnes Nestor; and the typescript autobiography of Mary Kenney O'Sullivan.
Note: This collection can be accessed through the Women's Studies Archive. Access to the database requires an active Harvard Key account, but non-Harvard affiliates can access the database onsite at the Schlesinger Library.