Life and Labor (National Women’s Trade Union League). Vol. 11 No. 5. May, 1921

Contents: The Open Shop by Andrew Furuseth, California Fishing Industry and Its Women Workers by. Elsa Lissner, Endangering Industrial Relations by Wage Reductions by. C.L. Baine, Negro Women and the Tobacco Industry by Emma L. Shields, Night Work Laws for Women, Current Comment: Coercion in Labor Agreements, Labor’s Share, First. Women’s Bureau Continues in Good Hands, Would Penalize Labor, Land Should Bear Tax Burden, New Force in American Politics by A. Ethel M. Smith, International Congress of Working Women Calls Second Meeting, Behind Prison Bars by Bella Casper, Labor’s Progress by Newton Jenkins, From Near and Far.

Life and Labor was the monthly journal of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). The WTUL was founded by the American Federation of Labor, which it had a contentious relationship with, in 1903. Founded to encourage women to join the A.F. of L. and for the A.F. of L. to take organizing women seriously, along with labor and workplace issues, the WTUL was also instrumental in creating whatever alliance existed between the labor and suffrage movements. Begun near the peak of the WTUL’s influence in 1911, Life and Labor’s first editor was Alice Henry (1857-1943), an Australian-born feminist, journalist, and labor activists who emigrated to the United States in 1906 and became office secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League in Chicago. She later served as the WTUL’s field organizer and director of the education. Henry’s editorship was followed by Stella M. Franklin in 1915, Amy W. Fields in in 1916, and Margaret D. Robins until the closing of the journal in 1921. While never abandoning its early strike support and union organizing, the WTUL increasingly focused on regulation of workplaces and reform of labor law. The League’s close relationship with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America makes ‘Life and Labor’ the essential publication for students of that union, as well as for those interest in labor legislation, garment workers, suffrage, early 20th century immigrant workers, women workers, and many more topics covered and advocated by ‘Life and Labor.’

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