Founding mothers of social justice: The Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, 1877-1892

Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Summer 1999 by Harth, Erica

Wright's work led to the establishment of a national Bureau of Labor, which soon thereafter, in 1889, became the Department of Labor. Wright headed the national bureau and department for over two decades. There is no known connection between Wright's report of 1884 and his meeting with the WEIU delegation from four years before. The visit may, however, have laid the foundation for the Union's continuing relationship with the Massachusetts Bureau.

In 1905, the Union organized a Research Department, which offered fellowships to college women for studies on various aspects of working conditions for Boston women. Under the direction of Susan Kingsbury (from 1907 to 1915), the Research Department published a number of reports for the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 1910, this collaboration had produced several reports on domestic service, a comparative study of the cost of homemade and prepared food, and a report on the social statistics of working women. May Allinson's Dressmaking as a Trade for Women (1916) and Amy Hewes' Industrial Home Work in Massachusetts (1915) were among studies by fellows in the Union's Research Department published by, or in cooperation with, the Bureau.37 Between 1906 and 1918, with the aid of fellows' reports, the Union presented bills to the State Legislature, sometimes successfully, on a variety of issues affecting women's lives.

The kind of networking used by the Union was nothing new in women's benevolent work. Since the earliest female benevolent societies of the 1790s, women's organizations had been closely tied to the work and influence of men. Men's benevolent societies, it should be said, also depended, to a significant extent, on the skills and services of women, such as the fundraising of their antislavery fairs.38 What distinguished the Union's networking, among women as well as among men and women, was the scope that it gave members to wage campaigns for social justice.

From its founding, the Union drew on elite connections for its advocacy, lobbying and institutional innovations. Through networking among individuals, the Union was eventually able to build coalitions and inter-organizational cooperation. Mary Morton Kehew's connection with Mary Kenney O'Sullivan is a case in point. Kehew (1859-1918), was the Union's third president, who served from 1892 to 1913. She succeeded in bringing the labor organizer Mary Kenney O'Sullivan from Chicago to Boston, where she served on the Union's board. O'Sullivan and Kehew worked together on founding the Union for Industrial Progress, which encouraged trade unionism among women workers. Later they cooperated in the Women's Trade Union League, organized in Boston in 1903 with Kehew as its first president and Jane Addams as vice-president.

Under Kehew's presidency, the WEIU developed a working relationship with Simmons College. The Union's School of Housekeeping, opened in 1897, and its School of Salesmanship, which began in 1905, both operated in close cooperation with Simmons. Eventually the college took over the two schools.39