Working Women's Protective Union

United States 1863

Synopsis

Just five years after its creation in 1863, the Working Women's Protective Union (WWPU) had established itself as a champion of working women. The WWPU did not consider organizing women to strike as one of its purposes. Rather, it focused its activities on forcing employers to pay women their agreed-upon wage and acted primarily as a resource for job training and legal defense and as an employment center. Though the WWPU was often criticized for not attempting to increase wages or supporting important labor legislation, it was considered a model for like-minded groups; representatives from across the United States and Europe traveled to New York City to study its structure so that they might create similar organizations. Interestingly, working women had no real power in the administration of the organization and acted in only an advisory capacity. The day-to-day running of the union was in the hands of middle-and upper-class women concerned with the plight of working women. Major decisions were made by those members who could contribute $25 or more, though even they were led by a group of powerful, wealthy men who served as advisors to the organization. Working women's unions modeled on this pattern existed in large cities all over the United States. Twenty-seven years into its mission, the WWPU had collected over $41,000 for 12,000 women and typically received over 10,000 applications for job placement. Though not a union in the way many had come to expect, the WWPU was indeed a union in the truest sense of the word, and its formation occurred at a time when just such an advocate was desperately needed.

Timeline

• 1843: First known reference to cigarettes, in a list of products controlled by a French monopoly.
• 1848: Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, launches the women's suffrage movement.
• 1852: Publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Though far from a literary masterpiece, it is a great commercial success, with over half a million sales on both sides of the Atlantic. More important, it has an enormous influence on British sentiments with regard to slavery and the brewing American conflict between North and South.
• 1856: Gustave Flaubert publishes Madame Bovary.
• 1859: In Belgium, Jean-Joseph-étienne Lenoir builds the first practical internal-combustion engine.
• 1861: Within weeks of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the Civil War begins with the shelling of Fort Sumter. Six states secede from the Union, joining South Carolina to form the Confederate States of America (later joined by four other states) and electing Jefferson Davis as president. The first major battle of the war, at Bull Run or Manassas in Virginia, is a Confederate victory.
• 1863: President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in Confederate territories, on 1 January. Thus begins a year that sees the turning point of the Civil War, with decisive Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Thereafter, the Confederacy is almost perpetually on the defensive, fighting not to win but to avoid losing.
• 1863: French forces occupy Mexico City, and formerly exiled Mexican leaders declare their nation an empire under Austria's Archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Josef. The real power, however, is Emperor Napoleon III of France.
• 1863: Opening of the world's first subway, in London.
• 1865: Civil War ends with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. More than 600,000 men have died and the South is in ruins, but the Union has been restored.
• 1867: Maximilian surrenders to Mexican forces under Benito Juarez and is executed. Thus ends Napoleon III's dreams for a new French empire in the New World.
• 1873: Financial panic begins in Vienna, and soon spreads to other European financial centers, as well as to the United States.

Event and Its Context

In November 1863 a man named Daniel Walford visited the editor of the New York Sun, Moses Beach. Walford was president of the Workingmen's Association and a mechanic who met thousands of working women and knew of their terrible living conditions. Many were starving, working for pittances that their employers often refused to pay them. The poorest of the poor, these women had no power to affect their work lives, and Daniel Walford was determined to help them. With his own money, Walford rented the Bowery's Military Hall for a mass meeting at which sewing women might meet to discuss their situation. He asked the editor of the newspaper to attend and report the results. The editor agreed, and what he reported in the New York Sun galvanized the conscience of an entire city.

On the night of the meeting, Military Hall was filled to capacity with hundreds of sewing women. Hoop-skirt makers, photographers, press feeders, silver burnishers, shirt makers, vest makers, and umbrella sewers had all come in the hopes of some relief. Among those in attendance were about six men, including an ex-chief of police and a dry goods merchant; each man had been specially invited by Daniel Walford. At first it seemed that the meeting would not begin as the women, already nervous, milled about and had no idea of how to proceed. One woman approached the gentlemen present and asked them to preside. The dry goods merchant obliged, and so the meeting began. As the women shared the details of their everyday lives, it quickly became apparent that action must be taken. That very night a committee of working women and powerful, concerned citizens was formed. The next week they met to name themselves (they chose the "Workingwomen's Union") and to appoint a committee to write a constitution. Over the next few weeks they also took lengthy testimony from thousands of women. Among the information gathered from the interviews were stories of women who worked 10 hours per day to support sick husbands and children for 12.5 cents per day. The testimony led to the gut-wrenching realization that the average pay was $2 to $3 per week (at a time when housing alone could not be obtained for less than $3 per week). The committee heard countless stories of women who were robbed of their wages when employers, knowing the women had no recourse, refused to pay them. All of these stories made the more prominent citizens determined to do something; the only problem was that no one could decide what course of action to take. At last, one committee member suggested that ensuring payment for the women upon completion of work was their most promising course of action. It was endorsed by the heartfelt cry of one woman, "Oh, if we could always get paid for our work, we could get along!" This decided the primary mission of the WWPU.

The first draft of the organization's constitution, presented on 24 November, offered membership without price to any working woman, excepting household servants. The constitution also suggested the creation of a board of delegates to be elected by and represent each shop. Although these suggestions passed unanimously, they were not to stay in place. A committee of "Presidents of Societies" and men who had contributed heavily to union funds held a meeting, and on 16 December they presented their suggestions, which greatly altered the original constitution. These "suggestions" included changing the name to the "Working Women's Protective Union" and providing reserved membership and decision-making power only to those who contributed $25 or more. These changes led to the replacement of the board of delegates with a 12-member council of working women who had only advisory powers.

To achieve their goal of helping women collect the wages that were owed to them, prominent New York attorneys offered their services free of charge. It became increasingly difficult for employers to deny women their agreed-upon wages for finished work. When an employer refused to pay, the woman spoke with the superintendent and then, if the superintendent thought the complaint worthy of prosecution, filed a complaint with the WWPU's legal representatives on "Complaint Day" (one designated day per week in the offices of the WWPU). Organization delegates then questioned the woman and her witnesses. If the complaint was judged to be valid, the WWPU served the offender with notice that allowed three days to answer. The complaint, signed by the WWPU superintendent, notified the offender that the claimant had filed for a given amount of pay and asked for a response that would provide "any just cause why she should not receive this money." After three days without a response, the notification advised, the organization "shall assume that you admit the debt, and the claim will be placed in court for collection."

If the WWPU did not receive an answer to the complaint in the three-day window, the next step was to deliver a legal summons for the offender to appear in court. If he was found guilty or failed to appear, the judge automatically awarded in favor of the plaintiff and ordered the defendant to pay the wages owed plus all costs related to the court appearance. Some of these fraudulent bosses went to prison, and all at least were embarrassed in the business community. Not all employers just accepted a guilty judgment, of course. Many chose to appeal the decisions and demanded retrials. If the defendant chose to appeal to the state court level, he might find himself facing a bill 20 times the amount of the original complaint plus court costs. As word of the WWPU's legal successes grew, many delinquent employers chose to settle out of court rather than face those inflated costs.

By 1890 the WWPU had collected more than $41,000 for 12,000 women who otherwise would have had no recourse. It also lobbied for a law that penalized employers who refused to pay their workers. This law was passed, and there is no doubt that it greatly aided the WWPU in achieving more than 20,000 (out of 27,292 grievances) out-of-court settlements in its first 15 years of existence. Additionally, the union was able to discourage employers from deducting money from owed wages for supposedly imperfect work. As it did not hesitate to pursue prosecution in these cases, employers soon realized that such behavior was pointless, as the women were no longer without recourse.

The union's secondary purpose was to train women for work. The WWPU had the farsighted goal of training women for new occupations so that overcrowding (and thus unemployment) was less likely to occur. Seamstresses who worked by hand, for example, receiving training in the use of sewing machines, which increased their production and earning potential. It took a skilled seamstress 14 hours to hand sew a shirt; use of a sewing machine cut production time to one hour. Obviously the offer of training was invaluable. The WWPU taught women skills in seven different branches of mechanical labor.

Hand in hand with training women came the union's third purpose: job placement. In its first year, the WWPU placed 3,500 women, and by 1870 it received over 10,000 applications for work each year.

Yet another resource the WWPU made available to working women was a 4,000-volume library, endowed by the donations of middle-class citizens. For a nominal fee, women could borrow books. Although the Boston Daily Evening Voice praised this effort, it also remarked that the WWPU should be about the business of establishing and maintaining acceptable wages for the women they championed. Until then, it stated, the working women "will have but little time and not much money to patronize their library."

The WWPU did not have the goal of organizing women workers. Although it lobbied for better hours and higher wages, the union did not see itself as a militant organization that would encourage women to strike. Whether this decision came from the wish not to see women go hungry or because strikes would interfere with the comfortable economies upon which the union's volunteers themselves depended is not clear. In any case, only once in its history did the WWPU actively cooperate with a trade union when, in 1864, it endorsed a letter from the Working Women's Union of New York to then Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton. It also made use of its friends in the press, asking them to publish the letter and reveal that women were being paid a mere 6 cents for each army shirt they made.

Chief Justice Charles P. Daly was named the first president or WWPU, and Mrs. Catherine Brooks offered her services as the lady superintendent. The WWPU was staffed and supported mostly by middle-and upper-class women who were moved by the plight of the working poor. Positions on its boards and committees were almost exclusively held by men. Many wealthy women also hoped to save working women from a life of prostitution, as that occupation became for many the only means to avoid starvation.

Reinforcing the fact that this was not a labor union, officers were not elected, working women never acted in any decision-making capacity, and there were no dues to pay. The WWPU instead relied on "the voluntary donations of those who approve the helping of those who help themselves, and defending the otherwise defenseless."

The WWPU, with its obvious successes, was a model for those hoping to establish such organizations. Working women's unions based on the WWPU also formed in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Detroit, and St. Louis. The National Women's Trade Union League also owes its establishment to the WWPU. In 1873 Emma Paterson, wife of a unionist cabinet-maker, visited New York from her native England and was impressed by the organization and activities of several organizations, including the WWPU. When she returned to England in 1874, she worked to establish the Women's Protective and Provident League, later known as the British Women's Trade Union League. In 1903 the American William English Walling observed the dynamic activities of this organization during a visit to England. Upon returning to America, he met with interested parties, who announced a meeting regarding the formation of such a union at the American Federation of Labor convention that same year. This organization became the National Women's Trade Union League. The WWPU was dissolved in 1894.

Key Players

Beach, Moses Yale (1800-1868): Beach moved to New York City in 1834 to work for his brother-in-law as manager of the mechanical department of the New York Sun. In 1838 Beach bought out his brother-in-law to become editor and full owner of the newspaper. Known for his obsession with speed in gathering news, Beach routinely used riders on horseback, carrier pigeons, and a boat sent specifically to meet ships arriving from Europe to gather the latest news. His greatest competitor was the New York Herald. Beach was key in the formation of the New York Associated Press and the Harbor Association; the purpose of both organizations was to speed the gathering and delivery of news. Beach was the first of the American editors to publish a European edition of his paper, which he called the American Sun. By the time Beach retired from journalism in 1848, the popular New York Sun had a circulation of 50,000.

Daly, Charles Patrick (1816-1899): After working as a sailor, Daly studied law at Columbia University and was admitted to the bar of New York in 1837. In 1843 he became a member of the New York Assembly. In 1844 he was appointed a judge of the court of common pleas, an office that he held until 1886. He wrote 16 volumes of law reports and a book about the first settlement of Jews in the United States. He served as a member of several scientific societies including the American Geography Society, of which he was president in 1864.

See also: National Women's Trade Union League.

Bibliography

Books

Foner, Philip S. Facts of American Labor: A Comprehensive Collection of Labor Firsts in the United States. New York: Holmes and Meir, 1984.

——. Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I. New York: The Free Press, 1979.

Henry, Alice. Women and the Labor Movement. New York:Arno and The New York Times, 1971.

Johnson, Allen, ed. Dictionary of American Biography, Vol.2: Barsotti-Brazer. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929.

Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Weiner, Lynn Y. From Working Girl to Working Mother:The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820-1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Wertheimer, Barbara Mayer. We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

Working Women's Protective Union: Twenty-Five Years History, 1863-1888. New York: Working Women's Protective Union, 1888.

—Kimberley Barker