Women on the Rise

The activism of women was impossible to miss during the Progressive Era. From labor strikes and grassroots campaigns to the crusade for the vote, women mobilized in large numbers.

- Eric Arnesen

In the New York City garment industry, tens of thousands of Jewish and Italian immigrant women labored in crowded and often dangerous factories and sweatshops. A number of small strikes broke out in October 1909. One young strike leader—Clara Lemlich—made history. She had been advised by male labor leaders to proceed cautiously. Instead, at a mass meeting the following month, she turned the struggle into something much larger. “I am a working girl, one of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions,” she declared, “I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared—now!” The crowd went wild, and a general strike of women garment workers began. From November 1909 to February 1910, between 20,000 and 40,000 women—many of them teenagers—struck their employers. They demanded higher wages, shorter working hours, paid overtime, and union recognition.

Members of the local branch of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Local 25 gathered in mass meetings in the evening and marched in picket lines during the day. Their protest was difficult and dangerous. Employers hired thugs and private security guards to harass and beat the strikers. Police often arrested picketers. One account put the number of arrests in the strike’s first month at 771 people.

Law enforcers attacked the strikers’ supporters as well. The Women’s Trade Union League had been formed in 1903 to promote women’s unionization. Middle-class and elite women dominated its membership. When they joined the picket lines in a show of support for working women, their privileged backgrounds didn’t protect them from abuse and arrest. The violence directed against the women strikers and their allies attracted considerable attention in the press.