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Mary Kenney O'sullivan, the American Federation of Labor, and the Boston Women's Trade Union League, 1892-1919

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Mary Kenney O'sullivan, the American Federation of Labor, and the Boston Women's Trade Union League, 1892-1919 University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1998 The necessity of organization' : Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, the American Federation of Labor, and the Boston Women's Trade Union League, 1892-1919. Kathleen Banks Nutter University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Nutter, Kathleen Banks, "The necessity of organization' : Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, the American Federation of Labor, and the Boston Women's Trade Union League, 1892-1919." (1998). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1253. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1253 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DATE DUE NUV 2 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST LD 3234 M267 1998 N9775 ^HE NECESSITY OF ORGANIZATION': MARY KENNEY O'SULLIVAN, THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, AND THE BOSTON WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE, 1892-1919 A Dissertation Presented by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1998 Department of History © Copyright by Kathleen Banks Nutter 1998 All Rights Reserved ^THE NECESSITY OE ORGANIZATION': MARY KENNEY 0' SULLIVAN, THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, AND THE BOSTON WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE, 1892-1919 A Dissertation Presented by KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER Approved as to style and content by 'Gerald W. McFarland, Chair Kevin B'oyle; Member Kathy Peiss, (Member Patricia Greenfield, Member Mary Wils^)'n, Department Head Departmeht of History DEDICATION In memory of Earl Alexander Banks (1916-1979) Henriette Hodge Banks (1911-1989) Jason Daniel Peters (1980-1996) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people and institutions which have assisted me during the dissertation process. Gerald McFarland has been the kind of dissertation chair that all graduate students should have- -patient, witty, and knowledgeable. Kevin Boyle has been both supportive and intellectually challenging. Kathy Peiss has been more than helpful as both Graduate Program Director and reader. Patricia Greenfield took an interest in my work during a busy time in her career and I am most grateful. Mary Blewett and Jack Tager were a part of this work in its early stages and I remain indebted to them both. Conference comments from Ava Baron, Ardis Cameron, and Nancy Hewitt caused me to think about my work in important and necessary ways. Dorothy McFarland saved me from many a grammatical slip. My thanks to them all. While researching and writing this dissertation, I received timely and much appreciated financial assistance from the History Department through a Bauer Gordon research grant and from the American Historical Association through an Albert J. Beveridge research grant. My research was made easier by helpful staff at the W.E.B. DuBois Library Special Collections and Inter-Library Loan Departments, Bryn Mawr College Archives, Massachusetts Historical Society, the Massachusetts State House Library, the Massachusetts State Archives, Wellesley College Archives, and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. My friends and co-workers at the Sophia Smith Collection/Smith College Archives remain ever supportive, ever interested. V Family and friends have played a major role throughout. I am especially grateful to be part of a friendly and fun graduate school cohort and am particularly thankful for the continued friendship of Kathryn Abbott, Matt Crocker, Brad Paul, and Anke and Mark Voss Hubbard. Pat Reeve has read every word of this dissertation--! value her commentary almost as much as I treasure her friendship. My scholar- in-training comrade Jane Elkind Bowers is distant only in terms of geography. Deen Leonard, a modern-day Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, sustains me in the real world as have Jeanne Sisson and Deb Taricano. Jane and Bruce Depper Goldstein blur the lines of friend and family in the best possible way. My children, Alex, Caitlin, and Anna have grown up with this work--I trust they are none the worse for it. I know that my life is far better (if hectic) because of their presence. They continue to give me immeasurable joy every day. My co-parent, spouse and best friend, Walter, has made it all not only possible but worth while. vi ABSIRACT ^THE NECESSITY OF ORGANIZATION': MARY KENNEY O'SULLIVAN, THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, AND THE BOSTON WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE, 1892 1919 FEBRUARY 1998 KATHLEEN BANKS NUTTER, B.A., SMITH COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Gerald W. McFarland One of the early leaders of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL ) was working-class woman and veteran trade union organizer Mary Kenney O'Sullivan (1864-1943). When she joined with several other trade unionists and social reformers to form, in 1903, the WIUL, Kenney O'Sullivan had already spent more than a dozen years attempting to forge a coalition between male-dominated organized labor and the social reform community in which Progressive-minded women played a vital role. Throughout, her primary goal was to improve the conditions of labor for women such as herself, primarily through trade unioni sm. In the early 1890s, then Mary Kenney was living in Chicago, working as a bookbinder. Frustrated by low wages and poor working early as conditions, Kenney formed Women's Bookbindery Union No. 1 as her 1890. She went on to organize women in other trades, utilizing connections with both the Chicago labor community and the social vi i / reform community, especially with the Chicago settlement, Hull House, and its founder, Jane Addams. In 1892, Kenney was briefly appointed the first national woman organizer for the American Federation of Labor (AFL). After her 1894 marriage to Boston labor leader, John O'Sullivan, and now known as Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, she would continue her trade union activity in that city, repeating the pattern of coalition building by relying upon both the Boston Central Labor Union and the local social reform community, particularly the settlement Denison House and the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. While she had some success in organizing women workers, Kenney O'Sullivan's personal efforts at coalition building were often frustrated by the sharp class and gender distinctions of her day. In 1903, she joined several other trade unionists and social reformers in an attempt to institutionalize this fragile coalition of labor and social reform through the formation of the WTUL. The WTUL, on the national level and through its principal local branches in New York, Chicago and Boston, sought to cooperate with the AFL in organizing wage-earning women into trade unions, as well as provide education and agitate for protective labor legislation. It also attempted to bridge the gap between working-class and reformist middle-class women. Kenney O'Sullivan was a leader in both the National WTUL and its Boston branch and, as such, she attempted to insure that the WTUL concentrate on trade unionism for women. The possibilities and limits of doing so within a cross-class, cross- gender alliance are especially evident during the WTUL's early years. From the Fall River strike of 1904 to the Lawrence strike of 1912, the efforts of Kenney O'Sullivan and other like-minded women continued to vi i i be frustrated by the class and gender contraints of this period. This dissertation attempts to reveal the complexity of those gender and class constraints during the Progressive Era by focusing on the efforts of Mary Kenney O'Sullivan at organizing wage-earning women. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION: "THE NECESSITY OF ORGANIZATION": GENDER, CLASS AND INDUSTRIALIZATION DURING THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 1 CHAPTER I. "I MUST BE THAT SOMEONE": MARY KENNEY AND THE CHICAGO LABOR COMMUNITY 15 II. "A NOBLE YOUNG WOMAN ON FIRE FOR HER CAUSE": MARY KENNEY O'SULLIVAN AND THE BOSTON LABOR COMMUNITY 48 I III. FOR THOSE "WILLING TO ASSIST": THE FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL \ / WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE 101 IV. "THE FIGHT FOR SUBSISTENCE": THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BOSTON WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE 148 V. "A GENERAL SMASH-UP": THE BOSTON WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE COMES OF AGE 202 CONCLUSION: "WE STAND AS ONE": THE LIMITATIONS OF CROSS-CLASS ALLIANCES AFTER 1912 245 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 X . INTRODUCTION "THE NECESSITY OF ORGANIZATION": GENDER, CLASS AND INDUSTRIALIZATION DURING THE PROGRESSIVE ERA In May, 1893, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan delivered an address at the World's Congress of Representative Women, an auxiliary of the World's Columbia Exposition which had just opened in Chicago.' Kenney O'Sullivan spoke of her experiences as an organizer for the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and on her fifteen years as a woman bookbinder. To a primarily middle-class audience, she described her frustration in attempting to organize women workers: To say that it is difficult to organize women is not saying the half. There are several reasons which prevent women from wishing to organize. In the first place, they are reared from childhood with one sole object in view... that is, marriage. If our mothers would teach us self-reliance and independence, that it is our duty to depend wholly upon ourselves, we should then feel the necessity of organization. The reason for her frustration was nineteenth-century gender ideology that revolved around the notion of separate spheres. Men were to work outside the home, earning a family wage while women stayed home, dependent on that wage.' Initially a concept of the middle class, the family wage earned by a male head-of -household became the goal of the working class and the AFL as well.
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