Lady Stitchers’ Union
The Lady Stitchers' Union formed in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1883 as a
recognized Assembly of the national labor organization the Knights of Labor. The Lady
Stitchers Union was a unifying force for women in the New England shoe industry,
providing an instrument for negotiating wages for women at a time when they could not
join the male shoemakers union.
Boot and shoe making was a significant industry in New England, with Essex
County in Massachusetts as a center of activity. Shoemaking as a trade had a long
history in the town of Lynn, with an early corporation of shoemakers in the 1630s and the
arrival of a Welsh shoemaker, John Adam Dagyr, in 1750. Shoemaking was a segmented
and gendered craft, with men typically producing the soles and bottom portions of a shoe
and women sewing the “uppers”, a hand-stitching task that could be done in the
home. As demand for shoes for sale increased, the greater amount of production lead to
the formation of workshops that continued to be the domain of men for producing parts
of the shoe, but with women continuing to sew the upper parts of shoes at home. At the
turn of the 19th Century, when family based work units were being supplanted by
mechanized centers of production, the segmentation of shoe production by part and
laborer was carried into the factories, which would have repercussions on later efforts of
labor organization.
One of the earliest recorded formal organizations formed to represent the interest
of the female shoe binders was the Society of Shoebinders, which formed in 1831 to
protest low wages and establish a uniform wage scale. In 1833, shoe binders in Lynn and
Saugus organized as the “Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity for the Protection and
Promotion of Female Industry” and held a public meeting attended by 1,000 women.
This organization only lasted until 1834.. In 1844, Lynn shoemakers formed the Mutual
Benefit Society of Journeymen Cordwainers. As described in the Society’s publication,
The Awl, the aims of the organization included wage uniformity and stabilization of the
work of shoemakers. The role of the female shoe binders was considered an auxiliary
interest of the Society, not an equal partner.
In the decade between1855 to 1865, the majority of home based and workshop
shoemaking was supplanted by the incorporation of mechanized stitching machines into
factory settings. In addition to sewing machines, the move to factory based production
was hastened by the use of patterns for soles and standardized sizes for shoe width and
length. The introduction of steam powered machines in 1858 became a standard feature
in all large shoe factories by 1865. Shoe binders who continued to sew shoe bindings at
home could rent hand cranked sewing machines. Women working as stitchers in the
factories soon found themselves working ten hour days while home shoe binders had to
compete with the relentless pace of factory machines, as well as having to furnish their
own sewing supplies. Thus women in the shoemaking trade were working longer hours
for smaller wages as mechanization changed production.
The Lady Stitchers' Union formed in Lynn, Massachusetts to protest working
conditions and wages in 1883 and by 1886 organized almost 3,000 women, representing
over two-thirds of the female work force in the area. Recognized as an Assembly by the
national Knights of Labor, this Union was also known as the Daughters of Labor. Just as
the men of the Cordwainers Society had refused to admit women as members, the Lady
Stitchers’ Union restricted membership to women who worked as shoe stitchers instead
of seeking a broad base of women engaged in all trades. As a body, the Lady Stitchers
could provide representation for workers to the State Board of Arbitration, the board
responsible for settling disagreements between workers and factory owners. With
dissolution of the Knights of Labor, many stitchers were later recruited into a new
organization that emerged in the 1890s, the Boot and Shoe Workers Union (BSWU).
Thus women in the Lady Stitchers union both stood up for their rights as workers and
resisted the gendered double standard of many labor unions at a time when American
society had difficulty recognizing women as waged laborers.
Rebecca Kohn
See Also: Factory Girls Association; Factory Workers; Lowell Female Labor Reform
Association; Voice of Industry
Further Reading
Blewett, Mary H. 1988. Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New
England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
New York City Garment Workers’ Strike 1909 The New York City garment workers’ strike took place between November 1909 and February 1910. It was also known as the “Uprising of the 20,000” based on the number of participants. The strike was a labor stoppage protesting intolerable conditions suffered by young women working in garment factories, asking for improved wages, better working conditions, and fewer hours. Though some progress was made, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire only a year later was a stark reminder of the horrendous conditions female workers endured in textile factories. In the early 20th century, a “shirtwaist” was a ready-­‐to-­‐wear blouse for women that was originally modeled on men’s shirts and could be tucked into the waistbands of women’s skirts. Shirtwaists became extremely popular and a highly competitive industry that produced mass quantities for sale nationwide developed in many cities. The center of production was New York City with almost five hundred textile factories employing about 40,000 garment workers. Management was almost exclusively male and the low-­‐paid workers were primarily young Italian or Jewish immigrant women who had to work to help support their families. The women were packed into small spaces with little light or air, so stifling that they became known as “sweatshops.” The women generally worked six or seven days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day, with one bathroom break daily. If workers were denied an extra bathroom break by their supervisor, many were forced to relieve themselves on the floor among dusty piles of fabric scraps, adding to the foul air and filthy conditions. From their scant wages they were often forced to bring their own supplies such as needles, thread, and heavy sewing machines which they had to carry to work each day. They could be fined for infractions such as being late for work, errors on a garment they were sewing, or not working fast enough. With a wage of two dollars a day, they were sometimes fined more than they were paid. It was also not uncommon for women to be fired for refusing the sexual demands of their male supervisors. At least one large factory, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, locked the workers behind heavy steel doors in its ten-­‐story building, allegedly to guard against unauthorized breaks or “pilferage.” With inadequate fire escapes, the owners were given warnings by city fire marshals, but the warnings were ignored. On November 22, 1909, a number of female shirtwaist workers attended a meeting at New York’s Cooper Union where male speakers talked generalities for hours. Finally, one of the women, Clara Lemlich (1886 – 1982), went to the podium and roused the women into a general strike. In late November of 1909, about twenty thousand women garment workers left their jobs to ask for higher pay, shorter hours, and better working conditions. Though it was the largest single work stoppage in the U. S. up to that time, the press hardly mentioned the strike. Factory owners had the women picketers beaten and arrested, and hired other young immigrant women to replace them. Still, during the coldest winter months and without income, the strikers persevered until February 1910. By that time, socialites from the wealthy Morgan and Vanderbilt families had joined in support of the workers, leading to more newspaper coverage. Businesses then began offering better conditions, a fifty-­‐two hour workweek, and increased pay. Strikers returned to work. On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a little over a year later, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company resulted in the death of almost 150 people. Overwhelmingly young women, they were trapped behind locked steel doors on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the building. Many leapt to their death as they tried to escape the flames. Subsequently, American labor leaders who had ignored the needs of women workers began doing more to help fellow laborers who happened to be female. The tragedy also led to improved factory safety standards and helped drive the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which continued the fight for better working conditions that began with the strike of 1909. Dr. Nancy Hendricks See Also: International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU); Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire
Further Reading
Argersinger, Jo Ann E. The Triangle Fire. New York: Bedford Books, 2009. Bender, Daniel E. Sweated Work, Weak Bodies: Anti-­‐sweatshop Campaigns and Languages of Labor. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Coser, Rose L. et.al. Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York. Westport CT: Greenwood Press 1999. Settlement House Movement
The settlement house movement began as a venture to help people suffering in
industrial poverty. In the United States, women assumed leadership roles and served as
volunteer workers in the movement. Some of the most notable settlement houses
included Hull House (Chicago, Illinois), Henry Street Settlement (New York, New
York), and Phyllis Wheatley House (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Settlement houses
numbered in the hundreds by the 1900s and they have endured to the present day.
Throughout the years, settlement houses adapted their missions to the changing
needs of an evolving society. Although the settlement house movement was not immune
from criticism, it provided many valuable services to people that needed them.
Ultimately, women’s efforts to help others became interwoven with the Women’s
Suffrage Movement.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a massive wave of immigrants arrived on
American shores seeking work in the large cities. Most of the immigrants were povertystricken, and they settled in poor neighborhoods. They spoke little or no English, and
their customs were unique to their cultural backgrounds. Most of them found jobs in the
factories where they worked under dangerous conditions for long hours and for little pay.
Some factory managers opted to employ mostly women and children with the aim of
paying them less than men. With no child labor laws in existence, factory work kept
many children from attending school.
The government philosophy at that time was that businesses would prosper best
without government intervention. Consequently, there were no federally mandated
employee protections or social programs in place. There was no job security and
unemployed workers went homeless. In short, the harsh realities of an unregulated
industrial complex resulted in a kind of contractual employer-worker relationship where
people were often used up and then tossed aside.
The settlement house movement began in England in 1884 with the founding of
Toynbee Hall in the slums of East London with the goal of offering people a safety net in
the harsh unregulated environment of industrialization. Anglican priest Samuel A.
Barnett and several Oxford University students organized a plan to bring collegeeducated people into the poor neighborhoods to live side by side with the poor people
that they helped. Toynbee Hall provided the residents of poor working-class
neighborhoods with legal aid, inexpensive meals, and literacy classes.
With a similar plan, Stanton Coit established the first settlement house in New
York in 1886. The community center movement concept caught Jane Addams’ interest,
and between 1887 and 1888 she spent time in England observing Toynbee Hall. Addams
returned to the United States in 1889 and established Hull House, the most famous
settlement house, in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Addams began by renting a
deserted mansion, renovating it, and enlisting the help of young middle-class female
volunteers. She secured funding for the venture through charitable donations from
several of the city’s wealthy families.
Over the next few years, Hull House grew into a settlement house that included
thirteen buildings and provided many services including a day care for working mothers,
free medicines, playground areas, and a gymnasium. Hull House volunteers taught a
variety of classes including English literacy, sewing, bookbinding, art, music, and
cooking. The community center also offered functions like concerts, plays, and various
exhibitions. Counselors advised the poor about job safety and about the importance of
children’s school attendance. The center also provided a boarding house for single
workingwomen.
The thousands of people that used the center every day were evidence of the
importance that Hull House held to the surrounding neighborhoods. Besides helping
people with their everyday needs, Addams undertook a social research project to
investigate the causes of poverty and crime. In this way, Addams expanded the
settlement house mission to include a scholarly research component. As a consequence,
Hull House attracted many scholars that were researching the complexities of the nation’s
large growing cities. Addams, herself, lectured extensively on the role that settlement
houses played in addressing society’s ills in industrial America, and she published several
books based on her lectures including Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) and The
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909).
Addams directed Hull House volunteers to conduct interviews, record their
observations, and compiled statistical data about the poor’s living and working
conditions. In 1895, Addams published the findings with recommendations in Hull
House Maps and Papers. Although most male sociologists of her time disparaged her
scholarship, she used the findings to lobby legislators for state and federal reforms
including safety inspections of factories, workers compensation after injuries, child labor
laws, an eight hour workday for women, union recognition, and government inspections
of tenement housing.
Realizing that political reforms would be more easily attained if women secured
the right to vote, Addams became involved in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and
served as Vice President of the National American Suffrage Association for several
years. Before and after women gained the right to vote by constitutional amendment,
Addams wrote books about her experiences at Hull House in Twenty Years at Hull-House
(1910) and The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930).
In the years leading up the World War I (1914-1917), Addams was very vocal
about her pacifist beliefs. In 1914, she protested the war in Europe by organizing a peace
parade in New York. In 1915, she organized the Women’s Peace Party and she joined
the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. Because most people opposed
entering the war, her activities were not deemed offensive. However, after the U.S.
officially entered the war in 1917, her beliefs and activities were deemed unpatriotic by
many Americans. In addition, in a time when Americans were fighting against Germans
in Europe, the settlement house’s efforts to help German immigrants were widely
criticized.
As a direct result of her unpopular pacifist views and her unwillingness to shun
German immigrants, donations to Hull House almost entirely disappeared during the war.
However, after the war, funding returned and Hull House was able to keep its doors open.
In 1931, four years before her death, Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her
humanitarian efforts. Today, she is mostly remembered for her work with Hull House.
Following the Chicago Hull House model, public health nurse Lillian Wald
established New York’s Henry Street Settlement in 1893. Although Wald addressed the
various problems the poor were facing at work and at home, she focused more attention
on improving the health of the poor city residents by stressing sanitation and hygiene
practices.
By 1900 more than 100 settlement houses had been established in the U.S. Like
Hull House, most of these ventures tended to poor immigrants. However, at a time when
segregation was enforced, African American residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota
founded the Phyllis Wheatley House in 1924 with the purpose of exclusively serving the
African American population of that city. The Phyllis Wheatley House, which was run
exclusively by African American women, had four main departments: education,
recreation, music, and dramatics. Because many hotels were closed to African
Americans, the Phyllis Wheatley House functioned as a hotel for African Americans
visiting the city. In like manner, African American college students stayed at the House.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Phyllis Wheatley House as
well as many other African American settlement houses became important gathering
places for African Americans.
After the large wave of immigrants that came to the U.S. in the early 1900s had
assimilated into American life and after the Civil Rights Movement ended, settlement
houses continued to serve the poor in their surrounding neighborhoods. For this reason,
settlement houses, numbering approximately 800 in recent years, became more
commonly known as community centers.
Although settlement houses helped immigrants and African Americans, these
ventures were sometimes criticized. Some critics complained that settlement houses
marginalized immigrant cultures by attempting to “Americanize” the people they helped.
Other critics complained that settlement houses embraced racism by segregating whites
and blacks. One of the things they did clearly do, settlement house movement provided
women opportunities to work outside the home. Not surprisingly, the early settlement
house movement became intertwined with the Women’s Suffrage Movement. As women
engaged in public speaking and in the political arena in efforts to attain reforms for
others, their experiences empowered them.
Rolando Avila
See Also: Addams, Jane; Hull House; National American Suffrage Association; Suffrage
Movement; Wald, Lillian; Women’s Peace Party.
Further Reading
Addams, Jane. 1910. Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes. New
York: Macmillan.
__________. 1930. The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, September 1909 to
September 1929, with a Record of Growing World Consciousness. New York:
Macmillan Company.
Barbuto, Domenica M. 1999. American Settlement Houses and Progressive Social
Reform: An Encyclopedia of the American Settlement Movement. Phoenix, Arizona:
Oryx Press.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 2002. Jane Adams and the Dream of American Democracy: A
Life. New York: Basic Books.
Friedman, Michael, and Bret Friedman. 2006. Settlement House: Improving the Social
Welfare of America’s Immigrants. New York: Rosen Publishing Group.