National Women's Trade Union League of America Records on Microfilm, 1903-1950
Collection Number: 5709 mf

The records of the National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) span the lifetime of the organization from the first meeting in Boston in 1903 to the last bulletin of its official organ, LIFE AND LABOR, announcing the termination of the League's national charter in 1950. The records consist of correspondence, memoranda, speeches, clippings, notes, printed matter, and miscellaneous other items.

The NWTUL's administrative operations are well documented in the headquarters records. Its policies and activities are recorded in the minutes of the Executive Board meetings and in the correspondence. Most of the letters and memoranda are from the various national League secretaries, particularly Elisabeth Christman, who held the position from 1921 to 1950. There is, as well, correspondence from various members of both the national and local Leagues, especially from the New York, Boston, and Chicago branches. Many of the local League members also served as officers and/or Executive Board members of the national League and are represented in the headquarters records. Included in this group are Margaret Dreier Robins, Mary Morton Kehew, Jane Addams, Rose Schneiderman, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Melinda Scott, Agnes Nestor, and Mary E. Dreier. Interspersed with the materials documenting the activities of the League are financial statements enumerating sources of income and costs of operation.

The subject files as well as the headquarters records offer a major source of information concerning the League's goal of organizing women wage workers into trade unions. There is considerable material on the early history of the League in the historical data file. Many of the files on individual members contain biographical information, and the file on the American Federation of Labor sheds light on the League's relationship to that organization. Here and in the headquarters records is correspondence with Samuel Gompers, Frank Morrison, Frank Duffy, and Florence C. Thorne.

Both series (headquarters records and subject files) contain documentation of the League's efforts to improve women's working conditions through supporting strikes, particularly in the garment industry, through the use of a training school to develop leadership among women of the working class, and through lobbying for the enactment of protective labor legislation. Issues such as the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, and the establishment of sanitary work areas were the focus of the League's early days. However, its interests broadened in later years to include federal aid to education, civil rights, price control, and social security. Correspondents include Ethel M. Smith, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Mary Anderson, Alice Henry, and Frances Perkins.

The records of the NWTUL also contain proceedings for 10 of the 13 national conventions and mimeographed corrected copies of the proceedings of the three international congresses which the League sponsored.