History of the Labor
Movement
As members of a union we must all recognize
the importance of understanding the history of the labor movement
and unions. The old adage tells us that in order to know where we
are going we need to understand where we have been. We all need to
understand that without the history of the labor movement we lose
our right to organize, our right to a safe work environment and our
right to collectively bargain for improved
wages and working conditions.
All of us must remember that without the trials and tribulations of
labors history we would not have the 8 hour day, a fair wage,
improved working conditions, paid holidays, vacation & sick time,
etc. We can thank our union brothers and sisters of bygone days for
these benefits. Instead of taking all of this for granted we all
need to be grateful for the sacrifices of yesterday and learn from
them as we move forward tomorrow as union members.
In the following series we will look at some of the women
who were major contributors to the Labor Movement
Women of the Labor
Movement
In 1791, while seeking ways to develop industry in the United
States, Alexander Hamilton wrote in his Report on Manufacturers
that women and children had been identified as a source of cheap
labor. To make matters worse for female laborers, workingmen often
saw them as threats to their status, especially as new machines
permitted less skilled operatives to perform tasks formerly
assigned to craftsmen. However, Women were eager to assume roles in
the fledgling labor movement.
After the Civil War some journalists and labor leaders called for
the creation of a Women's Bureau to oversee conditions of female
labor. In 1869 The Knights of Labor were the first large-scale
national labor federation in the United States and in 1881, its
members voted to admit women into its ranks. One of the ways that
working women sought to overcome male indifference or hostility was
to join forces with upper-class women in the Women's Trade Union
League (WTUL), an organization founded in the United States in
1903. The organization helped women start unions in many industries
and many cities, and also provided relief, publicity and general
assistance for women's unions on strike.
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to the creation of
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Sex
discrimination cases were low on the EEOC agenda until prodding by
groups such as the National Organization for Women brought them to
the fore. By 1970, when the courts had invalidated protective
legislation, women found themselves eligible for many jobs formerly
closed to them.
Alice Hamilton
Alice Hamilton, the sister of Edith Hamilton, was born in New York
on 27th February, 1869. Hamilton graduated from the University of
Michigan Medical School in 1893. She served internships at
hospitals in Minneapolis and Boston before studying bacteriology at
the University of Leipzig and at the Johns Hopkins Medical School.
In 1898 Hamilton was appointed professor of pathology at the
Women's Medical College at Northwestern University in Chicago.
After hearing a speech by Jane Addams she decided to join the Hull
House settlement in the city. Other social reformers living at the
settlement included Ellen Gates Starr, Alzina Stevens, Edith
Abbott, Grace Abbott, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, and
Sophonisba Breckinridge.
Hamilton increasing became interested in social issues. In 1910
Charles Deneen, the governor of Illinois, appointed her to a
commission to investigate occupational diseases. She studied
industrial poisoning in the lead, rubber and munitions industries
and was able to prove that lead, nitrous fumes and viscose rayon
were causing serious side effects including mental illness, loss of
vision, paralysis and in some cases, death.
Hamilton used this evidence to pressurize politicians to pass
workmen's compensation laws and factory owners to provide safer
working conditions. Hamilton's research into the dangers of
industrial pollution was also used in the campaign against child
labour.
On the outbreak of the First World War, Hamilton and a group of
women pacifists in the United States, began talking about the need
to form an organization to help bring it to an end. On the 10th
January, 1915, over 3,000 women attended a meeting in the ballroom
of the New Willard Hotel in Washington and formed the Woman's Peace
Party. Other women involved in the organization included Jane
Addams, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Anna Howard Shaw, Belle La
Follette, Fanny Garrison Villard, Emily Balch, Jeanette Rankin,
Lillian Wald, Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott, Crystal Eastman, Carrie
Chapman Catt, Emily Bach, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
In April 1915, Arletta Jacobs, a suffragist in Holland, invited
members of the Woman's Peace Party to an International Congress of
Women in the Hague. Hamilton, Jane Addams, Grace Abbott and Emily
Bach were chosen to represent the United States. Others who went to
the Hague included Lida Gustava Heymann (Germany); Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence,
Emily Hobhouse, (England); Chrystal Macmillan (Scotland) and Rosika
Schwimmer (Hungary).
The women were attacked in the press by Theodore Roosevelt who
described them as "hysterical pacifists" and called their proposals
"both silly and base".
Hamilton, along with Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton,
Emily Balch, Mary Church Terrell, Jeanette Rankin and Lillian Wald.
she attended the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
conference in Zurich in April, 1919. After the conference Hamilton
and Addams made a tour of the Western Front.
Hamilton lived in Hull House for twenty-two years and thereafter
returned for several months every year while Jane Addams was alive.
In 1919 Hamilton became the first woman to be appointed to the
staff at the Harvard Medical School. She also did studies on
industrial pollution for the federal government and the United
Nations. She also wrote several books including Industrial Poisons
in the United States (1925), Industrial Toxicology (1934) and
Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943).
Hamilton was a member of the League of Women Voters, the Women's
Trade Union League, the National Consumer's League, the American
Civil Liberties Union, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1927
Hamilton joined with John Dos Passos, Paul Kellogg, Jane Addams,
Upton Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Ben Shahn, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Floyd Dell, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in an effort to
prevent the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bertolomeo Vanzetti.
Even after Hamilton retired she continued to be active in politics
and campaigned against McCarthyism, the execution of Julius
Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, and the Vietnam War. At the age of
eighty-eight Hamilton remarked that: "For me the satisfaction is
that things are better now, and I had some part in it." Alice
Hamilton died on 22nd September, 1970, aged 101.
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge, the daughter of a lawyer, William
Breckinridge, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on 1st April, 1866.
Her mother, Issa Desha Breckinridge came from a political family
and her grandfather had been governor of Kentucky in the early
nineteenth century.
In 1907 Breckinridge became a resident of Hull House and joined
other women interested in social reform such as Jane Addams, Ellen
Gates Starr, Mary McDowell, Edith Abbott, Mary Kenney, Grace
Abbott, Alzina Stevens, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop and Alice
Hamilton.
While living at Hull House (1907-1920) Breckinridge played a
leading role in the development of the Immigrants' Protective
League, National Consumer's League, the Women's Trade Union League
and the Children's Bureau. A strong supporter of women's suffrage
she was a member of the American Woman Suffrage Association. An
advocate of African American civil rights, Breckinridge helped to
establish the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured
People in 1909.
Breckinridge was active in the Progressive Party and ran for the
post of alderman in Chicago in 1912. A committed pacifist,
Breckinridge opposed USA involvement in the First World War and was
a member of the Woman's Peace Party (WPP) and the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Breckinridge also worked with Edith Abbott at the Chicago School of
Civics and Philanthropy. In 1920 it was moved to the University of
Chicago and Breckinridge helped establish it as the country's first
university-based school of social work. The two women also
established the Social Service Review in 1927. Sophonisba
Breckinridge died in Chicago on 30th July, 1948.
