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DRAFT #2: (after laura conversation at noon)
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
THE KATE MULLANY HOUSE
TROY, NEW YORK
JULY 15, 1998
[Acknowledgments: Congressman Mike McNulty; Mayor Mark Pattison; Josephine Sano,
Albany Central Labor Council; Gov. Pataki; descendant of Mullany; citizens and friends;]
When a newspaper claimed that there weren't enough women in New York City with the
ability to be labor organizers -- Kate Mullany said defiantly: "you show me the women, I'll turn
them into organizers." And she did. It's a pleasure to be here to celebrate the life of this
courageous woman -- who helped change the course of America's history so many years ago.
Over the past three days -- I've traveled up the East Coast -- visiting the monuments and
sites and artifacts that tell America's story, and urging communities to come together to preserve
these irreplaceable symbols of our legacy, and pass them on to future generations. I've walked
around the headquarters of George Washington; stood at the foot of the Francis Scott Key
monument in Baltimore; and explored a community whose historic houses are serving as the
foundation for the rebirth of a neighborhood.
But this site -- the home of Kate Mullany -- tells a story that the vast majority of our
nation's historic sites neglect to tell -- the life and achievements of America's women.
This week, women from across the country are gathering a few miles from here at Seneca
Falls -- to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first women's rights convention. It's an
extraordinary opportunity for women of all ages, and races, and backgrounds to tell their own
stories -- and reflect on the extraordinary contributions of those who came before us.
Nowhere do those voices of the past come so alive as here -- in this house, and in this
city of Troy. We imagine Harriet Tubman -- known as the "Moses" of her people -- using her
wiles to help fugutive slave (Charles Nalle) escape from slavery in this home. We see Emma
Willard -- who founded the nation's first girls school here -- as she discovered she didn't have
the textbooks she needed. And writing them herself. We follow the accomplishments of one of
her graduates -- Olivia Slocum Sage -- as she establishes the Russell Sage College for Women --
using the money from her late rich husband -- who didn't even like women.
We watch with amusement as another woman of Troy -- housewife Hannah Lord
Monteague -- invents the detachable collar. Like so many women, she'd become frustrated at
having to wash her husband's entire shirts when only the collars were dirty. [Some things never
change.] And we applaud the tale of Regional Friehofer -- who established a bakery in Troy
because he saw so many working women racing out of their homes every morning to work --
not having the time to bake their own bread.
The lives of so many of these woman revolved around the resident of this house. Imagine
the courage it took for Kate Mullany -- only 19 years of age -- to organize 200 women garment
workers -- and form the first real all women's union in the nation. Most of the women -- like
Kate -- were the sole support of their ailing mothers, or younger siblings. Yet they still dared
to go out on strike.
This house also helps chronicle the triumphs and failures of America's early labor
movement. It's difficult to comprehend the working conditions these women workers were
forced to endure back then: standing on their feet for 11 to 14 hours a day -- bending over
washtubs and ironing tables in oppressive, 100 degree heat -- all for about $2-3 a week.
Yet that first strike -- demanding among other things a 25% increase in wages -- was
successful. And eventually women began to earn up to $14 a week -- which while small, was
almost on par with what men were making. An astonishing achievement. The fact that Kate was
able to buy this house with the money from that raise reminds us of the stability and benefits that
came with better jobs -- and better conditions at work. These women also found strength in
reaching out to the broader community -- and joining other unions for the common good.
Some of what we learn from Kate Mullany and the women of Troy -- is that the voices
of those women still speak to the concerns of today's working women -- and have continued to
inspire women in the labor movement down through the years. The women of Troy fought for
equal pay for equal work -- as we still do. They fought for better working conditions in the
workplace -- as we still do. They fought for respect -- at work and at home. As we still do. And
they struggled to find the time to bake their own bread -- and balance the demands of work and
family -- as we still do.
We've made progress over the past century that Kate Mullany and her friends could never
have imagined. Yet she envisioned a future that many of us still dream about " that when,
from choice or necessity, women are compelled to earn their own living, it will not be a reproach,
but an honor."
Augusta Lewis -- president of the women's typographical Union -- wrote in 1869 about
the Troy Collar Laundry Union as a model for working women through the ages. "Others will
be encouraged by their success; and be stimulated by their example to elevate their own
condition." Ms. Lewis recognized the enduring qualities of these women -- their courage to
reach out to others; their simple demand to be treated fairly and with respect; their sense of a
broader community that have inspired all Americans to tackle the next problem -- and move
ahead. These are not just history lessons to read and put back on the shelf. When we study and
learn from those who came before us -- we find we can face the future with a little more
confidence -- and with a renewed sense of hope.
Kate Mullany is truly one of America's most precious treasures. And it gives me great
pleasure today to help unveil this plague commemorating her home as a National Historic
Landmark -- knowing that it will help to keep her stories and those of all of these women alive
for the next generation to learn from, and yes, be inspired.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
OFFICE OF
SPEECHWRITING
Fax: (202)456-5709
Phone: (202)456-2777
Fax: TO: LAURA SCHILLER Phone: /ELLEN ELLEN LOVELL
FROM: Churty
Comments:
First draft mullery
Henre please call when
you can
Date:
Number of pages (including cover):
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
THE KATE MULLANY HOUSE
TROY, NEW YORK
JULY 15, 1998
[Acknowledgments: Congressman Mike McNulty; Mayor Mark Pattison; Josephine Sano,
Albany Central Labor council; Gov. Pataki; descendant of Mullany; citizens and friends;]
When a newspaper claimed that there weren't enough women in New York City with the
ability to be labor organizers -- Kate Mullany said defiantly: "you show me the women, I'll turn
them into organizers." It's a pleasure to be here at the home of such a courageous and determined
woman -- a woman who helped change the course of America's history so many years ago.
Over the past three days -- I've traveled up the East Coast -- visiting the monuments and
sites and artifacts that tell America's story, and urging communities to think about how they can
preserve these irreplaceable symbols of our legacy, and pass them on to future generations. I've
walked around the headquarters of George Washington; and stood at the foot of the Francis Scott
Key monument in Baltimore; and explored a community whose historic houses are serving as the
foundation for the rebirth of a neighborhood. Here, at the home of Kate Mullany -- we see
another side of the historic preservation movement -- a site that reflects the lives of ordinary,
every day people.
This house is unique in another way. It tells a story that the vast majority of historic sites
in America neglect to tell -- the life and achievements of women.
This week, women from across the country are gathering a few miles from here -- at
Seneca Falls -- to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first women's rights convention. It's an
extraordinary opportunity for women from every region of the country -- of all ages, and races,
and backgrounds -- to celebrate the progress that's been made -- but also to move forward to
meet the promises that remain unfulfilled. But perhaps most importantly, it's an opportunity to
tell their stories. Because for too long, women's voices have not been heard. Their stories gone
untold.
Here in Troy, the stories of America's women are all around us. Harriet Tubman --
known as the "Moses" of her people -- used this site to help fugutive slave (Charles Nalle) to
escape from slavery. When Emma Willard founded the first girls school here -- she couldn't find
all the textbooks she needed. So she wrote some herself. One of her graduates -- Olivia Slocum
Sage -- established the Russell Sage College for Women -- with the money from her late rich
husband -- who didn't even like women. Another Troy woman -- housewife Hannah Lord
Monteague -- invented the detachable collar. She'd become extremely frustrated at having to
wash her husband's entire shirts when only the collars were dirty. Some things never change. I
like the story of Regional Friehofer -- who established a bakery in Troy because he saw so many
working women racing out of their homes every morning to go to work -- not having the time to
bake their own bread.
The lives of so many of these woman revolved around the resident of this house. Imagine
the courage it took for Kate Mullaney -- only 19 years of age -- to organize 200 women garment
workers -- and form the first real all women's union in the nation. Most of the women -- like
Kate -- were the sole support of their ailing mothers, or their younger sisters and brothers. Think
of the bravery it took to go out on strike -- when so many depended upon you.
This house also helps chronicle the triumphs and failures of the labor movement in
America. It's difficult for me to comprehend the working conditions that these women workers
had to endure so many years ago: standing on their feet for 11 to 14 hours a day -- bending over
washtubs and ironing tables in oppressive heat -- and making about $2-3 a week.
Yet that first strike -- demanding among other things a 25% increase in wages -- was as
successful as it was bold. And eventually, thanks to Kate's tireless leadership -- women were
earning up to $14 a week which while small, was almost on par with what men were making.
An astonishing achievement. The fact that she was able to buy this house with the money from
that raise reminds us of the stability and upward mobility that came with better jobs -- and better
conditions at work. These women also found strength and comfort in each other -- and in joining
forces with other unions for the common good.
Some of what we learn from Kate Mullany and the women of Troy -- is that the voices
of those women over 130 years ago still speak to the concerns of today's working women
everywhere. The women of Troy fought for equal pay for equal work -- as we still do. They
fought for better working conditions in the workplace -- as we still do. They fought for respect --
at work and at home. As we still do. And they struggled to find the time to bake their own bread
-- and balance the demands of work and family -- as we still do.
Augusta Lewis -- president of the women's typographical Union -- wrote in 1869 about
the Troy Collar Laundry Union as national model of working women uniting for a common
cause. "Others will be encouraged by their success; and be stimulated by their example to
elevate their own condition." 130 years ago, Ms. Lewis recognized and appreciated the enduring
qualities of these women -- their courage to reach out to others; their determination to be treated
fairly and equally; their sense of community -- that have always inspired us as a people to tackle
the next problem -- and move ahead. These are not just history lessons to read and put back on
the shelf. When we study and learn from the past -- we find we can face the challenges before us
with a little more confidence -- and with a renewed sense of hope.
Kate Mullany is truly one of America's most precious treasures. And it gives me great
pleasure today to help unveil this plague commemorating her home as a National Historic
Landmark -- knowing that it will help to keep her stories and memories alive for the next
generation to learn from, and yes, be inspired.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
THE KATE MULLANY HOUSE
guardian guide
TROY, NEW YORK
JULY 15, 1998
[Acknowledgments: Congressman Mike McNulty; Mayor Mark Pattison; Josephine Sano,
Albany Central Labor council; Gov. Pataki; descendant of Mullany; citizens and friends;]
When a newspaper claimed that there weren't enough women in New York City with the
ability to be labor organizers -- Kate Mullany said defiantly: "you show me the women, I'll turn
them into organizers." It's a pleasure to be here at the home of such a courageous and determined
woman -- a woman who helped change the course of America's history so many years ago.
Over the past three days -- I've traveled up the East Coast -- visiting the monuments and
sites and artifacts that tell America's story, and urging communities to think about how they can
preserve these irreplaceable symbols of our legacy, and pass them on to future generations. I've
walked around the headquarters of George Washington; and stood at the foot of the Francis Scott
Key monument in Baltimore; and explored a community whose historic houses are serving as the
foundation for the rebirth of a neighborhood. Here, at the home of Kate Mullany -- we see
another side of the historic preservation movement -- a site that reflects the lives of ordinary,
every day people.
This house is unique in another way. It tells a story that the vast majority of historic sites
in America neglect to tell -- the life and achievements of women.
This week, women from across the country are gathering a few miles from here -- at
Seneca Falls -- to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first women's rights convention. It's an
extraordinary opportunity for women from every region of the country -- of all ages, and races,
and backgrounds -- to celebrate the progress that's been made -- but also to move forward to
meet the promises that remain unfulfilled. But perhaps most importantly, it's an opportunity to
tell their stories. Because for too long, women's voices have not been heard. Their stories gone
untold.
Here in Troy, the stories of women are all around us. When Emma Willard founded the
first girls school here -- she couldn't find all the textbooks she needed, So she wrote some
herself. One of her graduates -- Olivia Slocum Sage -- established the Russell Sage College for
Women -- with the money from her late rich husband -- who didn't like women Another
Troy woman -- housewife Hannah Lord Monteague -- invented the detachable collar. She'd
become extremely frustrated at having to wash her husband's entire shirts when only the collars
were dirty. Some things never change. I like the story of Regional Friehofer who established a
bakery in Troy because he saw so many working women racing out of their homes every morning
to go to work -- not having the time to bake their own bread.
The lives of so many of these woman revolved around the resident of this house. Imagine
the courage it took for Kate Mullaney -- only 19 years of age -- to organize 200 women garment
workers -- and form the first real all women's union in the nation. Most of the women -- like
Kate -- were the sole support of their ailing mothers, or their younger sisters and brothers. Think
of the bravery it took to go out on strike -- when so many depended upon you.
This house also helps chronicle the triumphs and failures of the labor movement in
America It's difficult for me to comprehend the working conditions that these women workers
had to (ensure so many years ago: standing on their feet for 11 to 14 hours a day -- bending over
washtubs and ironing tables in oppressive heat -- and making about $2-3 a week.
Yet that first strike -- demanding among other things a 25% increase in wages -- was as
successful as it was bold. And eventually, thanks to Kate's tireless leadership -- women were
earning up to $14 a week which while small, was almost on par with what men were making.
An astonishing achievement. The fact that she was able to buy this house with the money from
that raise reminds us of the stability and upward mobility that came with better jobs -- and better
conditions at work. These women also found strength and comfort in each other -- and in joining
forces with other unions for the common good.
Some of what we learn from Kate Mullany and the women of Troy -- is that the voices
of those women over 130 years ago still speak to the concerns of today's working women
everywhere. The women of Troy fought for equal pay for equal work -- as we still do. They
fought for better working conditions in the workplace -- as we still do. They fought for respect --
at work and at home. As we still do. And they struggled to find the time to bake their own bread
and balance the demands of work and family -- as we still do.
Augusta Lewis -- president of the women's typographical Union -- wrote in 1869 about
the Troy Collar Laundry Union as national model of working women uniting for a common
cause. "Others will be encouraged by their success; and be stimulated by their example to
elevate their own condition." 130 years ago, Ms. Lewis recognized and appreciated the enduring
qualities of these women their courage to reach out to others; their determination to be treated
fairly and equally; their sense of community -- that have always inspired us as a people to tackle
the next problem -- and move ahead. These are not just history lessons to read and put back on
the shelf. When we study and learn from the past -- we find we can face the challenges before us
with a little more confidence -- and with a renewed sense of hope.
Kate Mullany is truly one of America's most precious treasures. And it gives me great
pleasure today to help unveil this plague commemorating her home as a National Historic
Landmark -- knowing that it will help to keep her stories and memories alive for the next
generation to learn from, and yes, be inspired.
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PHOTOCOPY
CLINTON LIBRARY PHOTOCOPY
PRESERVATION
09/13/1997 18:51 5174799723
PAGE 02
VISIT OF THE FIRST LADY
TO
THE KATE MULLANY HOUSE
TROY, NEW YORK
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1998
EVENT:
Plaque Presentation Ceremony
DATE:
Wednesday, July 15, 1998
TIME:
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
LOCATION:
The Kate Mullany House
350 8ᵀᴴ Street
Troy, New York
ATTENDEES:
Approximately 700 ticketed guests
PARTICIPANTS:
The First Lady
Congressman Mike McNulty
Mayor Mark Pattison
Josephine Sano, Albany Central Labor Council
Mullany descendent, TBD
Governor Pataki or representative, TBD
State Senator Joe Bruno (R, Troy), TRD
Kate Mullany actress, TBD
PRESS:
Open
REMARKS:
Speaking Program
SCENARIO:
The First Lady will arrive at the Kate Mullany House and be greeted by
Congressman Mike McNulty, Mayor Mark Pattison, Josephine Sano and a Kate
Mullany descendent. The First Lady and the greeting party will then proceed
backstage and join other program participants and await introduction onto the
stage according to the speaking program.
Upon conclusion of the program, The First Lady will be presented with an original
Troy collar and then be invited to unveil a plaque commemorating the designation
of the Kate Mullany House as a National Historic Landmark.
The First Lady will exit the stage (ropeline optional) and depart.
09/13/1997 18:46 5174799723
PAGE 01
518-869-7659 THE DESMOND
616 P02/02 JUL 09 '98 15:04
7/9/98
Liz:
Could you please fax the list of speakers for the Troy event to Billy Mann at 202-456-6244?
Thanks.
Lisa McCann
WH Millennium Council
TROM EVENT SPEAKERS
Invocation- Father Planagan
Minister
Remarks - Troy Mayor
Mark Pattison
Congressman
Mike MCNWAY
Tosepline Sano,
Albany Council Central Labor
Governor Dataki- TBD
Mullary descendent -TBD
The First lady
200
MAINNETTIN
9229 SOC 202 IVd 12:20 NHL 25/80/40
trestour.wpd
Page 20
TROY, NY: Kate Mullaney House
Description Blue painted brick duplex with three apartments in each.
Currently private residences.
Historical Significance Kate Mullany House has recently been made a
National Historic Landmark which is still to receive plaque.
Site is also part of an area National Parks Service Labor History Theme Study
(NHL by theme). Mullaney was an early president of first long-lasting (8
years, non-strike specific) all-female union (Collar Laundry Union) which
managed to achieve almost parity with men's wages. She was also the first
female officer of a national union. Her house was bought with money from
25% wage increase after successful strike.
Incidentally, the detachable men's collar was invented by another Troy
woman, Hannah Lord Montague, when she got tired of laundering her
husband's shirts when only the collar needed cleaning.
Other Troy women's history tidbits. Regional Friehofer's bakery was
established in Troy when Mr. Friehofer noted the Kate Mullaney's of Troy
going off to work and thought it would be a good place for a bakery because
women didn't have time to make bread. Also, Troy is home of Emma Willard
School for girls which was first school to teach girls subjects such as math
and geography. Jane Fonda is a graduate. When Emma Willard School
moved buildings its original buildings were taken over by newly established
Russell Sage College named for a rich industrialist who didn't like women and
wasn't the least bit charitable to widows and orphans. His widow took his
money and established a college for women and named it after him.
Troy is also the home of the national icon "Uncle Sam." In the early 1800s, Sam Wilson,
a meatpacker and Army beef contractor in War of 1812, had a meat stamp that said "U.S.
Beef" which was jokingly interpreted as "Uncle Sam's Beef." Thus the character of Uncle
Sam was born. There is an aluminum statue of Uncle Sam in Troy.
There may well be a WPA mural "Rip Van Wrinkle" "Legends of the Hudson" by Waldo
Pierce in Troy.
Preservation Needs House site is a private residence but giving of plaque and
recognition of the historical significance would be the focus.
Budget/Funding Sources/Local Involvement U.S. Rep McNulty has requested a visit
and Sen. Moynihan who has a particular interest in historic preservation has long urged
NY folks to focus on "the Irish mill worker."
Contact Rachel Bliven, 518-673-1045, RB H 518-283-6353 and RiverSpark
trestour.slh
Page 24
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
350 8th St., Troy, NY
Description
Blue painted brick duplex with three apartments in each. Currently private
residences. Site will receive its plaque as a National Historic Landmark (NHL).
History and Significance
Kate Mullany was born around 1841 in England of Irish parents who brought their
family to the United States around 1850. She worked as one of 3,700 women
launderers, starchers, and ironers in the industry which supplied most of America's
detachable collars and cuffs. Workers were paid $2.00 a week for 14 hours work
per day in oppressive heat. When new machinery was introduced which increased
production but worsened working conditions, Kate Mullany organized the Collar
Laundry Union in 1864 which became the first long-lasting (five years, non-strike
specific) all-female union. 200 workers went on strike with Mullany and the
laundry owners met their 25 cent increase demand. Her wage increase helped her
family buy the house. This is the only surviving structure associated Mullany.
Mullany was also the first female officer elected to a national union (2nd Vice
President of the National Labor Union) though she was unable to serve because
another officer was from New York and the union could not have two officers from
the same state. Instead she was appointed special assistant secretary to
coordinate national working women's associations.
The Collar Laundry Union was successful in large part because the workers were
highly specialized. They ironed and shaped the collar into its final form. This
required strength and speed to get the collar just right when the starch was at the
best stage in the process for shaping and holding. In 1866, the Collar Laundry
Union also supported striking male iron molders with a sizable $1,000. donation.
During a later strike in 1869 during which the employers united in opposition, the
Collar Laundry Union formed the Cooperative Collar and Cuff factory-with Mullany
as president. Several months later the union dissolved and most ironers returned to
work though Susan B. Anthony visited Mullany in February, 1870 where Mullany
and several colleagues were still trying to make a go of the cooperative. In a later
speech, Anthony sympathized with their effort to establish the fact that "women
can be employers." Anthony and Mullany disagreed over the reasons for the failure
of the 1869 strike: Anthony attributing it to the "girls" disenfranchised lack of
power and the uneven level of ridicule heaped on the female strikers versus male
unionists in other strikes, while Mullany attributed the ridicule to the bribing of
editors. While Anthony identified first and foremost as a woman and battled for
the ballot, Mullany self-identified as a worker and battled for "bread."
trestour.slh
Page 25
Troy is referred to as "the collar city" for its production of collars. The detachable
men's collar was invented by another Troy woman, Hannah Lord Montagu, when
she got tired of laundering her husband's shirts when only the collar needed
cleaning. The first commercial laundry was established in Troy in the 1820's.
The Emma Willard School, founded as the Troy Female Seminary, is also in Troy.
The school was founded by Emma Hart Willard in Troy, New York, in 1821. It was
the first American educational institution to provide young women with an
education comparable to that of college-educated young men. At the time of the
seminary's founding, women were barred from colleges. Although academies for
girls existed, their curricula were limited to such "female arts" as conversational
French and embroidery.
The outline for the school was presented by Willard to the New York legislature in
her "Plan for Improving Female Education." This document proposed a course of
study that would provide girls with a broad-based and rigorous education. The
legislature did not respond and some members ridiculed her ideas as against God's
will but Governor DeWitt Clinton invited Willard to open a school in New York
state. The city of Troy raised $4,000 in taxes to begin construction of the school
envisioned by Willard.
The seminary's first class consisted of 90 girls from across the United States who
enrolled in mathematics, science, history, foreign language, and literature courses.
Willard herself not only served as an instructor but even wrote some of the school's
textbooks. Troy Female Seminary soon gained a reputation as an outstanding
institution. It proved to those who were
skeptical, that women were just as capable as men of comprehending difficult
subjects. Jane Fonda is a graduate.
Though the worlds of Kate Mullany and Emma Willard rarely overlapped, the
detachable men's collar industry began in the homes of financially comfortable
women who wished to earn extra "pin" money before becoming the major industry
in which Mullany worked.
One graduate of Emma Willard, Olivia Slocum Sage (1828-1918), continued the
strong story of women's education in Troy by establishing the Russell Sage College
of the Practical Arts in 1916 named for her late husband. She was an avid advocate for
preparing women for the world of work and wrote in the college's first catalog that, "The greatest
vocation of all is life and the ultimate employer is society." The practical arts consisted of
secretarial science, home economics, and the industrial arts (interior design).
Olivia Slocum Sage also established the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907 which supported social
work and documented working conditions and worked to improve those conditions.
The regional Friehofer's bakery was established in Troy when Mr. Friehofer noted
trestour.slh
Page 26
the many female laborers going off to work and thought it would be a good place
for a bakery because women did not have time to make bread.
Troy is also the home of the national icon "Uncle Sam." In the early 1800s, Sam
Wilson, a meatpacker and Army beef contractor in War of 1812, had a meat stamp
that said "U.S. Beef" which was jokingly interpreted as "Uncle Sam's Beef." Thus
the character of Uncle Sam was born. There is an aluminum statue of Uncle Sam
in Troy.
Preservation Needs
Designation of the site as an NHL will make it one of the 5 percent of NHLs
dedicated to a woman and highlight the growing awareness that sites associated
with women have much to contribute to the telling of our nation's story. The site
is also part of a proposed National Parks Service Labor History Theme Study (NHL
by theme). Congressman Michael McNulty currently has legislation before
Congress to make the house a National Historic Site (H.R.2849 "Hudson and
Mohawk Rivers National Historical Park Act").
Only 3% of National Register properties are designated as NHLs. The NHL program
was set out in the Historic Sites Act of 1935 Sec. 2(b) to "make a survey of
historic and archeological sites, buildings, and objects for the purpose of
determining which possess exceptional value as commemorating or illustrating the
history of the United States."
Resources
Local labor supporters hope to commemorate Mullany's contribution to labor at her
gravesite. Troy is one of six neighboring communities in RiverSpark which is one of
14 state designated urban cultural parks within New York State. Friends of
RiverSpark is based in Cohoes, NY.
Contact
Rachel Bliven, Historian, 518-673-1045
NY Sun, Sept 15, 1868, praises Kate Mullaney.
- In 1868 when bricklayers in the state of NY went on strike, the workers of Troy, including
women workers, supported them. The NY Sun described a "monster demonstration of working
men in the city of Troy" with "10 Unions parading the streets in a torchlight procession.
Not
less than 7,000 people assembled, among whom were many ladies." The Sun continued, "we
had the pleasure of an interview of Ms. Kate Mullaney, President of the Collar Laundry Union.
And we were greatly surprised to find a lady at the head of an association of females who SO
thoroughly understood the workings of the labor movment."
- The article also mentioned that Mullaney's Collar Union had over 500 members.
Here is Kate Mullaney's full quote about training female labor organizers, which I provided
part of in the Carole Turbin notes. It comes from a newspaper account.
- "In alluding to the difficulties we had to contend with in the city of NY to organize female
unions not being able to convince women that they were capable and competent to fill the
positions of presidents and secretaries (it being conceded by them that gentlemen should fill
those positions) she replied that there were numbers of ladies connected with the laundry union
who were just as competent as any gentleman, and if we did not have any ladies in NY who were
competent, if we suceeded in organizing female unions, she would send some from Troy and pay
their expenses until such time as they were able to educate some of are own. Before the union
was organized the wages were from $5 to $8 per week. They are now from $11 to $25 per
week." That was almost on par with men's wages.
* SEE ATTACHED QUOTES FROM CAROL TURBIN'S BOOK
1) Susan B. Anthony praises Mullaney's union
2) Mullaney and Anthony discuss challenges faced by working women (why a women's union
lost a conflict men could have won).
* Also see attached letter from NY Sun which graphically describes the conditions under which
the women collar workers labored, mentions the accomplishments of the union, and concludes
with a hopeful note about women workers and the future.
Working Women
of Collar City
Gender, Class, and Community
in Troy, New York, 1864-86
CAROLE TURBIN
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Urbana and Chicago
142
Part Two: Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism
Woman's Work and Woman's Rights
143
working women's first aim was "to get fairly paid for their work.
of working women and shared some of the interests of trade union-
After the association is formed, if a majority desires it, I believe in the
girls getting together and discussing politics. But I think other things
ists. Although divisions between Mullaney and suffragists were deeper
need attention now."23 Lewis and other compositors supported
than those between suffragists and women compositors, as a trade
woman suffrage in principle, but as working women it was not their
unionist Mullaney shared middle-class reformers' belief that wage
first priority.
earners could escape the wage system by becoming small entrepre-
neurs. Less than a year later, Anthony described her approval of the
Several incidents occurring shortly before the 1869 NLU meeting
laundresses' goal of achieving independence from employers. In Feb-
suggest that despite Mullaney's absence from the 1868 convention,
ruary 1870, when she had to spend a few hours in Troy waiting for a
her conflicts with Anthony were deeper than Lewis's, and she had
train, Anthony visited the Collar Laundry Union's cooperative collar
little or no interest in suffrage, not even as a secondary goal. In July
factory and laundry. She reported that she met Kate Mullaney and
1869, when Mullaney and Esther Keegan solicited contributions to
several other young Irish women, most likely Ann Tellers, the union's
their strike fund from the city's prosperous trade unions, Mullaney
secretary, Sarah McQuillan, treasurer, and Esther Keegan. They
also visited the Working Women's Association. Since Anthony was on
worked in "an upper room of a large building" and were dressed in
a speaking tour, she was absent from the meeting, whose membership
"the simplest calico." Although they earned "barely enough to cover
by this time was entirely middle class. In a period when trade union-
their rent
they were trying to establish the fact, that women can be
ists frowned' on all but the most worthy strikes, and strike funds were
employers." In a speech at Cooper Institute she described her heart-
burdened by requests for donations, almost every union in the city re-
felt sympathy for this working-women's venture. "I have not had my
sponded generously. In contrast, the Working Women's Associa-
heart stirred for long years with the terrible fact of the struggle that
tion's reaction was at best lukewarm.
women have to get a place and position beside men in business, as by
Mullaney's comments suggest that she was keenly aware of the so-
the story and efforts of these three girls."27
cial gap between herself and the members and was unwilling to pre-
Despite Mullaney's recognition of class differences, she kept in
tend to those she addressed that there was a basis for common
touch with suffragists who agreed with trade unionists that like men,
interests. Accompanied by Augusta Lewis and Alexander Troup, Mul-
laney observed that she came before them to request contributions
women wage earners could escape wage slavery by transforming
themselves into small entrepreneurs who were not dependent on
because she "understood that they were an association of working-
wages for their livelihood. In April of the same year Mullaney opti-
women." But, she continued, "as she looked around them: she could
mistically wrote to The Revolution that the "girls" hope "to proceed on
tell that they were not the working-women whom she had been ac-
a purely business basis, by doing the work
themselves." They plan
customed to see. She had to work all day in the shop, and this she
to "buy up all the stock and hold it for their own benefit." Already
did not think, judging from their appearance, that they did.
they had "made good progress toward securing
needed
capital,
Lewis's letter to the NLU about the outcome of the meeting agreed
$10,000." For Mullaney and the other women who managed the
with Mullaney's perceptions. She said that "Although the society
cooperative, becoming employers was consistent with their commit-
comprises many wealthy ladies, they raised $30 for the Laundresses
ment to trade unionism. Since Mullaney identified primarily as a
of Troy.
As a society, either the want of knowledge or the want
worker rather than as a woman, the interests Mullaney shared with
of sense
renders them as a workingwoman's association, very
suffragists were related less to what they had in common as women,
inefficient.' Identifying with the labor movement, Mullaney would
than to trade unionists' and some suffragists' shared concerns about
have voted with Lewis and other delegates who vociferously objected
wage earners.
to seating Stanton.
Anthony's description of her visit to the collar laundresses' coop-
Mullaney's mocivations for visiting the association were probably
erative reveals that this shared concern was also the basis for their
mixed. Her primary goal was instrumental, to solicit contributions
differences. The principle guiding Anthony's beliefs was that working
from women whom she believed were in a position to help the laun-
women's disadvantages stemmed from the status they shared with
dresses' union to win their strike. Yet she visited the organization be-
all women. In a speech in the 1870s, Anthony described the Collar
cause she had reason to believe that they sympathized with the cause
Laundry Union as the best-organized women's union she knew, and
SUSAN B. ANTHONY praces millares Union
144
Part Two: Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism
Woman's Work and Woman's Rights
145
compared her view of reasons for the failure of the union's 1869
In contrast to the typesetters and to collar workers' indirect rejec-
strike with Mullaney's explanation. When she visited the cooperative
tion of the cause Anthony represented, delegates from the Massachu-
collar factory she asked the "bright young Irish girl" who was presi-
setts' Daughters and Knights of St. Crispin endorsed Anthony's claim
dent of the union, "Do you not think if you had been 500 carpenters
to represent working women. Women shoe workers were represented
or 500 masons, you would have succeeded?" Mullaney agreed with
by Martha Wallbridge, the self-supporting Stoneham shoe stitcher
Anthony's suggestion that if they were men, they would have won the
who succeeded Anthony as chair of the NLU's committee on female
conflict. Replying "Certainly," Mullaney described the strike of two
labor. Recognizing that some male delegates represented reform or-
hundred bricklayers who "gained every point with their employers"
ganizations whose members were not wage earners, Wallbridge
the previous year. Continuing to question Mullaney, Anthony asked,
pointed out that if Anthony's "claims were" rejected because they
"What could have made the difference? Their 200 were but a fraction
"were not sufficiently valid," then there should "be an investigation
of that trade, while your 500 absolutely controlled yours." Mullaney's
into the equally invalid claims of male delegates
some of whom
answer revealed that she was not thinking of differences related to
she knew were not fully qualified." Her solid support from male trade
gender, but differences in collar laundresses' and bricklayers' circum-
unionists included Walsh whose fears about women's employment did
stances as workers facing employers and their middle-class allies. She
not prevent him from voting in favor of the committee on female la-
replied that "It was because the editors ridiculed and denounced us."
bor's resolution. He contrasted Anthony with Wallbridge, whom he
Yet she was also aware that employers treated them as women who,
described as a "bona fide working woman." Massachusetts's Crispin
ideally. should be supported by a male provider. Mullaney added that
Samuel P. Cummings seconded Wallbridge's endorsement of Anthony
their employers said that since our wages were "better than those of
as representative.3r
any other working women, except teachers,
if we weren't satisfied,
Crispin support of Anthony was significant because the circum-
we had better go and get married." When Anthony asked why the
stances that discredited Anthony as working-women's ally repre-
newspapers ridiculed the collar laundresses, but not the bricklayers,
sented a turning point in Anthony's relationship not only with Lewis
after several moments of careful thought Mullaney replied that "It
and women typographers, whom she helped to organize, but also with
must have been because our employers bribed the editors." For Mul-
the nation's labor movement. Although class differences divided suf-
laney, the strike failed not primarily because of the laundresses' vul-
fragists and the women Wallbridge represented, they shared some as-
nerability as women, but because of employers' strategy of controlling
pects of Anthony's position. As chair of the NLU's committee on
the press.
female labor in 1869, Wallbridge advocated equal pay for equal work
Anthony's analysis of Mullaney's answer emphasizes suffragist' be-
and the opening of "all avenues of labor" to all women equally.³ This
lief that the ballot was the best means for working women to improve
argument probably reflected Wallbridge's employment in an industry
their condition. Pointing out that this young woman never thought to
in which some skilled jobs were available to women. As a self-
compare her union with the bricklayers, Anthony not only conde-
supporting woman who understood the benefits of skilled work's
scendingly implied that Mullaney did not think but also that she did
good wages and relative security, she had a stake in taking a strong
not see that they lost the strike because of their disadvantaged posi-
position on women's entry into skilled jobs. Having no direct experi-
tion as women. She argued that in the case of the bricklayers' strike
ence with Anthony's rejection of the interests of women unionists,
"no editor, either Democrat or Republican" would have accepted a
Wallbridge was more likely than Lewis to be sympathetic to Anthony's
bribe because of men's influence as voters. Any editor "would have
goal of increasing opportunities for self-supporting and providing
known that if he denounced or ridiculed those men, not only they but
women to enter skilled trades.
all the Trades' union men of the city at the next election would vote
Women Crispins were by no means united on suffrage. In January
solidly against the nominees advocated by that editor." She continued,
1872, DOSC members in Lynn heard two different lectures on two
"If those collar laundry women had been voters, they would have
consecutive weeks, which took different positions. Mrs. Willard, the
held, in that little city of Troy, the 'balance of political power." She
prosuffragist second vice president of the NLU, lectured first. Emma
concluded, "My friends, the condition of those collar laundry women
Lane, the wife of a Crispin, the DOSC's first national leader, and a
but represents the utter helplessness of disenfranchisement."
well-known New England labor reformer, lectured second. At first,
220 Nineteenth-Century America
And IVe Are Nothing but Women 22%
clusions indicate that for these women at this time and place, class
from five hundred to eight
interests were more important than interests shared with women of other
afforded to their operative
W
social groups.
Some of those in the estable
more: and it has repeated)
reason, have returned and
Documents
their new employers nor di
of things does not however
years ago, a so-called "Wor
have
Linen and Collar and Cuff Manufacture and the Working-
at once went to work to ri
women's Union, 1873
fication for the step. since
within a few months. A th
When all these sewing processes are at last complete, the collars-and $0 of
faccurers, though not orga
other articles, for we are following the fortunes of the collar as a representative
202-456-6244
White House
Room 102
BILLY MANN
00
I
00
to the performances, the N
S
5
of the rest-are transferred to the laundry, where a second series of eleven
ground. The demand of If
N
processes is gone through with, besides the mere transfer.* These are as follows:
the ill-advised strikers wen
(1) Washing in suds, to remove the manufacturer's "dressing" Irom the goods:
rates, and the Union was
(2) bleaching. by means of hyperchloride of soria: (3) application of dilute
(Note: The firm of George n. CRICIT, promer K LU., later because a name
A
sulphuric acid, to complete the bleaching process: (4) washing in suds, to Γe-
producer of men's shirts, The Arrow Company, a division of Cluett, Pcabody,
move the acid; (5) boiling: (6) rubbing and rinsing; (7) bluing and rolling: (8)
and Co., Inc]
starching with thin starch: (9) starching with thick starch: (10) drying: (11)
ironing.
These operations are greatly facilitated by the arrangement of fitting up
A "Spicy" Letter from n Workingwoman, 1869
of the different rooms, and by various devices for economizing labor and power.
Thus a peculiar formation of the stove for heating irons keeps forty of them
It was my pleasure a few recks since 10 visit a real workingwomen's association,
hot all the time, with a small average consumption of roal; the order of the
the Collar Laundry Union of Troy. New York. 1 use the word real to desig-
tubs used is such as to make the progress of the goods easy through the suc-
nate it from imaginary workingwomen's associations who theorize, while this
cessive processes, etc. The starch used is not of wheat. but of corn, which is
organization has proved "that those who would be [ree themselves must strike
found to be equally efficient, cheaper. and much less disagrecable to the fingers
the blowl"
of the operatives. This is a pretty important consideration. for it is found to
For many years past the collar laundries of Troy have employed several
make the difference between sore fingers and healthy ones,-that is, work or
inflammation called felon has occasionally been somewhat frequent among those
who work in the starching rooms.
m
hundred women to wash, starch, and iron collars brought fresh from the manu-
I
idleness,- besides pain, which is sometimes no small item. as the very agonizing
facturer, preparatory to their sales in stores. Summer and winter from dawn to
dark sometimes "till midnight, their work was to stand over the washtub, over
the ironing table. with furnaces on either side, the thermometer averaging 100°
for wages averaging from $2 to S8 a week each. Many of those thus employed had
This firm, on the contrary, is well satisfied with that sort of success which
aged parents, younger brothers and sisters, and some had their own children,
is the only really desirable one in business-honest gains from enterprise, in-
besides themselves, depending on this pittance for an existence. A representation
dustry, and fair dealing. Steady kindness, and at the same (ime as much strict-
of their necessities and individual appeal for an increase of salary received the
usual answer to such demands-"That if dissatisfied there were plenty of women
ness as is necessary, keep them popular with their hands, of whom they employ
who would be glad 10 get work at any price." At last that bugbear of capitalists P
was resorted to, and they formed a trade union, whereby through their own
New York Sun, February 9, 1670; The Revolution, February 24. 1870; New York World,
March 11, 1870; Nancy Schrom Dye, "Creating 2 Feminist Alliance: Sisterhood and
Class Conflict in the New York Women's Trade Union League, 1902-1944," Feminist
Reprinted from the New York Sun, July 5. 186g. Although the letter is not signed.
Studies, 2, No. 2 and 3 (1975). 21-38.
biographical details provide strong evidence that the writer was Augusta Lewis,
Reprinted from Horace Greeley " al., Great Industries of the United States, 1. A.
president of the Women's Typographical Union No. of New York City (organized
222 Nineleenth-Century America
exertions and their faithfulness to their organization they have increased their
wages to $8 to S14 per week by working on an average from twelve to fourteen
9 Chinese Immigrant Women
hours per day. Meantime their employers' profits are $85 per day. The laun-
in Nineteenth-Century California
dresses' organization is at present in difficulty not of their own seeking. (The
cause of the trouble was stated in Tuesday's Sun.) The employers are very will-
Lucie Cheng Hirata
ing to pay less for small collars, but refuse to pay the increase for large collars.
Some [employers] say they will pay the scale provided the Union, which has
increased their wages, is dissolved. It will then be in cheir power to decrease the
wages, and the women, justly regarding the union 25 the mother of their success,
refuse the terms. Having been educated as to the knowledge of their true in-
terests by organization, they now desire to take a step higher and form a co-
operative laundry, thus becoming their own employers, a form of organized labor
to which even the most fastidious cannot object. I am not a resident of Troy,
nor a worker or member of the Laundry Union, but I am a workingwoman
who has had to work very hard for a very small sum, and my sympathies are
ever with chose who struggle in poverty to earn an honorable living. It is the
duty and interest of every workingman and woman to extend a helping hand to
those women of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy.
Fathers and mothers
whose daughters are sheltered and protected by home and wealth, remember
the workingwomen. It is uncertain how long you or your protecting care and
wealth will be spared. Neither your daughters nor you know but they might yet
have to earn their own living. At eight years of age the writer of this lived in
Brooklyn Heights, and attended one of the most aristocratic schools in the City
of Churches: a servant carried her books to schools, but at the age of seventeen
she carried her lunch to work, and stood behind the counter of a Broadway
store from eight in the morning til eight in the evening for $2 a week, and was
asked by the forewoman: "Why not dress more stylishly: well-dressed saleswomen
commanded better custom, and gave an air of dignity to the store." With such
remuneration and such remarks, who dare deny that prostitution is at a pre-
mium. Yes, and will be until women are paid a living price for their labor. Let
those who contribute to Magdalen Societies to reclaim the fallen do that which
will prevent the necessity for such institutions, and wherever they see women
striving to better their condition give them substantial aid.
Others will be encouraged by their success, and be stimulated by their
example to seek to elevate their own condition, as the female cap makers of this
city are now doing.
Whatever the evils of society are, let us not contribute to them by re-
fusing to do the good that lies in our power at the present moment. In thus
elevating one class of workingwomen, the good results will be felt by every
other, and in future let us hope that when, from choice or necessity, women
are compelled to earn their own living, it will not be a reproach but an honor
to be, as I am.
-
A working woman
Chinese woman. Courtesy of United Press International.
mall mullaney
VEENA'S NOTES
Women of America: A History
- Collar Laundry Union of Troy: at least 400 members at peak, lasted almost 6 years
- Many of the working women were sole supporter of their family; 1865: Kate Mullaney was
supporting herself as well as her mother, Bridget, age 55, and two younger sisters.
- working conditions involved strenuous labor: laundresses stood on their feet almost all of their
11 to 14 hours of labor: in the summer, it was so hot that they had to "forgo their work for 2 or 3
weeks at a time from sheer inablilty to perform it"; worked from dawn till dark, sometimes till
midnight
- increased wages from $2-$3 a week to $8-$14 a week (average of 12-14 hours a day)
- Kate Mullaney was aware that it was important for working women to organize independently
"women
helping
women
from men: offered to send laundry union members from Troy to NY City to help NY City
working women: help them organize, speak up at meetings and take up leadership roles
- success of laundresses due to fact that they organized themselves primarily as workers rather
than women
- belief "that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow"
Century of Struggle
- 1866 union was able to donate $1,000 to Iron Molders Union: as a result, 1869 Mullaney
chosen to be assistant secretary fo the National Labor Union
Kate Mullaney Anecdotes
*
Source: I spoke with Carole Turbin, author of Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class,
and Community in Troy, New York, 1864-86. She plans on attending the HRC event.
Paraphrase of anecdote: When a newspaper article claimed that there weren't enough women in
New York City with the ability to be labor organizers, Mullany responded, you show me the
women, I'll turn them into organizers.
And she likely did. She spoke to a group of working
women, the Working Women's Association, with Susan B. Anthony and she offered to send
Troy organizers to New York to train that city's women.
- When Mullaney addressed the WWA, she made clear the class difference between working
women and suffragettes. Nevertheless, she did not reject the cause of women's suffrage, and in
fact identified with Anthony as a woman.
Turbin's account:
Kate Mullaney's statements about the reluctance of working women to organize in other cities
emphasizes her beliefs that as trade unionists, Troy's collar laundresses were men's equals. The
writer of the article on Mullaney that appeared during the bricklayers' strike suggested that the
organization of New York City's working women lagged behind Troy's because women were not
confident of their own abilities to be "presidents and secretaries" of unions. In defense of her
sisters, Mullaney responded that "there are numbers of ladies connected with the laundry union
who were just as competent as any gentlemen." Realizing that this was not the case for other
women, she offered to send laundry union members to NYC to help women organize. If "ladies
from NY were not competnent," she would "send some from Troy and pay their expenses until
such time as they were able to educate some of their own." (P. 125)
Susan B. Anthony visited the union cooperative Mullaney helped found and later offered high
praise of these working women.
Tubin's account:
In February 1870, when she had to spend a few hours in Troy waiting for a train, Susan B.
Anthony visited he Collar Laundry Union's cooperative collar factory and laundry. She reported
that she met Kate Mullaney and several other young Irish women They worked in "an upper
room of a large building" and were dressed in "the simplest calico." Although they earned
"barely enough to cover their rent. they were trying to establish the fact, that women can be
employers." In a speech at Cooper Institute (NYC) Anthony described her heart-felt sympathy
for this working-women's venture. "I have not had my heart stirred for long years with the
terrible fact of the struggle that women have to get a place and position beside men in business,
as by the story and efforts of these three girls." (P. 143)
A later women's union in Troy named itself after Joan of Arc. Turbin explains why Joan of
Arc was an appropriate symbol, and we might be able to make a similar remark. E.g., "Over a
century ago, the women of Troy took as their symbol Joan of Arc, a woman of humble origins.. "
Turbin's account:
[Note: This paragraph concerns the Joan of Arc Assembly of the Knights of Labor, a local
organization of a national labor organization, whose members were largely women collar
workers. Organized in the 1880s, the local played a major role in the collar women's strike of
1886. Kate Mullaney herself is not mentioned in this strike, but more recent research suggests
that she was still active in Troy's labor community.]
Joan of Arc was an appropriate patron for the organization of Troy's Irish collar women. First
and foremost, joan of Arc was a woman exceptionally powerful in worldly affiars and in favor
with God. She was of humble origins and knew all the skills of women of her day. Although, in
worldly terms, she was a woman in a subordinate position to men, she acted with courage and
conviction in the secular world, and she was not afraid to confront men of the highest authority.
Joan of Arc conflicted with leaders of state, dressed in men's clothes, and led armies of men. In
the end, she clashed with representatives of the church who approved of the acts that condemned
her. Moreover, her cause was not only justice but nationalism. Joan of Arc's story echoed most
Irish immigrant's nationalist sentiments, especially their hostility toward England's aggessive
military strategies. Just as the Irish sought to end England's domination of Ireland, Joan of Arc
led French armies in order to prevent the English from capturing the French throne. The Irish
ironers and starchers who chose Joan of Arc as the patron of their organization, affirmed their
own piety, and called on the power that Joan of Arc represented. They hoped to benefit from her
proteciton and her help achieving their worldly goals as working women. (p. 173)
In the 1870s an organization of men workers told an organization of women's workers, the
Working Women's Protective Organization, that working women should not bother with trying
to get the vote because the shouldn't have it. The working women responded, we will bother
because we should have it.
- This is a paraphrase. Also, it is not clear that the working women of Troy ever took concrete
steps in support of women's suffrage.
- The WPO was the equivalent of a state-wide labor organization which included representatives
of local unions, including Kate Mullaney and other working women from Troy.
In 1886, a group of Troy working women showed their feistiness, sarcasm, and humor when a
reporter pestererd them for an interview. Not wanting to discuss their cause with the press, they
responded, "We're all in love with our boss. There's your interview."
Troy, NY: Kate Mullany (or Mullaney) House
* We don't have a definitive spelling. Both ways are used in different sources, with Mullaney
appearing more often in today's newspapers and Mullany being used on National Historic
Landmark application information.
The House and the Event
- The house continues to be a private residence with three apartments just as it was in Mullany's
time. Though recently designated a National Historic Landmark, the house has yet to receive a
plaque. Since, as a private residence, this landmark does not need the sort of restoration effort
necessary at many other stops, the focus of the event will be giving the plaque and recognizing
the historical significance of the Kate Mullany House.
Kate Mullany
Born in Ireland around 1845, Kate Mullany immigrated to Troy, NY with her parents
sometime before 1850. As a teenager, Mullany went to work in the laundry industry to bring
more income into the house. (It is believed her mother was too old to hold a job and her father
had moved out, perhaps to find a job elsewhere--whatever the case, he died in 1864).
Mullany worked in a new area of the laundry industry, washing collars. This area
developed when a Troy housewife, Hannah Lord Montague, invented the detachable collar after
being frustrated that she had to wash her husband's entire shirts when only the collars were dirty.
At the age of 19, Mullaney organized 200 women and formed the Collar Laundry Union,
the first long-lasting* all-women union in the nation. (*In the 1840s women factory workers in
Lowell and elsewhere had organized themselves in individual factories to protest specific
conditions. However, when the issues were resolved, the unions dissolved). She served as
president of the union and lobbied for higher wages, shorter hours, and better working
conditions, as workers were often scalded by laundry machines. In February 1864, the union
went on strike, demanding a 25% increase in wages. Less than a week later, their demands were
met. Shortly after the wage increase, Mullany purchased the house that has now been made a
landmark, presumably using her new wages. Over the next five years Mullany's continued
lobbying increased women's wages to near parity with men's wages in Troy.
Calling Mullany "one of the smartest and most energetic women in America," William H.
Sylvis, president of the National Labor Union, appointed Mullany second vice president of the
organization in 1868. However, because the first VP was also from NY, Mullany had to be
assigned another position, and she was made assistant secretary. This made her the first female
officer of a national union.
In 1869, there was renewed tension and another strike failed to resolve the issues. Hence,
Mullany and her colleagues started their own cooperative laundry to compete with their bosses.
Susan B. Anthony visited the cooperative in 1870 and noted: "Although they earned barely
enough to cover their rent, they were trying to establish the fact that women can-be employers."
She added: "I have not had my heart [so] stirred for years with the terrible fact of the
struggle that women have to get a place and position beside men in business, as by the story and
efforts of these three girls." (The other women likely being any or all of the following: Ann
Tellers, formerly the union's secretary; Sarah McQuillan, former treasurer; and Esther Keegan,
former vice president and the most prominent of the these three). Later that year Mullany wrote
a letter to Anthony's newspaper, "The Revolution."
The union was dissolved in 1869, and the cooperative struggled along until 1870,
possibly 1872. Kate Mullany spent the rest of her life (with a few exceptions) in the same house.
She died in 1906 and was buried in a family plot, with no individual gravestone, at St. Peter's
Cemetery, not far from her house.
Significance of Kate Mullany
- This shows another side of the historic preservation movement, highlighting a site that reflects
the lives of everyday Americans.
- The site highlights both women's history and labor history. In fact, Mullany seems to have
identified more as a laborer than as a woman, and her agenda differed greatly from that of
suffragists like Susan B. Anthony--although they did find common ground as noted above.
The Emma Willard School
Troy is also home to the Emma Willard School. Originally named the Troy Female
Seminary, the school was founded in 1821 by Emma Willard. Willard founded her first school
in Middlebury, VT in 1814, moved on to Waterford, NY in 1819, and set down in Troy in 1821
where the city raised $4,000 in taxes to support her new school.
The Troy Female Seminary was the first school in the nation to provide young women
with an education comparable to that of college-educated young men--which was significant
because at this point women were barred from colleges. While other girls academies limited
their curricula to "female arts" like conversational French and embroidery, Willard's school
taught mathematics, science, history, foreign languages, and literature courses. The school stood
as evidence against those who were skeptical that women were as a capable as men of
comprehending advanced and difficult subjects. The seminary's first class enrolled 90 girls from
across the country, and throughout the years the school has graduated such luminaries as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1832) and Jane Fonda.
In 1895 the school adopted its current name and built 3 new buildings. In 1910, with the
aid of a gift from alumna Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, the school moved to its current location
and the old buildings were later occupied by Russell Sage College.
Other Troy History
- See the Millennium notes on Uncle Sam and a WPA mural.
trestour.wpd
Page 20
TROY, NY: Kate Mullaney House
Description Blue painted brick duplex with three apartments in each.
Currently private residences.
Historical Significance Kate Mullany House has recently been made a
National Historic Landmark which is still to receive plaque.
Site is also part of an area National Parks Service Labor History Theme Study
(NHL by theme). Mullaney was an early president of first long-lasting (8
years, non-strike specific) all-female union (Collar Laundry Union) which
managed to achieve almost parity with men's wages. She was also the first
female officer of a national union. Her house was bought with money from
25% wage increase after successful strike.
Incidentally, the detachable men's collar was invented by another Troy
woman, Hannah Lord Montague, when she got tired of laundering her
husband's shirts when only the collar needed cleaning.
Other Troy women's history tidbits. Regional Friehofer's bakery was
established in Troy when Mr. Friehofer noted the Kate Mullaney's of Troy
going off to work and thought it would be a good place for a bakery because
women didn't have time to make bread. Also, Troy is home of Emma Willard
School for girls which was first school to teach girls subjects such as math
and geography. Jane Fonda is a graduate. When Emma Willard School
moved buildings its original buildings were taken over by newly established
Russell Sage College named for a rich industrialist who didn't like women and
wasn't the least bit charitable to widows and orphans. His widow took his
money and established a college for women and named it after him.
Troy is also the home of the national icon "Uncle Sam." In the early 1800s, Sam Wilson,
a meatpacker and Army beef contractor in War of 1812, had a meat stamp that said "U.S.
Beef" which was jokingly interpreted as "Uncle Sam's Beef." Thus the character of Uncle
Sam was born. There is an aluminum statue of Uncle Sam in Troy.
There may well be a WPA mural "Rip Van Wrinkle" "Legends of the Hudson" by Waldo
Pierce in Troy.
Preservation Needs House site is a private residence but giving of plaque and
recognition of the historical significance would be the focus.
Budget/Funding Sources/Local Involvement U.S. Rep McNulty has requested a visit
and Sen. Moynihan who has a particular interest in historic preservation has long urged
NY folks to focus on "the Irish mill worker."
Contact Rachel Bliven, 518-673-1045, RB H 518-283-6353 and RiverSpark
Working Women
of Collar City
Gender, Class, and Community
in Troy, New York, 1864-86
CAROLE TURBIN
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Urbana and Chicago
140
Part Two: Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism
Woman's Work and Woman's Rights
141
interrupted a speech by Mrs. Daniels, a suffragist, who briefly men-
Women trade unionists were divided over the issue of Anthony's
tioned the ballot. Walsh "sprang upon the platform" and said to the
eligibility. Augusta Lewis explicitly rejected Anthony's claim to repre-
chairman, "I think we did not come here to discuss politics. I don't
sent working women at the congress. Although absent from the con-
want my wife to become a politician." When the association's presi-
gress, Lewis sent a letter describing irreconcilable class divisions
dent and voices from the floor asked Walsh to leave, he "disappeared
within the Working Women's Association and argued that the orga-
from the platform," and Mrs. Daniels continued her address. Antisuf-
nization no longer represented working women. The letter said that
frage views of Walsh and others contrast with delegates like Sylvis,
at first the association included "over one hundred workingwomen,
for whom distinctions between women's and men's interests and
but as there was nothing practical done to ameliorate their condition,
the interests of the laboring and manufacturing classes were less
they gradually withdrew." When "wealthy women" who were present
sharp. This suggests that antisuffrage delegates' objections to grant-
asked working women rather than "wealthy officers" to resign in or-
ing women the basis for independent political action was related to
der to preserve a quorum, Lewis and another typesetter, Susie Johns,
a form of class consciousness that excluded perceptions of shared
decided to accept the suggestion that they resign as officers. A post-
rights.¹⁸
script suggested a great deal in a few words about Anthony's deter-
Anthony's response emphasized her rejection of trade union prin-
mination to be a delegate despite open conflicts with women
ciples, conveyed her goal of providing women with skilled work, and
typographers. Lewis wrote that she "sent word" to Anthony that she
pointed out the contradictions in Walsh's argument that women
"would, in all probability not be received [as a delegate)." She added:
should be supported by men. Walsh "seems to think that all women
"She will go, however."20 Lewis's letter to the Sun compared the Collar
should be married. But, unfortunately, you men do not do your duty.
Laundry Union to the Working Women's Association. "It was my
All women are not or can not be married." Most must "go out to the
pleasure a few weeks since to visit a real workingwomen's association,
world and support themselves" as soon as they "come of age
the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York
I
use
the
word
'real'
What a contradiction that gives to the theory of some men that all
to distinguish it from imaginary workingwomen's associations which
women are supported by some man." She argued that women whom
theorize, while this organization has proved 'that those who would be
she urged to take striking typesetters' jobs "had no fathers, brothers,
free themselves must strike the blow.'
or husbands to support them." These women were either "on the
Although Lewis supported Mullaney's view of Anthony and the
streets looking in vain for work or working at 25 or 30 cents per day";
Working Women's Association, her relationship to the suffrage cause
they "had nothing before them but starvation or prostitution.
was different than Mullaney's. Unlike Mullaney, Lewis participated in
What are we to do?" she continued. "Shall we let these women starve
debates about the relevance of the ballot for working women. At the
in garrets, or do worse, when the selfishness of employers in the
association's first meetings, women compositors differed on the ex-
printing or other business seems to open the way to them to honor-
tent to which woman suffrage should be a goal of the organization. In
able independence? How can I say to them, go down to destruction
a discussion over the association's name, women compositors dis-
rather than interfere with the interests of certain men? I would like to
agreed with Stanton's argument that the organization should be
ask the typographical union how many girls they have
educated
called the Workingwoman's Suffrage Association. Stanton maintained
thoroughly in the art of printing, or how many printing offices in
that the "shortest way to obtain justice for workingwomen is to get the
New York have done so?"!9 On one level, Anthony was correct to as-
ballot for them." Women say that they want bread, not the ballot, but
sociate unions with male interests and to advocate opening skilled
the "right to earn bread is so mixed up with the right to vote, that it
trades to women. Despite official support, male trade unionists allied
is impossible to earn the one fairly without the other."22 Lewis argued
with women only under certain circumstances and objected to women
against including the term suffrage in the organization's name on
entering male occupations. But just as Walsh missed Anthony's point
practical grounds, as well as on principle. Lewis could ally with suf-
about women's need for employment, Anthony missed the argument
fragists because she believed it to be "right that women should have
of Lewis's and other women trade unionists' that self-supporting
the ballot." But working women would be discouraged from joining
working women could best be helped through unity with other wage
if suffrage appeared in the title because they associated the term
earners-male and female.
with "short hair, bloomers, and other vagaries." She concluded that
142
Part Two: Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism
Woman's Work and Woman's Rights
143
working women's first aim was "to get fairly paid for their work.
of working women and shared some of the interests of trade union-
After the association is formed, if a majority desires it, I believe in the
ists. Although divisions between Mullaney and suffragists were deeper
girls getting together and discussing politics. But I think other things
than those between suffragists and women compositors, as a trade
need attention now."23 Lewis and other compositors supported
unionist Mullaney shared middle-class reformers' belief that wage
woman suffrage in principle, but as working women it was not their
earners could escape the wage system by becoming small entrepre-
first priority.
neurs. Less than a year later, Anthony described her approval of the
Several incidents occurring shortly before the 1869 NLU meeting
laundresses' goal of achieving independence from employers. In Feb-
suggest that despite Mullaney's absence from the 1868 convention,
ruary 1870, when she had to spend a few hours in Troy waiting for a
her conflicts with Anthony were deeper than Lewis's, and she had
train, Anthony visited the Collar Laundry Union's cooperative collar
little or no interest in suffrage, not even as a secondary goal. In July
factory and laundry. She reported that she met Kate Mullaney and
1869, when Mullaney and Esther Keegan solicited contributions to
several other young Irish women, most likely Ann Tellers, the union's
their strike fund from the city's prosperous trade unions, Mullaney
secretary, Sarah McQuillan, treasurer, and Esther Keegan. They
also visited the Working Women's Association. Since Anthony was on
worked in "an upper room of a large building" and were dressed in
a speaking tour, she was absent from the meeting, whose membership
"the simplest calico." Although they earned "barely enough to cover
by this time was entirely middle class. In a period when trade union-
their rent
they were trying to establish the fact, that women can be
ists frowned'on all but the most worthy strikes, and strike funds were
employers." In a speech at Cooper Institute she described her heart-
burdened by requests for donations, almost every union in the city re-
felt sympathy for this working-women's venture. "I have not had my
sponded generously. In contrast, the Working Women's Associa-
heart stirred for long years with the terrible fact of the struggle that
tion's reaction was at best lukewarm.
women have to get a place and position beside men in business, as by
Mullaney's comments suggest that she was keenly aware of the so-
the story and efforts of these three girls."27
cial gap between herself and the members and was unwilling to pre-
Despite Mullaney's recognition of class differences, she kept in
tend to those she addressed that there was a basis for common
touch with suffragists who agreed with trade unionists that like men,
interests. Accompanied by Augusta Lewis and Alexander Troup, Mul-
women wage earners could escape wage slavery by transforming
laney observed that she came before them to request contributions
themselves into small entrepreneurs who were not dependent on
because she "understood that they were an association of working-
wages for their livelihood. In April of the same year Mullaney opti-
women." But, she continued, "as she looked around them: she could
mistically wrote to The Revolution that the "girls" hope "to proceed on
tell that they were not the working-women whom she had been ac-
a purely business basis, by doing the work
themselves."
They
plan
customed to see. She had to work all day in the shop, and this she
to "buy up all the stock and hold it for their own benefit." Already
did not think, judging from their appearance, that they did."25
they had "made good progress toward securing
needed
capital,
Lewis's letter to the NLU about the outcome of the meeting agreed
$10,000." For Mullaney and the other women who managed the
with Mullaney's perceptions. She said that "Although the society
cooperative, becoming employers was consistent with their commit-
comprises many wealthy ladies, they raised $30 for the Laundresses
ment to trade unionism. 28 Since Mullaney identified primarily as a
of Troy. As a society, either the want of knowledge or the want
worker rather than as a woman, the interests Mullaney shared with
of sense
renders them as a workingwoman's association, very
suffragists were related less to what they had in common as women,
6-16-95: MVHC
inefficient. Identifying with the labor movement, Mullaney would
than to trade unionists' and some suffragists' shared concerns about
have voted with Lewis and other delegates who vociferously objected
wage earners.
to seating Stanton.
Anthony's description of her visit to the collar laundresses' coop-
Mullaney's motivations for visiting the association were probably
erative reveals that this shared concern was also the basis for their
mixed. Her primary goal was instrumental, to solicit contributions
differences. The principle guiding Anthony's beliefs was that working
from women whom she believed were in a position to help the laun-
women's disadvantages stemmed from the status they shared with
dresses' union to win their strike. Yet she visited the organization be-
all women. In a speech in the 1870s, Anthony described the Collar
cause she had reason to believe that they sympathized with the cause
Laundry Union as the best-organized women's union she knew, and
144
Part Two: Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism
Woman's Work and Woman's Rights
145
compared her view of reasons for the failure of the union's 1869
In contrast to the typesetters and to collar workers' indirect rejec-
strike with Mullaney's explanation. When she visited the cooperative
tion of the cause Anthony represented, delegates from the Massachu-
collar factory she asked the "bright young Irish girl" who was presi-
setts' Daughters and Knights of St. Crispin endorsed Anthony's claim
dent of the union, "Do you not think if you had been 500 carpenters
to represent working women. Women shoe workers were represented
or 500 masons, you would have succeeded?" Mullaney agreed with
by Martha Wallbridge, the self-supporting Stoneham shoe stitcher
Anthony's suggestion that if they were men, they would have won the
who succeeded Anthony as chair of the NLU's committee on female
conflict. Replying "Certainly," Mullaney described the strike of two
labor. Recognizing that some male delegates represented reform or-
hundred bricklayers who "gained every point with their employers"
ganizations whose members were not wage earners, Wallbridge
the previous year. Continuing to question Mullaney, Anthony asked,
pointed out that if Anthony's "claims were" rejected because they
"What could have made the difference? Their 200 were but a fraction
"were not sufficiently valid," then there should "be an investigation
of that trade, while your 500 absolutely controlled yours." Mullaney's
into the equally invalid claims of male delegates
some
of
whom
answer revealed that she was not thinking of differences related to
she knew were not fully qualified." Her solid support from male trade
gender, but differences in collar laundresses' and bricklayers' circum-
unionists included Walsh whose fears about women's employment did
stances as workers facing employers and their middle-class allies. She
not prevent him from voting in favor of the committee on female la-
replied that "It was because the editors ridiculed and denounced us."
bor's resolution. He contrasted Anthony with Wallbridge, whom he
Yet she was also aware that employers treated them as women who,
described as a "bona fide working woman." Massachusetts's Crispin
ideally, should be supported by a male provider. Mullaney added that
Samuel P. Cummings seconded Wallbridge's endorsement of Anthony
their employers said that since our wages were "better than those of
as representative. 31
any other working women, except teachers,
if we weren't satisfied,
Crispin support of Anthony was significant because the circum-
we had better go and get married." When Anthony asked why the
stances that discredited Anthony as working-women's ally repre-
newspapers ridiculed the collar laundresses, but not the bricklayers,
sented a turning point in Anthony's relationship not only with Lewis
after several moments of careful thought Mullaney replied that "It
and women typographers, whom she helped to organize, but also with
must have been because our employers bribed the editors." For Mul-
the nation's labor movement. Although class differences divided suf-
laney, the strike failed not primarily because of the laundresses' vul-
fragists and the women Wallbridge represented, they shared some as-
nerability as women, but because of employers' strategy of controlling
pects of Anthony's position. As chair of the NLU's committee on
the press.
female labor in 1869, Wallbridge advocated equal pay for equal work
Anthony's analysis of Mullaney's answer emphasizes suffragists' be-
and the opening of "all avenues of labor" to all women equally. 32 This
lief that the ballot was the best means for working women to improve
argument probably reflected Wallbridge's employment in an industry
their condition. Pointing out that this young woman never thought to
in which some skilled jobs were available to women. As a self-
compare her union with the bricklayers, Anthony not only conde-
supporting woman who understood the benefits of skilled work's
scendingly implied that Mullaney did not think but also that she did
good wages and relative security, she had a stake in taking a strong
not see that they lost the strike because of their disadvantaged posi-
position on women's entry into skilled jobs. Having no direct experi-
tion as women. She argued that in the case of the bricklayers' strike
ence with Anthony's rejection of the interests of women unionists,
"no editor, either Democrat or Republican" would have accepted a
Wallbridge was more likely than Lewis to be sympathetic to Anthony's
bribe because of men's influence as voters. Any editor "would have
goal of increasing opportunities for self-supporting and providing
known that if he denounced or ridiculed those men, not only they but
women to enter skilled trades.
all the Trades' union men of the city at the next election would vote
Women Crispins were by no means united on suffrage. In January
solidly against the nominees advocated by that editor." She continued,
1872, DOSC members in Lynn heard two different lectures on two
"If those collar laundry women had been voters, they would have
consecutive weeks, which took different positions. Mrs. Willard, the
held, in that little city of Troy, the 'balance of political power.' She
prosuffragist second vice president of the NLU, lectured first. Emma
concluded, "My friends, the condition of those collar laundry women
Lane, the wife of a Crispin, the DOSC's first national leader, and a
but represents the utter helplessness of disenfranchisement."³
well-known New England labor reformer, lectured second. At first,
PAGE
5
5TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
January 19, 1998, Monday, ONE STAR EDITION
SECTION: CAPITAL REGION, Pg. B1
LENGTH: 1000 words
HEADLINE: Labor leader's home honored
BYLINE: TIM O'BRIEN; Staff writer Troy A young Irish immigrant, daughter of a
widowed mother, Kate Mullaney had to work to support herself and her siblings
for 12 to 14 hours a day, doing the sweaty work of a 19th-century Collar City
laundress.
HIGHLIGHT:
Kate Mullaney's house is headed for national historic designation
BODY:
But it wasn't the starch she put into the shirts that secured her place in
history; it was the starch in her character that led her to become the leader of
the first all-women union in the nation -- and the first woman elected to office
in a national union.
Today, the modest three-story brick home at 350 Eighth St. where Mullaney
lived is heading for designation as a National Historic Landmark. The action
recently received approval from a nominating committee and, after minor
revisions, will head for the desk of U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce
Babbitt for approval.
Mullaney's home was nominated after a study of national labor history aimed
at honoring working Americans.
'There are very few National Historic Landmark sites that are for working
people, said Rachel B. Bliven, a historian who prepared the application for
the Mullaney home. ''Kate Mullaney is very important as a working woman of the
19th century. She's also important as a labor organizer.
As a young teenager in the mid-1800s, it's believed Mullaney went to work at
one of the many laundry factories in Troy because her mother was too old to hold
a job. About that time a new spinoff line of laundry industry work was emerging
with creation of the detachable collar, invented by Hannah Lord Montague, a Troy
housewife fed up with washing her husband's shirts.
At the age of 19, Mullaney organized 200 women and became the first president
of the Collar Laundry Union, soon recognized as ''the only bona fide female
union in the country.
At issue were low wages, long working hours and working conditions related to
the new starching machine, which cut prices for starching in half, but also
often scalded its operators.
In February 1864, the collar workers went on strike, demanding a 25 percent
increase in wages. The strike lasted less than a week, and the workers won.
PAGE
6
The Times Union, January 19, 1998
During the next five years, Mullaney continued to lead the union, getting
wages increased to $ 10 to $ 12 a week. Meanwhile, other non-unionized women
were earning only $ 7 while men received $ 13.50.
In 1868, William H. Sylvis, president of the National Labor Union, appointed
Mullaney assistant secretary of that organization.
'We now have a recognized officer from the female side of the house -- one
of the smartest and most energetic women in America, Sylvis said in his
closing convention address.
From the great work which she has already
done, I think it not unlikely that we may in the future have delegates
representing 300,000 working women.
By 1869, collar manufacturers had joined forces to try to drive the union out
of existence. To counter the move, Mullaney and her colleagues started their own
cooperative laundry, but local manufacturers prevented out-of-town collar makers
from supplying them with work.
Mullaney then went even further and launched a small collar and cuff factory
of her own.
Visiting the cooperative, suffragist Susan B. Anthony once described Mullaney
as ''a bright Irish girl'' working ''in an upper room of a large building and
dressed in the simplest calico.
'Although they earned barely enough to cover their rent, they were trying to
establish the fact that women can be employers, Anthony wrote.
Though the collar union eventually dissolved, the movement among collar
workers was rekindled in 1886. Mullaney, however, did not take part this time
around, and her life after that was largely out of the public eye.
She died in 1906 and is buried in a family plot -- with no individual
gravestone at St. Peter's Cemetery, not far from her longtime home.
Paul F. Cole, secretary-treasurer of the New York State AFL-CIO, said there
is a growing effort to find historic sites that reflect everyday Americans'
lives.
'There has been an increasing interest in social history, the history of
ordinary Americans, added Cole, a former member of the National Parks Service
Advisory Board. ''Kate Mullaney is very important because she was one of the
very first, if not the first, woman to head a union of any size or importance.
She's important from a labor union standpoint and from a women's movement
standpoint
Mullaney's home, located just off Hoosick Street, is in a neighborhood where
the buildings are largely unchanged from the last century. The house has three
apartments within it just as it did back when Mullaney's family rented some of
them to generate extra income.
Mary Lou McGuirk has owned the property for 25 years.
''I think it's great she's finally getting some recognition, said McGuirk,
who learned of her property's historic past only recently as the application
PAGE
7
The Times Union, January 19, 1998
for landmark status was being prepared. ''I had no idea at all. This is all
brand new to us. I think it's pretty nice. I'm hoping there will be some grants
because the house does need some work.
Harry Butowsky, a senior historian with the National Park Service, worked on
the application. Late last year, the home's nomination was approved by the
service's Advisory Board, though it recommended a more detailed bibliography be
completed before submission to Babbitt for approval.
'It's a recognition that the site is important in the history of America,
Butowsky said. ''Kate Mullaney is an early example of a woman labor leader. She
is a person of importance in the history of the United States. I was glad to get
some recognition for Kate Mullaney, a poor Irish working girl.
The Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway hopes to use the site's designation to
help put together an exhibition on worker life and organization in the 19th
century.
Linda Tremblay, director of the Hudson Mohawk Urban Cultural Park Commission,
said it is possible the National Park Service could offer to buy the house.
Once approved, Butowsky said the house would be eligible for a brass plaque
denoting its place in history. It would be a small marker to honor the life and
efforts of a young immigrant who helped change her corner of the world.
GRAPHIC: PAUL D. KNISKERN SR., TIMES UNION 19TH-CENTURY Troy labor leader
Kate Mullaney's home, 350 Eighth St., is behind the doorway on the right.
LOAD-DATE: January 20, 1998
PAGE
4
3RD STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
April 3, 1998, Friday, ONE STAR EDITION
SECTION: CAPITAL REGION, Pg. B5
LENGTH: 102 words
HEADLINE: Activist's home becomes landmark
BYLINE: TIM O'BRIEN; Staff writer
BODY:
Troy A home where the founder of the nation's first all-woman union lived has
been designated a national landmark.
The modest three-story brick house at 350 Eighth St., one-time home to Collar
City laundress Kate Mullaney, is now on the Register of Historic Places, U.S.
Rep. Michael McNulty announced Thursday.
In the mid-1800s, Mullaney, 19, an Irish immigrant, organized 200 women and
became the first president of the Collar Laundry Union, soon recognized as ''the
only bona fide female union in the country.
She is buried in St. Peter's Cemetery, near her former home, in a family
plot.
LOAD-DATE: April 6, 1998
PAGE
2
2ND STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
November 7, 1997, Friday, ONE STAR EDITION
SECTION: CAPITAL REGION, Pg. B7
LENGTH: 151 words
HEADLINE: Union founder's home eyed as landmark
BODY:
Troy A Troy home where the founder of the first all-female union lived is
nearing designation as a national historic landmark.
The Kate Mullany House at 350 Eighth St. was recommended for the status at
the meeting Wednesday of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's Historical Review
Committee.
Mullany led a union of workers who made the detachable collars that gave Troy
its Collar City nickname. Her leadership won wages of up to $ 10 to $ 12 a week
while other women were earning only $ 7 and men $ 13.50. Mullany's family built
the Eighth Street home in 1869.
The historic designation is a project of the Hudson-Mohawk Urban Cultural
Park Commission. U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty sponsored legislation for the site to
be studied.
Mullany was elected in 1869 to become second vice president of the National
Labor Congress, where she helped coordinate national working women's
associations.
LOAD-DATE: November 10, 1997
CENTURY
Also by Eleanor Flexner
American Playwrights, 1918-1938
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography
of STRUGGLE
I
1959, 1975
The Woman's Rights Movement
Seventh Brinting 1982
in the United States
ELEANOR FLEXNER
Revised Edition
THE BELKNAP PRESS of
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and
London, England
140
CENTURY OF STRUGGLE
WOMEN IN TRADE UNIONS
141
souls, and in 1878 it went out of existence; the national union
striking Iron Molders Union, a gesture which neither the union
thereafter adopted the policy of chartering no further women's locals
nor its leader, William Sylvis, forgot. In 1868 they won further
6
but of admitting women to membership on the same basis as men,
increases in pay, and their leader, Kate Mullaney, was chosen by
which corresponded to the practice of the Cigarmakers Union.
Sylvis as assistant secretary of the National Labor Union.
Such a policy had pronounced disadvantages. Women remained
Beyond this fact, and that she was known to Susan Anthony
a minority, and an unwelcome one, in whatever trades and organ-
and other outstanding women of the day, we know nothing of what
izations they were admitted to. They had no opportunity to de-
must have been a dynamic and indomitable woman beside the
velop their own leaders, or to focus attention on their particular
bare facts of the rise of the Laundryworkers Union and its eventual
problems, as Miss Lewis had been able to do by virtue of her posi-
defeat. In the spring of 1869 the collar ironers demanded a raise
tion as a convention delegate and union official.
of one-half, one, one-and-a-half, and two cents per dozen pieces
There was no solution possible yet for the problem. Attempts
"according to the size of the article"; when their demand was re-
by the women to organize among themselves always resulted in
fused they went out on strike again, and the starchers, although
DL
failure, even though they sometimes received sporadic assistance
making no wage demands themselves, went out with their sister
from men's unions. The repeated efforts to form unions made by
unionists, to the number of 43° in all. The Troy Whig, usually
women capmakers, collar and laundry workers, tailoresses, textile
liberal in tone and in its support of unions, termed it an "unfor-
operatives, shoebinders and stitchers, umbrella sewers and sales-
tunate and ill-timed strike," but support flowed in from a long
ladies, through the Civil War and down to 1873, are evidence not
list of unions in printing, the building trades, iron work, shoe-
so much of optimism as of the desperation of their plight.16
making, etc., the individual sums ranging from $25 to $250; in one
The women's union which became best known throughout the
week alone $558 was received.¹⁰
labor movement during its brief history was that of the collar mak-
A mass meeting on the steps of the town court house was ad-
ers and laundry workers of Troy, New York, just across the Hud-
dressed by prominent union men; plans were announced for a
son River from Albany, and the home of Emma Willard's famous
cooperative laundry which hoped to take the patronage of work-
seminary. It is unlikely that any of the collar workers enjoyed the
ing people away from the established firms. A picnic held on July
benefits of this institution, although the making of separate collars
19 was highly successful - the conservative Troy Times called it
for men's shirts was first carried on in the homes of respectably
"a monstrous affair" and the Whig reported that the streets of
comfortable ladies who wished to earn some pin money. But the
neighboring villages were deserted because everyone had gone to
making and laundering of collars became a major industry in
the picnic: it netted the strikers $1,200.
Troy. Mrs. Hannah Lord Montagu grew weary of washing and
Yet on July 23 another large meeting which was to have been
ironing a whole shirt every day because the neck band had be-
addressed by Richard Trevellick, a national labor leader, was can-
come soiled, and made the first detachable collars, and her hus-
celed without explanation. Just one week later on July 31 a meet-
band Orlando, a retired Methodist minister, built a profitable
ing of the union voted not merely for its members to return to
business out of his wife's idea.¹⁷
work, but to dissolve the organization.
We first learn of the conditions under which women worked in
The most logical explanation for the debacle lies in the sud-
the laundries from a resolution proposed by one of the early unions:
den death of William Sylvis after a brief illness, which threw the
long hours were spent in temperatures near one hundred degrees
entire labor movement into near panic, and diverted further aid
"while the implements with which they work are throwing out an
from the collar workers. The employers were not slow to press
equal amount of heat with increasing intensity." 18 In 1863 they
their unexpected advantage. On July 30, the day before the union
banded together, went on strike, and won a wage increase. Three
meeting, the Troy Times ran four prominently displayed adver-
years later their organization was sufficiently substantial to do-
tisements of a new paper collar, developed "for the accommoda-
nate the phenomenal sum of $1,000 to aid the locked-out and
tion of the growing demand among our citizens for this celebrated
CENTURY OF STRUGGLE
WOMEN IN TRADE UNIONS
143
142
goods," a threat to the jobs of the laundry workers. The employ-
"Resolved, that we assure our fellow-citizens that we only desire to
ers also met to confer on a common policy of re-employing the "old
so elevate and improve our condition as to better fit us for the dis-
hands," many of whom were offered positions in a large new
charge of those high social and moral duties which devolve upon
plant.21 These onslaughts, coupled with the demoralization re-
every true woman." 28
sulting from Sylvis' death, had the desired results. The union van-
In 1872 the shoe manufacturers of Lynn attempted to cut wages
ished overnight, and the cooperative laundry it had launched
and compel every worker to sign a pledge that she would give two
weeks' notice before leaving her position, or else forfeit five
lasted only a few weeks longer.
Another brief chapter in the organization of women workers
dollars of her pay. A meeting of nine hundred women voted
was written in Lynn, Massachusetts, long the center of the shoe
unanimously not to comply with such a demand and adopted a set
industry. Like Troy, Lynn had not yet been reached by recent
of resolutions which deserve quotation in full:
waves of immigrant labor; the women who stitched shoe tops,
which they had previously done in their own homes but did now
We, the Workingwomen, in convention assembled, do accept the
DC
in factories, were largely of Irish-Scotch and English extraction
following resolutions, as an earnest expression of our sentiments;
but Americans for several generations. Out of their discontent
Whereas, we have long been sensible of the need of protecting our
rights and privileges as free-born women, and are determined to defend
over low pay and long hours developed a short-lived but unique
them and our interests as workingwomen, to the fullest extent of our
trade union which spread to other growing centers of shoe manu-
ability; therefore, be it
facturing, and became a national organization - the Daughters
Resolved, That we, the workingwomen of Lynn, known as Upper
of St. Crispin, patterned on the union of men shoe workers, the
Fitters and Finishers of Boots and Shoes, do enter a most solemn pro-
Knights of St. Crispin, and occasionally aided by it.
test against any reduction of wages, on any pretext whatever; and that
Like all these earlier women's organizations (with the exception
we will not submit to any rules that do not equally affect our em-
ployers.
of the Lowell textile operatives) they left no records, and what is
Resolved, that we feel grateful to the shoemakers of Lynn for their
known of their history is scattered in the labor press of the period.
interest and determination to stand by us in our time of need.
The founding convention was held on July 28, 1869 (just at the
Resolved, that we, the free women of Lynn, will submit to no rule
time the Troy collar workers union collapsed), and two Lynn
or set of rules that tend to degrade and enslave us.
women - Miss Carrie Wilson and Miss Abbie Jacques - were
Resolved, That we will accept no terms whatever, either with
regard to a reduction of prices, notices to quit, or forfeiture of wages.
elected president and secretary, respectively. Within a few months
That while we utterly ignore the spirit of selfishness and illiberality
the organization had grown to twenty-four lodges, fourteen in
which prompted the late action of our would-be oppressors, we will
Massachusetts, the others scattered in Maine, New York, New
not hesitate to resist, in a proper manner, the unjust encroachments
Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Cali-
upon our rights.
Resolved, that a copy of these resolutions be given to every one of
fornia.22 Annual conventions were held until 1872, and two officers
the committee, to be by them presented to each girl in every shop, and
her signature thereon obtained; and should anyone of the employees
were present as delegates at the 1870 convention of the National
of the shop be reduced in her wages, or ill-treated, we will desist from
Labor Union. That year the Daughters of St. Crispin passed a
our work until she has obtained her rights.
resolution demanding "the same rate of compensation for equal
Resolved, that a copy of the above be inserted in the Lynn papers,
skill displayed, or the same hours of toil, as is paid other laborers
and a large surplus number be provided for distribution among the
in the same branches of business; and we regard a denial of this
girls.24
right by anyone as a usurpation and a fraud." Then, perhaps feel-
ing that such strong language might cost them the support of op-
Obviously, these women knew how to handle themselves: what
ponents of equal rights for women, they added a conciliatory note:
to expect in the way of reprisals, how to protect themselves through
368
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX
EMERGENCE OF SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
369
CHAPTER x
Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910-1911), IX, 72-73. In addition to Andrews
and Bliss, and Commons, the only historian to concern himself with working
The Emergence of a Suffrage Movement
women and their problems on the job and in the labor movement has been
Philip S. Foner, in his three-volume History of the Labor Movement of the
1. Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage - From Properly 10 Democracy:
United States. His first volume covers the period between the Colonial era
1760-1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960).
and 1881, when the American Federation of Labor was founded (New York.
2. The Revolution, vol. III (February 11, 1869), P. 88.
1947); see ch. xviii, pp. 204-813. 382-388, and passim. See also, the bibliog.
3. Quoted in Life and Writings of Frederich Douglass, IV, 13.
raphy, Women in American Labor History, 1825-1935, by Martha Jane
Soltow. Carolyn Forche, and Murray Masre (East Lansing, Mich., 1972).
4. 5. Letters of William Lloyd Garrison II to his facher, May 13, 1867, and
HWS, II, 391-392; 384.
3. Commons, Documentary History, p. 138. See also Israel Kugler, "The
June 3. 1867, SSC.
Woman's Rights Movement and the National Labor Union, 1866-1872," in
6. HWS, II, 235.
Labor History, 2: 91-100 (Winter 1961). Perhaps no other aspect of the early
7. Ibid., P. 242.
woman's rights movement. with the exception of the Seneca Falls convention,
8. Stanton, Eighty Years and More, PP. 248-219.
has received more consideration than the presence of Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, P. 107.
Anthony, and several other women as delegates at the National Labor Union
10. 9. Male white residents of the District of Columbia voted until 1874,
convention in 1868. Accually this event had less significance than the organ.
when the territorial government of the District was abolished.
izing of women workers done by Augusta Lewis and Kate Mullaney.
11. Congressional Globe, 39 Cong., , Sess., Part 1, P. 56.
4. Speech by Moses Beach at Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Working
12. Ibid., P. 66.
Women's Protective Union held in 1888, reprinted in Report of the Working
Ibid., P. 84. The House vote, on a similar measure on January 28,
Women's Protective Union, 1863-1894 (New York, ¹⁸⁹₄). p. 8.
1867. 13. was 49 in favor to 74 opposed, with 68 abstaining. Congressional Globe,
5. The Revolution, vol. 8. no. 18, P. 181 (September 21. 1868).
39 Cong., 1 Sess., Part 11, P. 806.
6. lbid., p. 196.
HWS, II. 324-325, 333. Additional bills to enact woman suffrage in
7. G. A. Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6: A Study of n
Territories 14. (western lands not yet admitted to statehood, in this case Utah)
Modern Trade Union and Its Predecessors (Albany, 19'3). P. 434n.
and in the District were proposed by Representative Julian and Senator Henry
8. The Revolution, vol. 2, no. 15. p. 231 (October 15. 1868).
Wilson of Massachusetts.
9. Ibid.
15. Just who was to certify suffrage groups as "legitimate" was never Mas. ex-
10. Quoted in Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, P- 434.
plicitly stated, but it was understood that the final decision rested with a
11. Far more notice has been paid to the appointment of Kate Mullaney,
sachusetts group consisting of Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Howe, and
leader of the Troy Collar and Laundry Workers union, as assistant secretary
Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The views of the opposing groups were set
of the National Labor Union in 1868. However, there is no evidence that
out in an interesting exchange of letters between Henry Blackwell (Decem-
she ever carried out any duties in connection with this office.
ber 16, 186g) and Martha Coffin Wright (January 1, 1870), both in the SSC.
12. President's Report. igth Convention, International Typographers
Elinor Hays, in her biography of Lucy Stone, first called attention to another
Union (1871), P. 12.
revealing document. by Hannah Tracy Cutler (Morning Star, p. 207): the in
13. Ibid.
original is in the Blackwell papers, LC. See also Robert Riegel, "The Split
14. Quoted in Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, P. 137.
the Feminist Movement," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 49. no. 3
15. Mrs. Troup wrote for the paper, supported woman suffrage. and be.
(December 1962).
came a well-known community figure: a New Haven junior high school bears
16. Congressional Globe, 4' Cong., 3 Sess., Part I, PP. 218, 272; also in
her name. See article in NAW.
HWS, II, 443-448.
16. Andrews and Bliss, History of Women in Trade Unions, p. 91.
17. For the most balanced evaluation of Victoria Woodhull's impact on
17. Abbott, Women in Industry, P. 236. The story of Hannah Montagu has
the woman's movement see the article in NAW.
been told in fictional form by Samuel Hopkins Adams in Sunrise to Sunsel
(New York, 1950).
18. From resolution quoted in Troy Daily Whig, June 19, 1869.
CHAPTER XI
19. Troy Daily Whig, July 10, 1869, and August 5. 1869.
First Victories in the West
20. Troy Times and Daily Whig, July 20, 186g.
21. Troy Times, August 2, 1869.
28. Andrews and Bliss, History of Women in Trade Unions, pp. 108-110.
Trail in the Gold Rush." Missouri Historical Review, 39: 1-83 (October
1. Georgia Willis Read, "Women and Children on the California-Oregon
23. Ibid., p. 109.
14. Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Third Annual Report,
1944). 2. Diary of Mary Richardson Walker, June 10-December 21, 1838, ed.
PP. 434-436.
3 1979
6-16-98; 6 4 49PM MVHC
DC
Women of America
A History
Carol Ruth Berkin
Baruch College, City University of New York
Mary Beth Norton
Cornell University
Houghton Mifflin Company . Boston
Dallas Geneva, Illinois Hopewell, New Jersey
Palo Alto London
8 And We Are Nothing but Women:
You know what a union is you know full well the value
Irish Working Women in Troy
of cooperation; we have been out of money six weeks and but two
of 0111 number have given in. I funcy but there are few men's
Carole Turbin
organizations that can show such a record, and we are nothing
but women.
Esther Keegan, Vice President of the Collar Laundry
Union of Troy, New York, 10 the Workingmen's Union
of New York City, July 2, 1869. (New York World,
July 3, 1869).
A REMARKABLY SUCCESSFUL WOMEN'S TRADE UNION
DO
It has often been observed that women's labor activity in the United States
in the mid-nineteenth century was sporadic, short-lived, and unsuccessful.
As dependents whose proper sphere was fireside and nursery, working
women's role in the labor force was incompatible with the conditions
necessary for permanent trade union organization. Women did not devote
time and money to union activity because they did not regard themselves
as permanent members of the work force. Moreover, they were occupied
with household duties after their hours of wage labor and were too shy
and retiring to participate in organizations that required speaking in
public and assuming leadership. Also, since women were the most un-
skilled, low-paid workers of the day, they lacked the leverage to bargain
with employers and the resources to weather hard times and strikes.
Finally, some women workers faced hostility from working men because
men believed that women competed for their jobs and reduced their
wages to the low level of women's earnings. As helpless, degraded workers
on the lowest levels of the working class, most women wage earners did not
engage in labor activity to protect their interests as workers.¹
The Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York, does not fit this
characterization. Other working women periodically went on strike and
some organized small unions that lasted as long as a year. But the laun-
dresses' union was larger and more permanent than many men's locals
during these decades. This women's union consisted of at least 400 mem-
bers at its peak and existed for almost 6 years (from February 1864 to
September 186g). Other women workers improved wages and working
conditions from time to time. But the laundresses raised their wages to
a level almost equal to the average earnings of working men. Also, they
Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C., Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.
1 John B. Andrews and W. P. D. Bliss, History of Women in Trade Unions, Arno Press,
New York, 1974 (reprint of 1911 edition), PP. 17-18, 45-19. 140-145: Theresa Wolfson,
The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions, International Publishers, New York,
1926, PP. 90-97. 157-158; Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle, Atheneum, New York,
1970, Chap. 9. especially p. 137.
203
204
Nineteenth-Century America
And We Are Nothing but Women 205
accumulated a fund large enough to provide security during strikes, ill-
workers specialized in only one operation. And in keeping with craft
ness, or death in the family. Further, the laundresses did not face hostility
unionism, each group of workers formed separate organizations, although
from male workers, but formed a close alliance with the male-led labor
sometimes they engaged in labor activity together. Also in keeping with
movement. Male unionists considered the Collar Laundry Union the only
craft unionism, the women who formed the union were the most skilled
.. 'bona fide' female union in the country." 2 In light of the obstacles to
workers in the shops-the ironers. In Troy the union was often referred
labor organization that women faced, why was the Collar Laundry Union
to as the Collar Ironers' Union.
so successful?
Troy's shirt, collar, and cuff industry was not a minor local industry
in a backwater town. Troy was an important industrial center with two
major industries-shirt, collar, and cuff manufacturing and the iron in-
THE INGREDIENTS OF SUCCESSFUL TRADE UNION ACTIVITY
dustry. These industries' products, as well as textiles and other goods
produced in surrounding Albany and Cohoes, were shipped all over the
DC
The women who organized the Collar Laundry Union were not transient
United States via the Hudson River and the Erie Canal, which connected
workers who had little reason to attempt to improve their condition as
the East to the Midwest through the Great Lakes. The relatively small-
workers. Like other working women in the nation, the Troy laundresses
scale collar laundries were interdependent with Troy's shirt, collar, and
as a group were permanent members of the industrial work force. Al-
cull factories, which produced most of the detachable collars and cuffs
though individual women may not have remained in the labor force all
sold in the nation. The 15 factories employed a total of 3,128 women.
their working days, women were essential to industrial production, and
Although it was a local industry. it was seventh in capital investment of
by the mid-nineteenth century they were a substantial percentage of the
all the 23 apparel industries in the state, including New York City's
industrial labor force. Labor historian David Montgomery points out that
already vast clothing industry. Today Troy is still nicknamed "Collar
by 1870 one-quarter of the wage earners in nonagricultural occupations
City."
were female. Of these, 7° percent were domestic servants. But of the re-
Many members of the Collar Laundry Union were not permanent
maining 30 percent, most were industrial workers. Over four-fifths of
workers. Working men and women agreed with other Americans that
women industrial workers were employed in soine branch of apparel
ideally women should remain at home in their proper sphere and hus-
making, including hoopskirt making and parasol and umbrella sewing.
bands should earn enough to support their families. Thus, in Troy as in
The remaining one-fifth were schoolteachers, clerks in stores, or worked
other communities, less than 1 percent of the women in the labor force
in numerous other industrial occupations employing women, such as
were wives living with their husbands. Another much larger group (about
paper box making, cigar making, and printing.
17 percent of the Troy laundresses in 1865) were widows with small
Trby's laundresses were an important part of that city's permanent
children. But by far the largest group of working women in the nation
industrial work force. They were not domestic servants or washerwomen
were young single women who lived with their families. Some of these
who did personal laundry, as the term laundress suggests, but industrial
women may not have been willing to devote time and money to trade
workers who ironed newly manufactured detachable collars in commercial
union activity because they did not regard themselves as permanent
laundries. Employing about 600 women, Troy's approximately 14 laun-
4 Daniel Walkowitz, "Statistics and the Writing of Working Class Culture: A Statistical
dries performed one step in the production of detachable collars for the
Portrait of the Iron Workers in Troy. New York, 1860-1880," Labor History, 15 (Sum-
city's prosperous shirt, collar, and cuff industry. In keeping with the
mer 1974). 416-460; New York State Census, 1865. p. 478.
increasing division of labor of the day, the laundering process was divided
5 All percentages for age, birthplace, occupation of male relatives, and marital status
into separate steps-washing, starching, and ironing-and individual
are based on the manuscript censuses for Troy in 1865 and 1870. The census is an ex-
tremely imprecise tool for studying working women in this period. Many employed
2 For basic facts about these unions, see: Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 131-141;
women do not appear in the census and enumerators often omitted households or in-
and Andrews and Bliss, Women in Trude Unions, PP. 105-110. The following essay is
vented families. But a comparison of data indicates that we can make some rough
based primarily on fuller information found in newspapers published in Troy and New
estimates. For example, in 1865 the proportion of widows to single women is about the
York City, the labor press, Susan B. Anthony's The Revolution (New York, 1868-1872),
same for laundresses as it is for most employed women (13 percent for collar stitchers.
and proceedings of meetings of the National Labor Union and the New York State
20 percent for other sewing women, and 20 percent for other female industrial workers).
Workingmen's Assembly. This quote is from the Workingman's Advocate, June 26,
Similarly, in 1870 there is a dramatic rise in the number of widows among the laun-
186g.
dresses (44 percent) as well as among other employed women (34 percent for collar
David Montgomery. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872,
stitchers). The consistency of this rise suggests that it roughly reflects the marical status
Vintage Books, New York, 1967, P. 33.
of the female work force.
workers. Young single women who anticipated marrying and raising
fact, over three-quarters of the laundresses were of Irish descent. In con-
children probably regarded their employment as temporary. Even widows
trast, only one-half of other female industrial workers, and about 30
dependent entirely on their own earnings probably hoped to remarry and
percent of sewing women were Irish-born or the children of Irish immi-
leave the work force. Yet the collar laundresses did seek to improve their
grants. Only domestic servants were more overwhelmingly of Irish back-
condition through trade union activity. To understand this, we must
ground than collar laundresses.
look more closely at the significance of women's temporary role in the
Mid-nineteenth-century immigration patterns in the United States
work force.
partially explain the overwhelming proportion of Irish women employed
The fact that Troy's laundresses worked only temporarily did not
in the laundries. Many Irish immigrants found their way to Troy because
mean that their occupation was a fleeting monent in their lives, not
the Hudson River provided convenient transportation from New York
worth improving through trade unionism. These working women were
City, and Troy's industries promised employment. By 1865 Irish immi-
not laboring to buy themselves luxuries: many were the sole supporter
grants constituted almost one-quarter of Troy's population: the American-
DL
of their family. Augusta Lewis, President of the Woman's Typographical
born children of these residents makes the proportion even higher. Since
Union No. 1 of New York City, observed that many of the laundresses
most of these people were working class, probably more than one-half of
"had aged parents, younger brothers and sisters, and some had their own
Troy's working class was of Irish descent.
children besides themselves depending on their wages." In 1865 Kate
This is not to say that Troy's laundresses came from the city's
Mullaney, the laundresses' president, was supporting herself as well as
poorest families. Irish workers did labor in the most menial occupations,
her mother, Bridget, age 55, and two younger sisters." Many others had
such as day labor and domestic service, but many Irish families achieved
to work even when the male head of household was employed. ^ study by
a much higher status through employment in Troy's iron industry. This
the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1872 shows that the yearly
industry included several large iron and steel works and many smaller
expenses of a family of four amounted to about $776.86. But during these
foundries that produced stoves, ranges, bells, wheels, and other iron
years the average yearly income of wage earners was only $611.00. The
products. Some skilled occupations like pattern-makers in the foundries
report concluded that even when the head of the family worked steadily,
and nailers and spikers in Burden's nail factory, employed largely workers
had only two children, and did not indulge in luxuries such as Christmas
of American background. But men of Irish descent constituted the largest
presents, toothbrushes, and loys for the children, the average working
number of workers in each of the three largest skilled branches of the
man's family could not keep out of debt without the income of other
iron foundries-molders, puddlers, and heaters and rollers. Since most of
family members. Clearly, working-class women's proper role included the
these men arrived in America with few industrial skills, they experienced
role of provider.
considerable upward mobility through the iron industry.8
For women like Troy's laundresses, some form of employment was
Troy's laundresses were part of a well-organized labor movement
a familiar experience in every stage of life. In many working-class families,
led by these highly skilled, largely Irish iron molders. In the 1860s and
daughters joined the work force as soon as they reached a suitable age,
1870s the most well-organized workers were highly skilled, well-paid men
often entering the same occupation as their older sisters or other female
of American background. But in Troy the most well-organized workers
relatives. Those who married in their early twenties probably did not
were skilled iron workers, chiefly stove and range molders. From about
work for more than five to seven years. But women who did not marry
1860 to the 1880s the Troy Iron Molders' Union No. 2 was one of the
remained in the work force much longer. Because most working-class
most influential locals in the International Iron Molders' Union, and
women were employed at one time or another, and because at any given
this national union was in turn one of the three or four most powerful
time some female family members were working for wages, working-class
national trade unions. In Troy the molders helped organize strikes, meet-
women were constantly reminded of the necessity of earning a decent
ings, and trade union picnics that contributed to other workers' labor
living. Although they may not have been permanent workers as individ-
activity or celebrated working-class solidarity. The Troy Press viewed one
uals, they had good reason to protect their rights as workers.
picnic as a symbol of this unity: "Capital, with her high head, proud
The collar laundresses' position in the work force and the com-
mein and plethoric purse, is at Saratoga or Newport. Labor, with her
munity was worth defending. Like many industrial workers during this
period, the collar laundry women were largely of Irish background. In
7 Montgomery, Reyond Equality, PP. 35-40: Walkowite, "Statistics," P. 422; New York
State Census, PP. 11-12, 151-152.
6 The description of Mullaney and her family and the following discussion of work
8 Walkowitz, "Statistics," PP. 435-444-
patterns are drawn from the manuscript census for Troy in 1865 and 1870.
9 Walkowitz, "Statistics," pp. 426-428.
brawny arms, independent spirit and moderate share of greenbacks is at
work was not a prestigious occupation for women of American back-
Winnie's Grove. Hurrah for Winnie's!"
ground who could get other work, it was a good occupation for Irish
What was the collar laundresses' status in this working-class com-
women who wished 10 rise above employment in service occupations.
munity? Although many laundresses came from the families of unskilled
Unlike taking in washing and domestic service, laundering offered
workers, an even larger group came from families on the highest levels
the independence of a wage and regular employment. Also, thanks to the
of the working class. For example, in 1865 about 30 percent of the laun-
union, laundresses' earnings were comparatively high. In 1872 the average
dresses' male relatives were unskilled workers like laborers or porters, but
earnings of working women amounted to $299.00 per year, or $1.16 per
only about 11 percent of sewing women's male relatives were unskilled.
day, $6.96 per week, a figure close to the average earnings of working men
Also, about half (52 percent) of laundresses' male relatives were skilled
($13.44 per week). Collar laundering combined the disadvantages of un-
workers like carpenters, blacksmiths, or molders. This figure is about the
ladylike labor with the advantages of industrial work. It attracted women
same for other Troy working women-for example, 59 percent for sewing
from lower levels of the working class who were able to get better employ-
women's male relatives. The laundresses' status was consistent with both
ment than domestic service, and those from higher levels who were willing
the low status of Irish workers in general and the relatively high status
to endure hard physical labor for high wages.
of many Irish families in Troy.
Of the several laundering steps, collar ironing was the most presti-
The characteristics of the laundresses' occupation itself fit in with
gious. It was not a skilled trade, since it involved a task familiar to many
their mixed status in Troy's working class. In general, work in commercial
women and did not require knowledge of many complicated processes.
laundries carried less status than other industrial occupations like needle-
Neverthcless, handling the heavy hot irons required physical strength,
work. Although laundering was probably not any more fatiguing and
endurance, and a skill that could only be acquired through two to four
health-impairing than sewing and factory work, working conditions in-
weeks of intensive training. According to employers, good ironers were
volved strenuous physical labor. Esther Keegan reported that laundresses
not easy to come by, and the ironing skill was worth more than that of
stood on their feet almost all of their 11 to 14 hours of labor in shops as
starchers and washers. In the small world of commercial laundries, ironers
small as 16 feet square. Temperatures reached the "nineties" in the
were the aristocracy of labor.11
winter, and in the summer it was so hot that laundresses often had to
The collar laundresses' organizational structure and level of skill
"forgo their work for two or three weeks at a time from sheer inability to
helped them to defend their right to earn a living in the occupation in
perform it." Ironers were required to continually lift hot heavy irons, and
which they were trained. The ironers organized by the work they did in
starchers' fingers became sore from constant immersion in starchy water.
their shop as well as by sex. This organizational structure was typical of
Keegan asserted that because of these conditions, laundresses frequently
craft unionism; workers who did different kinds of labor in one industry
contracted consumption: "None but the strongest could stand it."
almost always organized separately. But it was also useful for women to
Laundering was also less ladylike than other women's occupations.
organize separately because women who organized into men's locals were
While women from prosperous families may have done their own fine
at a disadvantage. They faced male workers' antagonisms more directly
needlework, they rarely did their own laundry. People invariably com-
and were more reluctant to speak up at meetings and take leadership
pared laundry work to taking in washing, which was one of the most
roles. The few women who did belong to men's locals, like women cigar
menial, poorly paid women's occupations. Thus, although laundry work
makers, were less effective unionists because their interests were sub-
was an industrial occupation, it was less genteel and respectable than
merged and isolated. Working women like the laundresses who formed
dress-making, millinery, or even routine hand-stitching. Women of Ainer-
separate organizations could develop their own leaders and adopt strat-
ican background who had more options for employment probably pre-
egies and tactics tailored to their particular work situation.
ferred the more ladylike occupations of sewing or light industrial work.
Kate Mullaney was aware that it was important for working women
Collar laundering was, however, more prestigious than domestic
to organize independently from men. A reporter who interviewed Mul-
service. Working-class women considered the work of cooks, chamber-
laney in September 1868 argued that the organization of New York City's
maids, and housekeepers degrading because it involved serving or cleaning
working women lagged because women were not confident of their own
up after others and did not provide the independence of a wage. Women
abilities to be "presidents and secretaries" of trade unions. In defense of
who needed servants beinoaned the fact that most Americans "would
rather want bread than serve to gain it." 10 Therefore, while laundry
11 Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1961,
pp. xviii-xxi; Monigomery, Beyond Equality, pp. 1.10-148.
10 Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants, 1790-1380, Atheneum, New York, 1978, P. 61.
12 Flexner, Century of Struggle, p. 137.
her sisters, Mullaney responded that "there are numbers of ladies con-
the importance of these factors in the union's success. In previous strikes
nected with the laundry union who were just as competent as any gentle-
the laundresses had conflicted only with the laundry proprietors, but in
men." Probably because she realized that some women were at first
1869 they faced a more formidable foe. That year the laundry proprietors
reluctant to speak up at meetings or take leadership roles, she offered to
combined with the much more powerful collar manufacturers. More than
send laundry union members to New York City to help women organize.
any other factor, the manufacturers' resources and strategies determined
If "ladies from New York" were not "competent," she would "send some
the strikes' outcome-the demise of the Collar Laundry Union.
from Troy and pay their expenses until such time as they were able to edu-
The strike officially began on May 29, and on June 1 the manufac-
cate some of their own." According to Mullaney, New York's working
turers met publicly to plan their resistance. Their strategies were carried
women could overcome these difficulties with the help of other won:en
out on two fronts. They pressured the proprietors into holding out in-
MVHC
workers rather than male trade unionists. Clearly, the laundresses' strate-
definitely by refusing to send new collars and cuffs to any laundry em-
gies were shaped partly by their status as women.
ploying union ironers, and they helped the laundry owners obtain a new
The ironers also used their position as semiskilled workers in strat-
work force by helping them recruit and train new hands. Also, the
DL
egies that contributed to their union's success. In this period, skilled
manufacturers attempted to undermine directly the union's efforts to
workers were the most well organized partly because their skill was a
weather the strike. They tried to create a negative image of the union
valuable commodity that they could withhold from employers.¹ An inci-
through the local press, which they virtually controlled. They prevented
dent that occurred early in September 1868 indicates that employers
the few collar manufacturers in other cities from patronizing the union's
could not maintain a profitable level of production with inexperienced
cooperative laundry even though it claimed it could provide the same
hands. Having given in to wage increases since 1864, the laundry propri-
services for 25 percent less. Under these circumstances, the collar ironers'
etors tried to undermine the union by persuading nonunion ironers in
tactics were much less useful.
the city's largest laundry to train new hands to replace workers in union
The collar manufacturers and laundry owners combined to prevent
shops. It would not have been necessary for the owners to use this tactic
future wage increases. They aimed to do this not simply by opposing the
to weaken the union if they could have simply fired the union ironers
present increase, but by finally climinating the union. One indication
and replaced them with new hands. Mullaney reported that the em-
that this Wils their motivation is the substantial evidence that the conflict
ployers' tactics failed because the nonunion ironers, "seeing what the
was actually initiated by the laundry owners." The ironers had demanded
result would finally be, for their own protection, joined the union in a
and received a wage increase in July 1868, and the starchers received an
body." The owners' need for experienced labor enabled the ironers to
increase in March 186g. The third conflict began when the laundry
strengthen their union even further. The laundry proprietors could not
owners demanded that the ironers equalize wages paid for work on differ-
maintain full production levels during a strike even while scab workers
ent-size collars within each shop. When the ironers complied by decreasing
were being trained. As employers themselves admitted, it took "some time
rates for some work and increasing rates for other work, there was a
to teach the newcomers the business." Even with a few weeks of training,
general increase of about 1t cents per dozen collars. Although the propri-
the inexperienced workers' skill was not equal to the dexterity and speed
etors had demanded the equalization, they refused to pay the increase.
of the striking ironers.
The manufacturers claimed through the local press that this increase
This tactic of withholding labor was successful partly because laun-
was the issue of the strike. They maintained that the ironers already
dry proprietors were relatively vulnerable to employees' concerted action.
received extraordinarily high wages for only ten hours of light labor per
As operators of a small-scale service industry, the laundry owners had
day, and that women foolish enough to be influenced by "outside busy-
fewer resources than the collar manufacturers with which to weather
bodies" deserved to lose their jobs. Troy's collar Inctories, they argued,
reduced production during strikes. Even more important, the laundry
were already being undersold by the few collar manufacturers in other
owners' position in the business community enabled them to pass on any
cities. If the ironers continued their unreasonable demands, Troy's collar
increased labor costs to the collar manufacturers. The manufacturers had
industry would be destroyed and thousands of residents would suffer. The
to absorb these costs. Despite the manufacturers' extensive resources and
Troy Daily Whig asked, will "this new collar-a" prevail?
markets, they were dependent on the laundries' services to prepare their
Although Troy's press was not as biased as the strikers claimed, it
products for sale. The ironers' three-month strike in 1869 demonstrates
14 There is some evidence that the collar manufacturers were behind the initiation of
18 Montgomery, Beyond Equality, PP. 140-148.
the strike, but there is not enough data to confirm the role they played at this stage.
did suppress an essential fact that was revealed in New York City's news-
trade unionists contributed, prospective buyers were not likely to take
papers: Once the ironers went on strike for the increase, some employers
women seriously as manufacturers.
offered to rehire them at slightly higher wages on the condition that they
The demise of the union and the cooperative does not mean that
give up their union. Kate Mullaney told the Workingmen's Union of
the laundresses were helpless women or degraded workers who had no
New York City on July 2, 1869, that the laundry union's employers "do
bargaining power. They successfully resisted employers' appropriation
not care for the money." They were willing to pay the increased wages,
of an unfair share of the profits their labor produced for a much longer
but they insisted that the ironers "inust give up" their union. Esther
period than most male workers did in these decades. They could do this
Keegan maintained that the ironers would make "every concession," but
for the same reasons that working men were able to improve wages and
"it would never do to give up" their union. "We are determined not to
working conditions-by making the most of their employers' need for
yield." From a trade unionist's point of view, the strike was a lockout in
trained labor, and by taking advantage of the owners' vulnerability and
which employers would not rehire union members unless they gave up
their position in the business community. The ironers lost this leverage
their union. Like the iron molders' Great Lockout of 1866, the issue of
only when the proprietors increased their strength by combining with
the ironers' strike was "union or no union."
the manufacturers. The ironers' leverage was decreased even further a
Partly because the combination of employers was SO formidable, the
few years later when collar manufacturers found a more effective way to
ironers also chose another strategy for obtaining their rights: They
avoid absorbing laundry owners' increased labor costs: By the late 1870s
formed a producers' cooperative, essentially a joint stock company financed
the manufacturers incorporated the laundries into the collar manufac-
through selling shares. In the late 1860s many prominent trade unionists
tories. The collar ironers were "nothing but women" who faced more
believed that strikes could eliminate only the worst effects of wage slavery.
disadvantages than male workers. But like other relatively successful
They argued that producers' cooperatives enabled workers to escape wage
women and men unionists, they faced their employers primarily as workers.
slavery permanently by transforming themselves into small busincssmen.13
The laundresses withstood employers' efforts to break their union
Iron molders were among the most enthusiastic advocates of cooperation,
for several months because their alliance with other workers-male trade
and their iron foundries in Troy were among the most successful cooper-
unionists-made their strategies and tactics more effective. Male unionists
ative enterprises in the nation. Following the example of molders and
cooperated with the ironers despite the fact that the antagonism between
others, the collar ironers laid plans for a cooperative laundry in early
men and women workers were as deep as other hostilities dividing Amer-
June. In July, when it was apparent that local manufacturers prevented
ican wage earners. Just as working men were threatened by unskilled
out-of-town manufacturers from supplying the cooperative with newly
"green hands," especially if they were black or Chinese, they were also
made collars, the union expanded the project to include a cooperative
threatened by women workers. Working men not only believed that
collar-and-cuff manufactory. As Mullaney wrote in a letter to Susan B.
women took men's jobs and reduced their earnings, but they also thought
Anthony which appeared in The Revolution in April 1870, the "girls"
that women wage earners were out of their natural sphere.¹ Because of
hoped "to proceed on a purely business basis, by doing the work
these beliefs, sometimes male workers were not willing to provide women
themselves." They hoped eventually to "buy up all the stock and hold it
wage earners with the aid that unskilled or semiskilled workers urgently
for their own benefit." If the project had succeeded, the laundresses
needed to organize effectively. Yet they did aid the laundresses.
would have transformed themselves into small businesswomen who were
How firm was this alliance between collar laundresses and male
not dependent on wages for survival.
trade unionists? The ironers' relationship with the male-led trade union
Despite the ironers' determination and the trade union movement's
movement began with their friendship with Troy's iron molders. This
generous support, the union was dissolved in early September 1869, and
relationship in turn began with the laundresses' first efforts to organize,
the cooperative was disbanded in 1870. The cooperative was doomed
lasted until at least 1870, and continued into the 1880s, if not longer.
largely because of problems inherent in this form of producers' cooper-
Esther Keegan reported that the molders' union introduced the laun-
ative, and partly because it could not compete with Troy's powerful
dresses to the principles of trade unionism in February 1864. During the
collar manufacturers. But the project's failure was probably also due to
period of economic difficulties just after the beginning of the Civil War,
the fact that the ironers were women. No matter how efficient the ironers'
their "weeks' wages could only buy a pair of shoes." They "asked higher
enterprise was, and no matter how much expertise and financial aid male
wages," but "were not listened to." But when they organized into a union
16 Montgomery, Beyond Equality, pp. 154-155, 227-229.
10 Montgomery, Beyond Equality, p. 147.
on the advice of the molders, they "got the advance they asked for." By
Lewis, who accompanied Mullaney, later wrote: "Although the society
1869 almost all shops were organized and the union included about
comprises many wealthy ladies, they raised $30 for the laundresses of
430 members.
Troy. As a society, either the want of knowledge, or the want of sense,
In the ensuing years the laundresses showed their appreciation and
renders them, as a workingwomen's association very in efficient." Else-
the molders reciprocated. At the first molders' picnic on July 18, 1864,
where, Lewis wrote that compared to the Workingwomen's Association,
about 4,000 people watched the presentation of a blue silk banner to
the laundresses' union was a "real workingwomen's association." Suf-
Henry Rockefeller, the Troy molders' president. The banner pictured on
fragists made immeasurable contributions to improving women's condi-
one side a furnace in full blast with men "pouring olf" the molten metal
tion, but women trade unionists considered male trade unionists to be
and on the other side a figure of justice below an eagle. Ribbons on one
firmer allies than suffragists were.
side of the banner bore the inscription: "Presented by the Collar Laundry
The state's trade unions generously aided the ironers in part because
Union of Troy to the Iron Molders' Association." Two years later, in
the strike was one of the few that was officially endorsed by the New York
April 1866, the laundresses donated the enormous sum of 1,000 dollars
State Workingmen's Assembly. Trade unionists resented "begging expe-
to the molders during their Great Lockout. In return, in September 1868,
ditions" that visited New York, because contributing to strikes depleted
William Sylvis, President of the National Labor Union and the IMIU,
their treasuries and weakened their ability to resist their own employers.
appointed Kate Mullaney Assistant Secretary of the NLU. Remembering
In response to this problem William Jessup, President of the New York
the laundresses' loyalty, the molders were the ironers' staunchest sup-
State Workingmen's Assembly, instituted a policy of investigating conflicts
porters during their 1869 strike. Dugald Campbell wrote, "The laundry
when strikers requested aid in order to determine whether they were
girls have stood by the moulders in their hour of adversity and they to
worthy of contributions. If he deemed them worthy, Jessup issued an
a man will do the same to them." In gratitude, the laundresses dedicated
official circular explaining the strike's cause. The ironers' 1869 strike was
a poem to Campbell which began:
one of only two conflicts that year endorsed in this manner. Significantly,
the other worthy strike was the New York City Bricklayers' strike for the
See Labor's Champion, so nobly contending,
eight-hour day. Troy's iron molders, Troy's labor movement, and New
Who fights for the down-trodden loilers the while;
York State's trade unions were the ironers' loyal allies.
Whose life's wholly spent their condition amending,
Since most working men were threatened by women workers, why
Despite every slanderer that would him revile.
did male unionists rally behind the laundresses' union? A New York State
Bureau of Labor Statistics Report of 1886 suggests that the iron molders
Trade unionists in New York City and elsewhere also stood by the
and laundresses were allied because the laundry women were an impor-
ironers in 1869. In early July Kate Mullaney and Esther Keegan visited
tant source of income for molders' families. The census manuscript adds
New York City in order to solicit contributions for their cooperative and
some support to this argument. While 14 percent of the laundresses' male
strike fund from the city's prosperous unions. Almost every union in the
relatives were molders in 1865, molders constituted only 8 percent of
city responded with generous amounts of cash. By September, contri-
collar sewers' male relatives, and 5 percent of sewing women's male rela-
butions totaled 4,510 dollars.
tives. Although 14 percent does not represent very many individuals,
Ironically, the least generous organization was the Workingwomen's
slightly more laundry women than other working women were related
Association of New York, which was organized by Susan B. Anthony in
to molders. These family ties may have reduced antagonisms between
September 1868. Although working women were active in the association
male and female workers in collar laundries and iron foundries. Shared
in the first weeks, by July 1869 the members were all prosperous middle-
ethnic identity may have augmented these ties. Living in the same neigh-
class women. Most of these middle-class women were more concerned
borhoods and participating in Irish political and nationalist organizations,
with working women's difficulties than other suffragists. According to a
Troy's Irish working-class community was particularly close-knit.¹⁷ Troy's
report in the New York World on July 3. Mullaney observed that she
laundresses and molders probably had more ethnic and family ties than
came before them to request contributions because she "understood that
other female and male workers.
they were an association of working-women." But "as she looked around
But family ties and shared ethnic identity cannot provide a full
them" she could tell that "they were not the working-women whom she
explanation for this alliance. If the alliance was based entirely on these
had been accustomed to see. She had to work all day in the shop, and this
she did not think, judging from their appearance, that they did." Augusta
17 Walkowitz, "Statistics," pp. 433-435-
ties, then the ironers' union would have to be viewed as an isolated
to the solidarity of the working-class community. Troy's trade union
example that depended on the external aid of relatives or membership
movement was a major center of labor activity partly because iron molders
in an ethnic community. The union's strength, commitment to trade
and other skilled workers not only protected their own interests, but also
unionism, and firm alliance with male trade unionists could not have
helped draw other less-skilled workers into the local trade union move-
been based on external aid alone, but must have also depended on the
ment. The molders helped establish Troy's Trades' Assembly in 1864 and
ironers' own efforts as wage earners. Also, family ties and ethnic identity
organized huge picnics and demonstrations that mobilized thousands of
cannot explain why workers organize, because these ties do not necessarily
workers in Troy and neighboring communities. Not only did they help
lead to a commitment to trade unionism. In order to organize successfully
the collar ironers organize, but they also aided others who were less likely
the laundresses also had to develop a commitment to trade unionism
to organize on their own, such as day laborers, tailoresses, and dress-
through their own experiences in bargaining with employers. In order to
makers. Unlike needlewomen in other communities, these Troy sewing
form firm alliances with other workers the laundresses had to have com-
women were continuously organized for at least a year.18 Workers of
mon interests as wage earners who were attempting to counter the power
different backgrounds, levels of skill, and stages of organization could
of capital. These common interests also explain the laundresses' alliance
depend on each other for support.
with the national trade union movement.
The ironers' independence and commitment to trade unionism made
It was possible for some male workers to ally with women on the
them particularly deserving of support. William Sylvis noted that "the
basis of shared interests as wage earners and for others to be hostile to
Troy girls" worked hard, "doing what they could in a practical way to
working women because working men's situation as men and as trade
work out their own salvation. They have acted upon the old saying,
unionists was inconsistent. As American workers, male unionists were
'Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.'' Having experi-
threatened by women working for wages. However, working men also
enced labor activity on their own, the ironers developed a deep commit-
recognized that women worked because they had to, that women workers
ment to trade union principles. As Esther Keegan put it, the ironers
had a right to protect themselves from employers, and that working women,
militantly resisted employers' efforts to break up the union because they
like men, could obtain this protection only through trade unionism.
were "not willing to go back to that state of slavery in which" they "were
But working men's fear of women's competition was so strong that
six years ago." The union was the "mother of their success," and their
working men could cooperate with women wage earners only under
SUCCCSS in turn was the mother of their firm commitment to trade unionism.
circumstances that mitigated this threat to their livelihood. Three kinds
The ironers and other female trade unionists in Troy not only re-
of circumstances seemed necessary for this cooperation: With few except
ceived aid but also made their own contributions to the unity of labor
tions, male and female wage earners cooperated only when male workers
against capital. The dressmakers' and milliners' unions contributed to
believed that women were not directly competing with men; this kind of
the bookkeepers' strike for a wage increase in 1864. The ironers not only
cooperation occurred when working women were not helpless but proved
supported the molders in 1866, but donated the large sum of 500 dollars
the unionists' adage that "those who would be free must themselves strike
to the New York City Bricklayers' strike in 1868. As a Troy molder put it,
the first blow"; most important, working men cooperated with women
"The ironers
have always been noted for their liberality in assisting
workers when they derived some direct benefit from working women's
other trade unions on strike."
labor activity.
The laundresses also contributed to the solidarity of the national
Most male-female cooperation in the 1860s and 1870s occurred be-
trade union movement. Their contribution to the molders' lockout was
tween men and women who labored in different branches of the same
a donation not to a local conflict, but to Sylvis's strategy to counter a
industry. For example, members of the Daughters of St. Crispin stitched
national association of manufacturers formed to weaken the IMIU. Sim-
shoes in the same shops as male Crispins. In these situations male and
ilarly, the bricklayers' strike was part of the strategy of the state's eight-
female wage earners were not competitors, because they did work strictly
hour movement to enforce an eight-hour law recently passed by the state
reserved for either sex. Their cooperation strengthened the bargaining
legislature. Like their allies, the laundresses protected not only themselves
position of both sexes, since their efforts were aimed at the same employers.
and their neighbors, but also the working-class movement as a whole.
In Troy and other communities cooperation also occurred between
The ironers' 1869 strike and their cooperative were major contribu-
women and men who were employed in entirely different industries with
tions to this movement. William Jessup described the strike as an attempt
different employers. In this case, women's unions were beneficial to men
in another equally important way: They made substantial contributions
18 Walkowitz, "Statistics," PP. 426-428.
by "the employers and manufacturers to destroy the union by starving
reflected the characteristics of their occupation and their employers,
its members into subjection to accept the employers' terms." Like the
divisions between workers based on level of skill, nationality, religion,
molders' and bricklayers' conflicts, the ironers' strike was not a maneuver
and sex, and characteristics of the labor movement in their community.
for temporary advantages, but a struggle for the American workers' right
They came to the same conclusions about the relationship between labor
to organize. The Troy printers' resolution summed up the trade unionists'
and capital, adopted the same strategies and tactics, and formed the
view:
same alliances as male unionists.
Other characteristics of women's unions in the 1860s and 1870s in
It is the duty of all trades' organizations to resist such attempts upon
the United States support the conclusion that the laundresses organized
trade union principles.
We must sustain and uphold the right of
primarily as workers rather than women. The collar laundry women were
those who labor to consult together and determine upon the rate at which
part of a female trade union movement within the national labor move-
their labor shall be sold for the enrichment of capital.
ment. New York City's newspapers reported on March 11, 1870, that
representatives of the seven women's unions in the state, including the
Moreover, the laundresses were also taking the "higher step" of cooper-
laundry union, met in the city's Cooper Institute to organize the Working-
ation. Jessup's circular asking the state's trade unions to contribute to the
women's State Labor Union (WSLU) of New York. The formation of the
ironers argued that:
WSLU is significant because it tells us that the laundresses' union was not
unique, but was one of many women's unions in the region during these
The Collar Laundry Union does not ask you to contribute to support
years. The laundresses were not isolated but were in close touch with
them in idleness while they are on strike. They desire to enter into CO-
other women unionists. These women developed the same forms of orga-
operation by organizing manufactories of their own on the cooperative
nization, ideologies, strategies, and tactics as male unionists.
principle. The object is feasible
Let us all contribute with a willing
An important conclusion about women trade unionists' conscious-
heart and an open hand.
ness of themselves as workers and as women emerges from this examin-
ation of male and female trade unions. Esther Keegan's address to the
Despite the fact that the strike failed and the cooperative foundered,
Workingmen's Union indicates that Keegan, like other women unionists,
the ironers' leaders continued to be committed to trade unionism, and
viewed herself primarily as a wage earner who was also a working-class
male trade unionists continued to stand by them. As valuable members
woman-that is, Keegan recognized that the laundresses were "nothing
of the trade union movement, the ironers continued to be deserving of
but women" whose dependent status shaped their ability to organize as
support. Sharing the interests of wage earners who sought to protect them-
successfully as men. But this status was in turn fundamentally shaped by
selves through trade unionism, the collar ironers were "bona fide" trade
the disadvantages they shared with working-class men who were also
unionists.
dependent on wages for their livelihood. Thus, to the extent that women
trade unionists organized as women, they identified with other working-
class women, not with women of other social classes. Conscious of their
WOMEN TRADE UNIONISTS' SELF-PERCEPTION
identity as wage earners, they did not identify with women's rights
advocates who would probably never have to work for wages. Women
The women who formed the Collar Laundry Union overcame formidable
trade unionists like Troy's laundresses organized as women within their
obstacles to trade union organization. Women who overcame these bar-
own social class.
riers must have been forceful individuals who developed the abilities to
This conclusion is not meant to argue that working women in the
articulate clearly their conclusions and to plan strategies and tactics to
mid-nineteenth century did not identify with issues relevant to women
achieve their goals. But the laundresses' success was not due to the fact
of all levels of society. Women unionists did not agree with suffragists
that some were exceptional individuals. They were successful because
that "the ballot, in the World of work is [woman's] only shield and pro-
they shared more characteristics that enabled workers in general to form
tection." But they did firmly believe that in principle women should have
permanent unions than did other female industrial workers. The laun-
the ballot. Further, this conclusion is not meant to argue that all working
dresses were successful for the same reasons that male trade unionists were.
women in all times and places will always identify primarily with working-
The factors contributing to the laundresses' success reveal that they
class men rather than with women of other social groups.¹⁸ These con-
organized primarily as workers rather than women. Coming from the
same level of the working class as many male unionists, their organization
19 The Revolution, January 15, 1868 (quote); New York World, September 18, :868;
220 Nineteenth-Century America
clusions indicate that for these women at this time and place, class
from five hundred to cight hundred. This treatment, and the pleasant quarters
interests were more important than interests shared with women of other
afforded to their operatives, secure the important advantage of steady help.
social groups.
Some of those in the establishment have been with the firm for twelve years or
more: and it has repeatedly happened that those who left, for one or another
reason, have returned and asked 10 be employed again, having found neither
Documents
their new employers nor their new quarters as comfortable. This amicable state
of things docs not however, prevent a strenuous adherence to their rights. A few
years ago, a so-called "Workingwomen's Union" was set up among the hands, and
Linen and Collar and Cuff Manufacture and the Working-
at once went to work to raise wages. Apparently there was a measure of justi-
women's Union, 1873
fication for the step, since the required advance was granted, as was another
within a few months. A third, however, met with a prompt refusal; the manu-
When all these sewing processes are at last complete, the collars-and so of
facturers, though not organizing into any formal body, agreed to put a stop
other articles, for we are following the fortunes of the collar as a representative
to the performances, the Messrs. Cluett being among the very first in taking this
of the rest-are transferred to the laundry, where a second series of eleven
ground. The demand of the "Union" was peremptorily refused. work stopped.
processes is gone through with, besides the mere transfer.* These are as follows:
the ill-advised strikers were let alone until they returned to work at previous
(1) Washing in suds, 10 remove the manufacturer's "dressing" from the goods;
rates, and the Union was exterminated, as no member of it would be employed.
(2) bleaching, by means of hyperchloride of soda: (3) application of dilute
[Note: The firm of George B. Cluett, Brother & Co., later became a national
sulphuric acid, to complete the bleaching process: (4) washing in sucls, to re-
producer of men's shirts, The Arrow Company. a division of Cluett, Peabody.
move the acid; (5) boiling; (6) rubbing and rinsing; (7) bluing and rolling: (8)
and Co., Inc.]
starching with thin starch; (9) starching with thick starch: (10) drying: (11)
ironing.
These operations are greatly facilitated by the arrangement of fitting up
of the different rooms, and by various devices for economizing labor and power.
A "Spicy" Letter from a Workingwoman, 1869
Thus a peculiar formation of the stove for heating irons keeps forty of them
It was my pleasure a few weeks since to visit a real workingwomen's association,
hot all the time, with a small average consumption of coal: the order of the
the Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York. I use the word real to desig-
tubs used is such as to make the progress of the goods easy through the suc-
nate it from imaginary workingwomen's associations who theorize, while this
cessive processes, etc. The starch used is not of wheat. but of corn, which is
organization has proved "that those who would be free themselves must strike
found to be equally efficient, cheaper, and much less disagreeable to the fingers
the blow!"
of the operatives. This is a pretty important consideration, for it is found to
For many years past the collar laundries of Troy have employed several
make the difference between sore fingers and healthy ones,-that is, work or
hundred women to wash, starch, and iron collars brought fresh from the manu-
idleness,- besides pain, which is sometimes no small item, as the very agonizing
facturer, preparatory to their sales in stores. Summer and winter from dawn to
inflammation called felon has occasionally been somewhat frequent among those
dark sometimes "till midnight, their work was to stand over the washtub, over
who work in the starching rooms.
the ironing table. with furnaces on either side, the thermometer averaging 100°
for wages averaging from $2 to $3 a week each. Many of those thus employed had
This firm, on the contrary, is well satisfied with that sort of success which
aged parents, younger brothers and sisters, and some had their own children,
is the only really desirable one in business-honest gains from enterprise. in-
besides themselves, depending on this pittance for an existence. A representation
dustry, and fair dealing. Steady kindness, and at the same time as much strict-
of their necessities and individual appeal for an increase of salary received the
ness as is necessary, keep them popular with their hands, of whom they employ
usual answer to such demands-"That if dissatisfied there were plenty of women
who would bc glad to get work at any price." At last that bugbear of capitalists
New York Sun, February g. 1870; The Revolution, February 24, 1870; New York World,
was resorted to, and they formed a trade union, whereby through their own
March 11, 1870: Nancy Schrom Dye, "Creating a Feminist Alliance: Sisterhood and
Class Conflict in the New York Women's Trade Union League. 1902-1914," Feminist
Reprinted from the New York Sin, July 5. 86g. Although the letter is not signed,
Studies. 1, No. 1 and 9 (1975). 24-38.
biographical details provide strong evidence that the writer was Augusta Lewis.
Home Greeler et al., Great Industries of the United States, 1. n.
president of the Women's Typographical Union No. I of New York City (organized
from October 1868 to 187.1).
222 Nineteenth-Century America
exertions and their faithfulness to their organization they have increased their
wages to $8 to $14 per week by working on an average from (welve to fourteen
9
Chinese Immigrant Women
hours per day. Meantime their employers' profits are $85 per day. The laun-
in Nineteenth-Century California
dresses' organization is at present in difficulty not of their own seeking. (The
cause of the trouble was stated in Tuesday's Sun.) The employers are very will-
ing to pay less for small collars, but refuse to pay the increase for large collars.
Lucie Cheng Hirata
Some [employers] say they will pay the scale provided the Union, which has
increased their wages, is dissolved. It will then be in their power to decrease the
wages, and the women, justly regarding the union as the mother of their success,
refuse the terms. Having been educated as to the knowledge of their true in-
terests by organization, they now desire to take a step higher and form a CO-
operative laundry, thus becoming their own employers, a form of organized labor
to which even the most fastidious cannot object. I am not a resident of Troy,
nor a worker or member of the Laundry Union, but I am a workingwoman
who has had to work very hard for a very small sum, and my sympathies are
ever with those who struggle in poverty to earn an honorable living. It is the
duty and interest of every workingman and woman to extend a helping hand to
those women of the Collar Laundry Union of Troy Fathers and mothers
whose daughters are sheltered and protected by home and wealth, remember
the workingwomen. It is uncertain how long you or your protecting care and
wealth will be spared. Neither your daughters nor you know but they might yet
have to earn their own living. At eight years of age the writer of this lived in
Brooklyn Heights, and attended one of the most aristocratic schools in the City
of Churches; a servant carried her books to schools, but at the age of seventeen
she carried her lunch to work, and stood behind the counter of a Broadway
store from eight in the morning 'til eight in the evening for $2 a week, and was
asked by the forewoman: "Why not dress more stylishly: well-dressed saleswomen
commanded better custom, and gave an air of dignity to the store." With such
remuneration and such remarks, who dare deny that prostitution is at a pre-
mium. Yes, and will be until women are paid a living price for their labor. Let
those who contribute to Magdalen Societies to reclaim the fallen do that which
will prevent the necessity for such institutions, and wherever they see women
striving to better their condition give them substantial aid.
Others will be encouraged by their success, and be stimulated by their
example to seek to elevate their own condition, as the female cap makers of this
city are now doing.
Whatever the evils of society are, let us not contribute to them by re-
fusing to do the good that lies in our power at the present moment. In thus
elevating one class of workingwomen, the good results will be felt by every
other, and in future let us hope that when, from choice or necessity, women
are compelled to earn their own living, it will not be a reproach but an honor
to be, as I am.
Chinese woman. Courtesy of United Press International.
Troy Female Seminary
http://women.eb.com/women/articles/Troy_Female_Seminary.htm
From the
editors of
WOMEN
BRITANNICA
online
IN AMERICAN HISTORY
by Encyclopædia Britannica
Early America
The Nineteenth Century
At the Crossroads
Modern America
1600-1820
1820-1880
1880-1920
1920-the Present
Articles
Media Gallery
Troy Female Seminary luing it was
In Her Own Words
(1821), institution
School actually bunded in middlelung,
Britannica Classics
Vermont in 1814. moved to Tray in 1821
Weekly Quiz
Now known by the name of its founder, the Troy Female Seminary was
i
Ask the Experts
founded by Emma Hart Willard in Troy, New York, in 1821. It was the
first American educational institution to provide young women with an
Dec p4
Women's History
on the Web
education comparable to that of college-educated young men. At the
time of the seminary's founding, women were barred from colleges.
Recommended
Reading
Although academies for girls existed, their curricula were limited to
such "female arts" as conversational French and embroidery.
Study Guide
Britannica Online
The outline for the school was presented by Willard to the New York
legislature in her "Plan for Improving Female Education." This
document proposed a course of study that would provide girls with a
broad-based and rigorous education. Her idea was favorably received,
<<
and the city of Troy raised $4,000 in taxes to begin construction of the
school envisioned by Willard.
The seminary's first class consisted of 90 girls from across the United
States who enrolled in mathematics, science, history, foreign language,
and literature courses. Willard herself not only served as an instructor
but even wrote some of the school's textbooks. Troy Female Seminary
soon gained a reputation as an outstanding institution. It proved to
those who were skeptical that women were just as capable as men of
comprehending difficult subjects.
In memory of its founder, the seminary changed its name to the Emma
Willard School in 1895. Since 1910, when the school moved to a new
location in Troy, the school has erected additional buildings. It has
continued in its mission of providing high-quality education to young
women.
Copyright © 1998 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Willard, Emma Hart
http://women.eb.com/women/articles/Willard_Emma_Hart.html
2
From the
editors of
WOMEN
BRITANNICA
online
IN AMERICAN HISTORY
by Encyclopædia Britannica
Early America
The Nineteenth Century
At the Crossroads
Modern America
1600-1820
1820-1880
1880-1920
1920-the Present
Articles
Media Gallery
Willard, Emma Hart
In Her Own Words
(1787-1870), educator
Britannica Classics
Weekly Quiz
In Her Own Words
Ask the Experts
Born in Berlin, Connecticut, on February 23, 1787, Emma Hart was the
Women's History
on the Web
next-to-last of 17 children; her younger sister was Almira Hart (Lincoln
Phelps). Encouraged by her father, she early began to acquire an
Recommended
Reading
education beyond the ordinary. In 1802 she enrolled in the Berlin
Academy, her first school, where her progress was so rapid that by
Study Guide
1804 she was teaching in it and in 1806 she had charge of it for a term.
Britannica Online
In 1807 she taught briefly in an academy in Westfield, Massachusetts,
and then became principal of a girls' academy in Middlebury, Vermont,
where in 1809 she married John Willard, a physician 28 years her
senior. From her husband's nephew, a student at Middlebury College
who lived in the Willards' home, Emma first inferred the vast
difference in the educational opportunities open to men and to women.
She studied her nephew's textbooks and mastered such subjects as
geometry and philosophy.
In 1814 Willard opened the Middlebury Female Seminary in her home
and over the next few years demonstrated that women could teach and
girls learn classical and scientific subjects commonly thought suited
only to men. Her success prompted her to write An Address to the
Public; Particularly to the Members of the Legislature of New-York,
Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education in 1819. The
pamphlet was warmly received by such readers as Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams. The legislature addressed failed to respond--several
members ridiculed Willard's outline of a course of academic studies for
girls as contrary to God's will--but Governor De Witt Clinton invited
Willard to open a school in New York state.
In 1819 Willard moved to Waterford, New York, and opened a school.
In 1821 she moved on to Troy, New York, where the town council had
raised money to build a girls' school. The Troy Female Seminary
opened in September 1821 and began its long history as one of the
most influential schools in America. It was a pioneer in the teaching of
science, mathematics, and social studies to girls, antedating Mary
Lyon's Mount Holyoke Seminary by 16 years and the first public high
schools for girls (in Boston and New York City) by 5. The school
attracted students from families of wealth and position and by 1831 had
an enrollment of over 300, more than 100 of whom were boarding
students. Willard published several textbooks, including History of the
United States, or Republic of America (1828) and A System of
Universal History in Perspective (1835). She also published a volume
of verse, The Fulfilment of a Promise (1831). Of her poems only
"Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" is remembered.
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3
Willard remained head of the Troy Female Seminary until 1838, by
which time hundreds of graduates, many of them teachers and all of
them shaped by her philosophy, had fanned out across the country.
Willard's later years were filled with travel, lecturing, and writing.
Among her later books are A Treatise on the Motive Powers Which
Produce the Circulation of the Blood (1846), Guide to the Temple of
Time; and Universal History for Schools (1849), Last Leaves of
American History (1849), Astronography; or Astronomical Geography
(1854), and Morals for the Young (1857). Willard died in Troy, New
York, on April 15, 1870. The Troy Female Seminary was renamed the
Emma Willard School in 1895.
Copyright © 1998 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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EWS Facts
http://helen.emma.troy.ny.us/wlcm/facts.htm
4
EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL
Facts
Founded: 1814 in
Middlebury,
Vermont, by pioneer
educator Emma Hart
Willard, and moved
to Troy in 1821.
Madame Willard's
early curriculum
included
mathematics and
physical science,
subjects previously
closed to female
students of the day.
The School celebrates its 184th year in 1998.
Head of School: Robin Robertson; B.A., University of Pennsylvania,
M.A. and Ph.D., Harvard University.
Reputation: Emma Willard is among the oldest independent schools for
the higher education of young women in the United States. A
college-preparatory boarding and day school for girls in grades 9-12 and
the post-graduate year, Emma Willard boasts a rigorous academic
program enhanced by visual and performing arts, independent study in
the community, and a full complement of interscholastic sports.
Research & Curricular Innovation: Emma Willard School remains
committed to expanding current knowledge about the developmental
needs and experiences
of adolescent girls and
young children, to
inform teaching
practice, and to share
with others. A major
longitudinal study of
female adolescence,
known as the Dodge
Study, was conducted
on the Emma Willard
campus from 1981-1985
by Dr. Carol Gilligan
and a team of researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education. Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent
Girls at Emma Willard School, a collection of provocative essays based
on the Dodge Study, was published by the School in 1989 and is now in
its second printing with Harvard University Press.
Students: For the 1997-98 school year, Emma Willard enrolled 275
students (167 boarding/108 day). Students attended from 26 states and
16 foreign countries. The student-to-faculty ratio is 8:1.
Faculty/Staff: More than 160 employees work at the School, including
44 full-and part-time instructors at the high school. There are seven
endowed instructorships.
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http://helen.emma.troy.ny.us/wlcm/tacts.html
5
Campus: The School's 92-acre campus features excellent examples of
Tudor Gothic Collegiate architecture adorned with
more than 90 carved gargoyles. The administration
building is listed on the National Register of
Historic Places. The architecturally-innovative
Hunter Science Center opened for the start of the
1996-97 school year, and the Helen S. Cheel
Aquatics Center opens in May 1998. The campus
also includes a gymnasium, chapel, art and music
building, three dormitories, a 400-meter track, eight
tennis courts, faculty houses, and plant and maintenance facilities.
Technology. Students have access to more than 60 Pentium PCs and 50
PowerMac computers, which are located in the library, computer labs,
and classrooms around campus. A total of 324 student, faculty, and
administrative computers are connected to the School's sophisticated
networks, and dormitory rooms are wired for Internet and School
network access by individual student computers. A four-person
Information Technology Services office provides technical assistance to
students, and the School's curriculum includes a computer science
requirement.
Library: The William Moore Dietel Library houses 34,000 volumes,
112 periodicals, numerous CD-ROMS, and Internet access to major
databases around the world.
Academic Program: The
School offers more than 145
secondary courses in nine
divisions. An EW student is
required to complete four years
of English/literature, three years
of mathematics, three years of
history, two years of laboratory
science (including biology and
chemistry), two years of visual
and performing arts, and three
years of foreign language. She must also be computer literate.
Athletic Program: Emma Willard sports 17 varsity and junior varsity
teams and two club-level teams, including crew.
Tuition & Financial Aid: Tuition and costs at the high school are
$22,900 for boarding students and $13,300 for day students. In 1997-98,
Emma Willard awarded $1.2 million in financial assistance to 47% of
the student body.
Alumnae: Distinguished in business, law, medicine, science, education,
the arts, and in service to their communities, Emma Willard's 5,600
alumnae share a 184-year tradition of excellence in women's education.
Together with parents of alumnae, current parents, and friends, alumnae
provide more than $1 million in annual support to the School, in
addition to countless hours of volunteer service.
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EWS History
http://helen.emma.troy.ny.us/wlcm/history.htm
6
EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL
History
1787 Emma Hart born in Berlin, Connecticut.
1814 Emma Willard opens her first school in Middlebury, Vermont.
1818 Mrs. Willard presents "Plan for Improving Female Education" to New
York Governor Dewitt Clinton and the New York State Legislature.
1819 School moves to Waterford, New York.
1821 City of Troy grants Mrs. Willard $4,000 to establish Troy Female
Seminary in the heart of the city (at current site of Russell Sage College).
1870 Emma Hart Willard dies.
1832 ELIZABETH CADY
1872 Due to changing economic conditions in Troy following the Civil War
and a shift in attitude toward women's education, the School becomes a day
STANTON graduates
school.
1892 Emma Willard Assocation incorporated by alumnae to honor her name
and promote the cause of higher education among women. First meeting held
in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair.
1895 Seminary's name changed to Emma Willard School. Three new
buildings (1892-95, now part of Russell Sage College) replace original one.
Boarding component reopened.
1910 With the aid of a
major gift from alumna
Margaret Olivia Slocum
Sage, Class of 1847, the
School moves to its
location on Pawling
Avenue atop Mount Ida.
1915 First Revels
performance.
1937 Weaver Hall (science) opens.
1961 Emma Willard Plan of Education published to outline the Correlated
Curriculum.
1966 Tangeman faculty apartments completed.
1967 Dietel Library and Snell Music Building built.
1969 Elective curriculum introduced. Faculty duplexes built.
1971 Maguire Art Building added to library/music complex.
1972 The Children's School established in former Cluett mansion.
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EWS History
http://helen.emma.troy.ny.us/wlcm/history.html
1977 Charles S. Mott Gymnasium completed.
1981-84 The Dodge Study conducted at Emma Willard by Dr. Carol
Gilligan, Dr. Nona Lyons, and associates from the Harvard Graduate School
of Education.
1987 Emma Hart Willard's 200th birthday.
1989 175th anniversary of Emma Willard School. Making Connections: The
Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, a collection
of essays based on the Dodge Study, published by the School.
1996 Hunter Science Center opens.
1997 Curiosity and Confidence: Girls Claiming Science national science
symposium commemorates Hunter Science Center dedication. Story about
symposium televised on CNN.
1998 Helen S. Cheel Aquatics Center, housing a six-lane competition-size
pool, exercise and strength/conditioning rooms, and state-of-the-art fitness
equipment.
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EMMA WILLARD
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Expanding Horizons
a gift of God! But I did not speak. Samuel reproved him and told him all about
matter was once set before the men as legislators, they would be ready to correct
it. He sat down very sorrowful. I then told him, "I had a promise, the day thee
the error. The idea that such a thing might possibly be effected by my means,
wrote my letter to sister Diges, that if I was faithful I would see the day when I
seemed so presumptuous that I hesitated to entertain it, and for a short time
can write."
So I tried, took my Bible daily and praying and read until I could
concealed it even from my husband, although I knew that he sympathized in my
read anywhere. The first chapter that I read I never could know it after that day.
general views. I began to write (because I could thus best arrange my ideas) "an
272
I only knowed it was in James, but what chapter I never can tell.
address to the
Legislature, proposing a plan for improving Female Edu-
273
Oh how thankful I feel for this unspeakable gift of Almighty God to me! Oh
cation." It was not till two years after that I filled up the blank. No one knew of
may I make a good use of it all the days of my life!
my writing it, except my husband, until a year after it was completed, (1816), for
I knew that I should be regarded as visionary, almost to insanity, should I utter
the expectations which I secretly entertained in connection with it. But it was
not merely on the strength of my arguments that I relied. I determined to inform
To Improve Female Education
myself, and increase my personal influence and fame as a teacher; calculating that
in this way I might be sought for in other places, where influential men would
Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870) had a thirst for knowledge and a "visionary"
carry my project before some legislature, for the sake of obtaining a good school.
longing to make women's education equal to men's. After growing up in Con-
My exertions meanwhile, became unremitted and intense. My school grew
necticut, she established her first school in Vermont after her marriage. She also
to seventy pupils. I spent from ten to twelve hours a day in teaching, and on
became an organizer willing to lobby New York politicians in 1818 to ask for
extraordinary occasions, as preparing for examination, fifteen; besides, always
public funding for her school. No one seems to have impugned her femininity
having under investigation some one new subject which, as I studied, I simulta-
for doing so, perhaps because she was teaching daughters of some of the "best
neously taught to a class of my ablest pupils. Hence every new term some new
families." Although the legislators turned down her request, Willard's plan of
study was introduced; and in all their studies, my pupils were very thoroughly
study was praised by presidents and intellectuals. A predecessor of Mary Lyon,
trained. In classing my school for the term of study, which was then about three
who founded Mount Holyoke in 1837, and of Catharine Beecher, who estab-
months, I gave to each her course, (being careful not to give too much) with
lished Hartford Seminary in 1823, Emma Willard emphasized that educated
the certain expectation, that she must be examined on it at the close of the term.
women would be better mothers and more useful persons. She also insisted that
Then I was wont to consider that my first dury as a teacher, required of me that I
women were capable of studying mathematics, science, and philosophy. The
should labor to make my pupils by explanation and illustration understand their
academy she founded in Troy, New York, in 1821 was attended by the suffragist
subject, and get them warmed into it, by making them see its beauties and its
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and many other influential nineteenth-century women.
advantages. During this first part of the process, I talked much more than the
Willard's textbooks were widely used, and many of her graduates became teach-
pupils were required to do, keeping their attention awake by frequent questions,
ers throughout the country.
requiring short answers from the whole class,-for it was ever my maxim, if at-
From Emma Hart Willard, in Henry Barnard, ed., Educational Biographies,
tention fails, the teacher fails. Then in the second stage of my teaching, I made
Memoirs of Teachers, Educators, and Promoters and Benefactors of Education, Lit-
each scholar recite, in order that she might remember-paying special attention
erature, and Science, Part I: Teachers and Educators, 2d ed. (New York: F. C.
to the meaning of words, and to discern whether the subject was indeed under-
Brownell, 1861), PP. 133-37.
stood without mistake. Then the third process was to make the pupil capable of
communicating. And doing this in a right manner, was to prepare her for exami-
When I began my boarding school in Middlebury, in 1814, my leading motive
nation. At this time I personally examined all my classes.
was to relieve my husband from financial difficulties. I had also the further object
This thorough teaching added rapidly to my reputation. Another important
of keeping a better school than those about me; but it was not until a year or two
feature of a system, thus requiring careful drill and correct enunciation, was
after, that I formed the design of effecting an important change in education, by
manifested by the examinations. The pupils there acquired character and con-
the introduction of a grade of schools for women, higher than any heretofore
fidence. Scholars thus instructed were soon capable of teaching; and here were
known. My neighborhood to Middlebury College, made me bitterly feel the
now forming my future teachers; and some were soon capable of aiding me in
disparity in educational facilities between the two sexes; and I hoped that if the
arranging the new studies, which I was constantly engaged in introducing.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Expanding Horizons
Here I began a series of improvements in geography-separating and first
Possibly your Excellency may consider this plan as better deserving
teaching what could be learned from maps-then treating the various subjects
your attention, to know that its authoress is not a visionary enthusiast,
of population, extent, length of rivers, &c., by comparing country with coun-
who has speculated in solitude without practical knowledge of her sub-
try, river with river, and city with city,-making out with the assistance of my
ject. For ten years she has been intimately conversant with female schools,
pupils, those tables which afterwards appeared in Woodbridge and Willard's
and nearly all of that time she has herself been a preceptress. Nor has
274
Geographies. Here also began improvements in educational history. Moral Phi-
she written for the sake of writing, but merely to communicate a plan of
275
losophy came next, with Paley for the author, and Miss Hemingway for the first
which she fully believes that it is practicable; that, if realized, it would
scholar; and then the Philosophy of the Mind-Locke the author, and the first
form a new and happy era in the history of her sex, and if of her sex, why
scholars, Eliza Henshaw, Katharine Battey, and Minerva Shipherd.
not of her country, and of mankind?
The professors of the college attended my examinations; although I was by
Your Obedient Servant, Emma Willard
the President advised, that it would not be becoming in me, not be a safe prece-
Middlebury, Vt., February 5, 1818.
dent, if I should attend theirs. So, as I had no teacher in learning my new studies,
I had no model in teaching, or examining them. But I had full faith in the clear
This treatise is in reality the foundation of the Troy seminary. It will not
conclusions of my own mind. I knew that nothing could be truer than truth;
be thought surprising that I awaited with intense feeling Gov. Clinton's reply.
and hence I fearlessly brought to examination, before the learned, the classes, to
It came before I expected it, expressing his accordance with my views in his
which had been taught the studies I had just acquired.
happiest manner. His message to the legislature soon followed, in which, refer-
I soon began to have invitations to go from Middlebury. Gov. VanNess,
ring to my "Plan," (though not by its title or author's name,), he recommended
wishing me to go to Burlington, I opened my views to him. The college build-
legislative action in behalf of a cause heretofore wholly neglected. The Water-
ings were then nearly vacant, and some steps were taken towards using them
ford gentlemen had made Gov. Clinton's opinion their guiding light. They were
for a Female Seminary, of which I was to be Principal, but the negotiations
to present my "Plan" to the legislature; and advised that Dr. Willard and my-
failed. In the spring of 1818, I had five pupils from Waterford, of the best fami-
self should spend a few weeks in Albany during the session, which we did. The
lies. On looking over the map of the United States, to see where would be the
Governor and many of his friends called on us; and I read my manuscript sev-
best geographical location for the projected institution, I had fixed my mind on
eral times by special request to different influential members; and once to a
the State of New York, and thought, that the best place would be somewhere
considerable assemblage. The affair would have gone off by acclamation, could
in the vicinity of the head of navigation on the Hudson. Hence, the coming of
immediate action have been had. As it was, an act was passed incorporating the
the Waterford pupils I regarded as an important event. I presented my views to
institution at Waterford; and another, to give to female academies a share of the
Gen. Van Schomhoven, the father (by adoption,) of one of my pupils,-who
literature fund. This law, the first whose sole object was to improve female edu-
was interested, and proposed to show my manuscript to the Hon. J. Cramer, of
cation, is in force, and is the same by which female academies in the state now
Waterford, and to De Witt Clinton, then Governor of New York; and if they ap-
receive public money.
proved it, then the "Plan" might go before the legislature with some chance of
success. Thereupon I copied the manuscript with due regard to manner and chi-
rography; having already rewritten it some seven times, and thrown out about
three quarters of what it first contained-then sent it to Gov. Clinton with the
By Awakening Their Consciences
following letter:
In 1839 the first normal school for teacher training was established in Massa-
To his Excellency, De Witt Clinton,-
chusetts, and the movement for "common" grammar schools free to all comers
Sir,-Mr. Southwick will present to you a manuscript, containing a
began in earnest. Its purpose was to Americanize and Christianize (Protestant-
plan for improving the education of females, by instituting public semi-
style) the expanding populace, continuing the work of the many Sunday or
naries for their use. Its authoress has presumed to offer it to your Excel-
Sabbath schools that zealous women had been establishing in new communi-
lency, because she believed you would consider the subject as worthy of
ties in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. Children were taught to read,
your attention.
write, and cipher-and to say their prayers and mind their morals. Women like
HAS
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Troy, New York
West (Front) Facade
Photo: Ann Luby, 1994
NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK NOMINATION
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 1
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
1. NAME OF PROPERTY
DRAFT
Historic Name:
MULLANY, KATE, HOUSE
Other Name/Site Number:
2. LOCATION
Street & Number: 350 8th Street
Not for publication: N/A
City/Town: Troy
Vicinity:] N/A
State: NY
County: Rensselaer
Code: 083
Zip Code: 12180
3. CLASSIFICATION
Ownership of Property
Category of Property
Private:
X
Building(s):
X
Public-Local:
District:
-
Public-State:
Site:
-
Public-Federal:
Structure:
-
Object:
-
Number of Resources within Property
Contributing
Noncontributing
1
buildings
sites
structures
-
objects
1
0 Total
Number of Contributing Resources Previously Listed in the National Register: 0
Name of Related Multiple Property Listing: N/A
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 2
United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
4. STATE/FEDERAL AGENCY CERTIFICATION
As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, I hereby
certify that this
X
nomination
request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards
for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and
professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property
meets
does
not meet the National Register Criteria.
Signature of Certifying Official
Date
State or Federal Agency and Bureau
In my opinion, the property
meets
does not meet the National Register criteria.
Signature of Commenting or Other Official
Date
State or Federal Agency and Bureau
5. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE CERTIFICATION
I hereby certify that this property is:
Entered in the National Register
Determined eligible for the National Register
Determined not eligible for the National Register
Removed from the National Register
Other (explain):
Signature of Keeper
Date of Action
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 3
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
6. FUNCTION OR USE
Historic: Domestic
Sub: Multiple Dwelling
Current: Domestic
Sub: Multiple Dwelling
7. DESCRIPTION
ARCHITECTURAL CLASSIFICATION: Italianate
MATERIALS:
Foundation: Brick
Walls:
Brick
Roof:
Asphalt
Other:
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 4
United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
Describe Present and Historic Physical Appearance.
The Kate Mullany House¹ is the southern half (#350) of a three-story brick double row house,
both sides of which are identical, located at 350-352 Eighth Street, Troy, Rensselaer County,
New York. Except for the Quik Lube garage and the heavily traveled Hoosick Street
immediately to the south, the neighborhood of the Mullany House retains much of the working
class character of the 1860s and 1870s when Kate Mullany lived and worked there. The
neighborhood is largely comprised of modest residences in brick and frame, with a mixture of
single family and multiple unit dwellings. The Mullany House and its twin are among the
most substantial domestic structures in the area.
The most distinguished feature of the double house is its ornate brick cornice, with alternating
long and short dentilation forming a brick tasseled fringe along the roofline. The tassel-like
brickwork is painted white, while the house is painted a deep slate blue. The front of the
house has rectangularly shaped windows; three six-over-six windows on each of the second
and third stories and two six-over-six windows on the first floor. All of the windows on the
front of the house have stone lintels and stone sills and are framed with white wood trim. The
front entrance is a simple six-paneled white door, topped by a plain transom light and stone
lintel. Three concrete steps and an iron banister form the exterior entrance. The south side of
the house has two full size segmental-arched six-over-six windows on the first floor, one full
size segmental-arched six-over-six window and one three-quarter size arched six-over-six
window on the second floor, and one full size arched one-over-one window and one
one-quarter size arched single window on the third floor. All windows on the south side of
the house have stone sills and partly concealed lintels, which appear to be made of wood.
The Mullany House and its twin have always been three-unit apartment buildings, with one
family unit per floor. On the rear of the house, the second and third story units have partially
enclosed wood balconies, each with a rear entrance and a single-hung sash window. The first
floor unit has a partially enclosed porch and rear door. The rear of the Mullany side of the
building has one rectangularly shaped one-over-one window at the third story level, an arched
six-over-six window at the second story, and an arched one-over-one window at the first floor.
All of the rear windows have thin stone sills, with only the windows at the first and second
stories having lintels, which appear to be made of wood. The interior of the building retains
its original configuration and staircase, although most of the interior woodwork and finishes,
deteriorated over time, were replaced in renovations in the early 1960s. The top floor units
are the largest ones.
Each side of the double house has a private back yard, enclosed by an unpainted wood picket
fence.
'There is much variation in the spelling of the family surname. Kate's official death certificate, her mother's
will, and Surrogate Court records use the spelling of "Mullaney", as have all of the historians of her life in their
published research to date. State and federal census records of the family, as well as city directory listings,
church records, cemetery records, and most of the obituaries in local newspapers, however, omit the "e". Based
on this recently documented evidence, we have chosen to use the spelling of Mullany throughout this nomination.
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 5
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
8. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
Certifying official has considered the significance of this property in relation to other properties:
Nationally: X Statewide: Locally:
Applicable National
Register Criteria:
A X BX C D
Criteria Considerations
(Exceptions):
ABCDEFG
NHL Criteria: 1, 2
NHL Theme(s):
V: Developing the American Economy
5. labor organizations and protests
Areas of Significance:
Social History
Other: Labor History
Period(s) of Significance:
1869
Significant Dates:
1869
Significant Person(s):
Mullany, Kate
Cultural Affiliation: N/A
Architect/Builder:
Unknown
NHL Comparative Categories:
XXXI: Social and Humanitarian Movements
H. Labor Organization
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 6
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
State Significance of Property, and Justify Criteria, Criteria Considerations, and Areas and Periods of
Significance Noted Above.
SUMMARY
The Kate Mullany House, located at 350 Eighth Street, Troy, New York, is nationally
significant as the residence of one of America's leading female labor leaders, the young Irish
immigrant laundry worker who organized and led the all-female Collar Laundry Union in
Troy, New York, in the 1860s. Her Collar Laundry Union was recognized by male unionists
of the time as the only bona fide female union in the country for its success in bargaining with
laundry owners for worker objectives, as well as its active support of other working unions
and labor activity. Organized in February 1864, the Collar Laundry Union was officially the
first continuously organized women's trade union in the nation. The 500-member union
enabled its members to maintain wages higher than those of most working women (and near
wage parity with working men) of the time, and it accumulated a treasury larger than that of
many men's locals. Their generosity to other striking unions and benefits to their own were
nationally noted, as was a militancy unmatched by most male trade unionists.
Mullany achieved national recognition in 1868 when the National Labor Union convention
commended her indefatigable efforts on behalf of female laborers and elected her second
vice-president of the NLU. That action had to be annulled since the first vice-president was
also from New York State, but the NLU president, William H. Sylvis, then appointed Mullany
special assistant secretary to coordinate national efforts to form workingwomen's associations.
This appointment was a significant milestone in the history of working women by making her
the first female appointment to a national labor union office.
Like many working women in the nineteenth century, Mullany was a major source of her
family's income. In the 1860s, she seems to have been the primary wage earner in a household
that included a widowed mother and four siblings. The land on which 850 Eighth Street
stands was purchased by Bridget Mullany, Kate's mother, in 1864, only six months after Kate
Mullany and her fellow laundry workers organized the Collar Laundry Union and successfully
struck for a 25% wage increase. The house, designed as an income-producing property, was
completed and the family in residence by 1869, when the union once again went on a decisive
strike against Troy's laundry owners. The collar manufacturers held firm and this strike
eventually failed, but not before Kate Mullany and the laundry union had formed their own
laundry cooperative and a cooperative to manufacture collars and cuffs.
The emergence of Mullany as a national leader in the labor movement came at a time when
suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were becoming well
established in the movement to gain the right to vote for women. While Mullany seems to
have been more interested in women as workers with the right to be represented equally with
men in the labor movement where they fought for shared worker issues, the leading suffragists
focused on women bettering their lot by obtaining equal rights through the ballot. These
differences provide a good historical perspective on the views of women at the time.
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 7
United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
The acquisition of land and home ownership were primary goals for many immigrants,
particularly the Irish, who also brought to this country a strong tradition of organized labor.
The Kate Mullany House is emblematic of the stability and upward mobility made possible for
workers by union activity, both the reward and the goal of all their actions.
The various known residences that Mullany occupied prior to this one and the Union Laundry
Cooperative, located at the Union House block on Broadway Avenue in Troy, are no longer
standing. Although the laundry facilities of the Union Cooperative continued under various
laundry proprietors after the Union's downfall, the entire block was leveled and replaced by a
parking garage in 1942. A careful review of the historical materials that are available turned up
no particular laundry (with the exception of the Union Cooperative) linked to Kate Mullany.
Because of the destruction of other relevant structures, 350 8th St. is the most appropriate choice
for nomination.
HISTORY
Born
1845
Kate Mullany and her family immigrated to America from Ireland sometime before 1850, the
year when Irish-born Kate turned 5 and her younger sister Ellen was born in New York State.
The family first appeared in the Troy, New York city directory of 1852-53 with the listing of
Dominick Mullony, laborer, then living at 61 North Third Street. In subsequent directories the
surname was listed as "Mullany". The family moved frequently from 1852-1868 but remained
in the same central Troy neighborhood near to their church, St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church.
In 1860 the family household consisted of the mother Bridget, 55, who peddled dry goods, Mary,
21, a seamstress, Catherine, 19, who "works out", and Bridget, 15, then still in school. Their
father Dominick was still listed in the local directory at their address, but he was not living with
the family. It is possible that as an unskilled laborer, he had moved elsewhere to find
employment. He died sometime in 1864. A listing for Bridget Mullany, a widow, first appears
in 1865 at 34 North 3rd Street. (The family is variously listed as living at 34 N. 1st, 34 N.
2nd, and 34 N. 3rd Streets in the years between 1861-1868.) (None of these buildings still
stand.)
In September 1864, Bridget Mullany purchased the two lots on which the double rowhouse
350-352 Eighth Street stands, and by 1869 the family had moved into the top apartment of 350.
A small cottage at 356 Eight Street was purchased in 1874. The double rowhouse was designed
to be income-producing, with a rental unit on each floor and the family living in the larger top
floor unit at 350 Eighth. At Bridget Mullany's death in 1876,
she willed the three houses to each of her three daughters. Catherine Agnes Mullany was given
the premises and "the rents profits and income arising from the three story brick dwelling house
and lot 25 by 100 ft No 350 on the east side of Eighth St Troy N.Y. during her lifetime." The
U.S. Census of 1870 records six families in the double rowhouse at 350-352 Eighth Street.
Kate Mullany, then 25 years old and a laundry worker, lived with her widowed mother
Bridget, and an older sister Mary.¹ Members of the Mullany family were recorded as living
'The Federal Census of 1870 included three younger Mullanys in the household: Ellen, Alice and Frank, then
ages 20, 16, and10. These three are not listed, however, in any other census records of the Mullany households,
nor in family wills or burial plots, and their exact relationships to Kate are still unknown. It is possible they were
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No.
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration
there at various times until at least 1910, when Mary Mullany died at that address. The house
at 350 8th Street continued to be Kate's residence off and on until her death in 1906.2
Catherine Mullany Fogarty, by then a widow, was described in court records at the time of her
death as "an aged woman engaged in no business" who "for a number of years past had lived
upon her rents arising from said real property." The property was apparently mortgaged circa
1897-98 when the city sued for back taxes and assessments on the property. [Rensselaer County
Deeds, 1897, 263/419 and 263/423.] The house is the only remaining structure associated with
Kate Mullany during her period of leadership in the labor movement.
The admission of women into existing trade unions in the early 1860s was extremely limited.
Of the thirty national trade unions existing at the time, only two, the printers and the cigar
makers, were open to women.³ Yet women made up one-quarter of the nonfarm labor force.
In Lowell and elsewhere, women workers had successfully organized themselves in the 1840s
to protest working conditions and win concessions from management, but these unions were
often issue-specific, within a single factory, and only lasted as long as necessary to resolve the
particular issue under debate. The Collar Laundry Union organized by Kate Mullany in 1864
was no different in its origins, but it continued to fight for union principles and actively
supported labor causes beyond its own membership throughout the half-decade of its existence.
The Collar Laundry Union came into being in February 1864 largely as a result of Kate
Mullany bringing together about two hundred of the collar laundry workers in Troy to protest
low wages and the introduction of starching machines that were scalding hot to handle and cut
prices for starching almost in half.4 Laundry work had traditionally been one of the
lowest-paying occupations for women. In the early 1860s Troy's laundry workers earned
from two to three dollars a week, working twelve-to fourteen-hour days over washtubs and
ironing tables in oppressive heat. 5 The Collar Laundry Union included washers, starchers and
ironers, but was made up principally of ironers, the most highly skilled in the hierarchy of
laundry workers. To understand the significance of the Collar Laundry Union, it is necessary
to understand the pivotal role of their work in the overall process of manufacturing and
marketing collars and cuffs.
The detachable shirt collar was first invented in Troy by Hannah Lord Montague, wife of
Orlando Montague, a prosperous merchant and manufacturer of women's fine shoes. Tired of
laundering her husband's shirts when only the collar needed cleaning, Mrs. Montague cut the
cousins or perhaps just boarders mistakenly listed as family by the census taker.
²Troy (New York) Record, August 18, 1906. At some point Kate Mullany had married John Fogarty and her
obiruary was listed under "Fogarty."
Susan Esterbrook Kennedy, If All We Did Was to Weep at Home: A History of White Working-Class Women
in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), p. 5, 81.
"Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement from Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I
(New York: The Free Press, 1979). P 124. Carole Turbin, Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and
Community in Troy, New York, 1864-1866 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 112-13.
"Kennedy, If All We Did Was to Weep at Home, p. 80.
NPS Form 10-900
USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86)
OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Page 9
United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
collars off and attached tapes to either end so that they could be washed, starched and ironed
separately from the shirt. While Mrs. Montague was the first to create the detachable collar, it
was the Reverend Ebenezer Brown, a retired Methodist minister and owner of a small dry
goods store in Troy, who first made and sold the detachable collar in 1829. By 1834, Orlando
Montague and his partner Austin Granger, had set up a business to manufacture detachable
collars, as had Lyman Bennett. Other manufacturers soon followed. The nation's first
commercial laundry was established in Troy in the 1830s to wash, starch, and iron products
for local collar manufacturing firms.
By the mid-nineteenth century, starched white shirts, collars, and cuffs had become the
mainstay of the wardrobes of men from middle-class families involved in commercial
occupations where personal appearance was an important ingredient in meeting the public.
Thus the term "white collar worker" came into popular use. Detachable collars also created
stylish variations for men and women to adapt a single shirt to the needs of different social
occasions. The demand for these items increased to such an extent that by the 1860s Troy had
become the producer of almost all of the nation's detachable collars and cuffs. Troy's shirt,
collar, and cuff industry was seventh in capital investment of New York State's already vast
clothing industry. The collar industry in Troy in the 1860s employed 3,700 women, almost
half of Troy's female industrial workers, and was the single largest employer of women.⁷
Thousands more women throughout the city and surrounding countryside worked in their own
homes, hand-stitching and turning collars delivered daily on the "collar express." Fifteen
collar manufacturers employed female machine operators in factories ranging in size from
25-550 employees, while the fourteen collar laundries operating in Troy at the same time
employed only about six hundred women who worked in small shops in groups of 10-20.
Laundering was an essential part of the manufacturing process for shirts, blouses, and
detachable collars and cuffs. This was especially true of collars and cuffs, easily soiled in
manufacturing by the many processes done by hand, as well as by travel back and forth from
home sewers. Washing, starching, and ironing these items after they were manufactured and
before they were distributed were just as important as making them. The laundering process
was quite involved: washing with soap; bleaching with chloride of soda; adding dilute of
sulfuric acid to further bleach the collars; and again washing in suds; boiling; rubbing and
rinsing; bluing and rolling; starching (with thin starch to be followed by a thick starch);
drying; and finally ironing.⁸ There was a great deal of interdependence among the laundry
workers. Starchers, for example, could not properly starch the garment unless it had been
thoroughly cleaned and ironers depended on starchers to apply the correct kind of starch as
well as the right amount. Ironing was the most skilled process, requiring a knowledge of
techniques, materials, and a combination of physical strength, endurance and manual
dexterity.9 An 1865 description of Troy laundry work vividly depicts the women standing
Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, pp. 19-21.
¹Ibid, pp. 21, 28, 43.
'Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 1213.
Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, pp. 45, 51.
NPS Form 10-900
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OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
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United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service
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"over the washtub and over the ironing table with furnaces on either side, the thermometer
averaging 100 degrees, for wages averaging $2.00 and $3.00 a week," for twelve to fourteen
hour days.
Since ironing was the last stage in the manufacturing/laundering process before the goods were
inspected, stamped with a style name, and packed in boxes by the dozen for shipping, the
work of the ironers was regarded as the most crucial to producing a good product and the
ironers were in a strategic position to control the availability of the finished product. Much of
how the finished product looked when it reached the market depended upon the skill of the
ironers, who had to use the appropriate amount of heat and pressure to produce and apply
finishing touches to determine the final shape and style of the garment. 10 Laundry owners
recognized the importance of the ironers by the wages they paid the respective laundry
workers: washers earned the least, starchers earned somewhat more, and the ironers were paid
wages which were considerably higher than that received by factory workers and public
laundry workers. 11 Of all of the laundry workers, the ironers were in the best position to
bargain with the laundry owners when labor issues arose.
When the Collar Laundry Union was formed in Troy, it was the ironers who took the initiative
for they were predominant in the membership. The first demonstration of the strength of the
new union came with a strike by all of the laundry workers against the city's fourteen
commercial laundry establishments during late February 1864, at the busiest season for the
industry. While the introduction of a new starching machine was one item of contention, the
principal demand was for a twenty-five percent increase in wages. Up to this time, laundry
work had been among the lowest paid jobs. One of the officers of the new union, Esther
Keegan, reflecting on pre-union days, commented that when the Civil War broke out a week's
wages could only buy a pair of shoes, and when the workers asked for higher wages, they
were not listened to. Things changed with the union, however. When they struck in 1864 for
a twenty-five percent increase, the laundry owners capitulated, giving the laundresses what
they wanted in less than a week after they left their shops. 12
The Collar Laundry Union credited Troy's Iron Molders' Union No. 2 with providing the
inspiration for them to form a union and to strike for better wages. By the 1860s the iron and
collar industries dominated the local economy. Troy's iron industry was a nationally
important producer of both iron and iron products and employed approximately 2,000 men, a
considerable proportion (17%) of the city's working class men. Collar laundering and iron
work offered particularly attractive opportunities to Troy's Irish immigrants as relatively new,
expanding industries with open access to employment and advancement. Iron molding, like
commercial laundering, combined difficult physical labor at high temperatures, dangerously
heavy implements, and potentially harmful substances with the advantages of relatively steady,
well-paying industrial work making important, highly visible products. Iron molders and
"[bid, p. 28.
"Ibid, p. 52.
"Ibid, pp. 107-09.
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OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
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United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
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laundry ironers held the most highly skilled positions within their field, both requiring long
apprenticeships to learn the skills, endurance, and manual dexterity required. In Troy, most
of the collar laundresses and iron molders were Irish immigrants. Their expertise was
reflected in their earnings and their high status within the Irish working class community. The
Iron Molders' Union No. 2 was the center of Troy's active labor movement in the 1860s.
Founded on May 1, 1858, the local was the second to join the Iron Molder's International
Union and Trojans were among the most prominent trade unionists in that major national
union. The IMIU helped shape the strategies and policies of other unions, as well as the
National Labor Union, the first national labor organization which met annually from 1868 to
1875. Early in February 1864, the Trojan molders successfully struck foundry owners for a
15% pay increase. Their example was emulated by Trojan laundry workers later that same
month.
The Collar Laundry Union showed its appreciation to the molders at a picnic celebrating
working class unity on July 18, 1864. Four thousand working people witnessed the Collar
Laundry Union's presentation of an elaborately embroidered full-color banner with a picture of
the interior of a furnace in full blast on one side and a picture of "Justice" surmounted by an
eagle on the other side, along with ribbons bearing the inscription: "Presented by the Collar
Laundry Union of Troy, to the Iron Molders' Association." Decorated with symbols of the
common goals and values that the two unions held, the banner and its presentation were public
statements of the Collar Laundry Union's legitimate and prominent place in Troy's
well-organized labor movement, and its close alliance, based on mutual respect and
reciprocity, with the city's most prominent male trade union. 13
The strong alliance with the Iron Molders Union would become even stronger over the next
few years, especially in April 1866, when the Collar Laundry Union donated the amazing
amount of $1,000 to the molders after they had been locked out by the iron founders of Troy
as a result of a labor dispute. By this time, the Collar Union had succeeded in raising their
own wages to $8 to $14 per week, although they still worked 12-14 hour days. The
contribution by the Collar Laundry Union received favorable attention in the press and brought
them recognition from the Troy Trades' Assembly, who invited them to become affiliated and
added a section of books relating to women to its Labor Free Library and Reading Room. 14
The lockout of the iron molders escalated into Troy's largest and most protracted labor
dispute, with national attention. William H. Sylvis, the Philadelphia iron molder who
transformed the Iron Molders' International Union into the largest and most effective trade
union of the period after he became president in 1863, rallied national union support for the
Trojan iron molders. 15 Sylvis was long acquainted with Troy. He had spoken at the "great
picnic of the Troy Trades' Assembly to raise money for the library and reading room" in
August 1864, crediting working women with the success of that library and reading room. He
went on to say that he "hoped thereby to convince the 'old fogies' in other cities to begin
¹³Ibid, p. 1.
"Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 124.
"Ibid, p. 124.
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OMB No. 1024-0018
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
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United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service
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making common cause with working women. "16 A special friend of Kate Mullany, Sylvis was
one of the earliest supporters of women's trade unions.
Sylvis had the opportunity to further the cause of working women when he called a congress
of national labor leaders to meet in Baltimore on August 26, 1866. The National Labor Union
grew out of this meeting, part of Sylvis' dream to have a nationwide association that would
represent all workers, including women.¹⁷ At the National Labor Union congress in New
York City in September 1868, Sylvis was chosen president. With Sylvis at its head, "this new
organization for the first time created a national labor leadership" for he was the "first truly
national labor leader in the United States." As president of the Iron Molders' International
Union, Sylvis had traveled the country urging iron molders to organize, and in doing so had
"made himself a true spokesman for labor, and his words commanded attention and respect."
So highly regarded was he that the New York Sun's account of his selection as NLU president
noted that his name was as "familiar as a household word. "18
Knowing the high esteem in which Sylvis was held, the action that the members of the
National Labor Union took in September 1868, electing Kate Mullany to a position of
leadership, makes her selection that much more important. She was initially elected to be
second vice president, but that action had to be annulled because the first vice president was
from New York and it was not considered appropriate to have two vice presidents from the
same state. Delegates to the congress praised Mullany for "having shown great business
ability in organizing and rendering prosperous the establishment of which she is head," and for
the Collar Laundry Union's recent contribution of $500 to sustain the New York City
bricklayers' strike. 19
Sylvis instead appointed Mullany assistant secretary, responsible for corresponding with
working women and coordinating national efforts to form working women's associations. In
his closing remarks, Sylvis told his colleagues: "We now have a recognized officer from the
female side of the house-one of the smartest and most energetic women in America; and from
the great work which she has already done, I think it not unlikely that we may in the future
have delegates representing 300,000 working women." Women delegates attending the
congress were impressed on two counts: first, that they were allowed to attend as delegates,
and second, because the appointment of Mullany to organize working women proved that "the
recognition of woman [was] to be future policy of the National Labor Congress. "20 Mullany's
¹⁶lbid, p. 126, Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 112.
"Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 125; Paul S. Boyer, et. al. The Enduring Vision: A
History of the American People (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1990), PP. 629-30.
¹⁸Foster Rhea Dulles and Melvyn Dubofsky, Labor in America: A History (Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan
Davidson, Inc., 4th edition, 1984), pp. 95-100.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 113.
²⁰Foner. Women and the American Labor Movement, P. 134.
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appointment was a milestone in the historyof working women; "she was the first female
appointment to a national labor union office. "21
The selection of Kate Mullany to an important position within the National Labor Union
reflected Sylvis' opinion about the presence of women in the labor market. Women were in
the industrial life to stay, he said, and "if the wage standards of the mechanics were to be
defended, all women workers had to be organized into unions and their wage standards
equalized with those of men." He argued that if labor were to achieve its goals, it was
necessary for working women to be included: "How can we hope to reach the social elevation
for which we all aim without making women the companion of our advancement?"
Commitment on the part of the National Labor Union to work toward achieving those goals
was demonstrated by the report of the Committee on Female Labor which was adopted by the
1868 National Labor Congress. That report urged the extension of eight-hour demands to
women workers, equal pay for equal work, and trade unions for working women. It also
encouraged women "to learn trades, engage in business, join our labor unions, or form
protective unions of their own." In adopting this report, the National Labor Union became
"the first labor federation in world history to vote for equal pay for equal work. "22 It was
obvious that Sylvis saw in Kate Mullany someone who could do much to advance the goals of
the National Labor Union and working women in America.
Mullany used her Collar Laundry Union to financially assist other unions, such as the Iron
Molders' Union in Troy and the Bricklayers' Union in New York City, and to help in the
organization of women. The union was able to do this because it had accumulated a treasury
larger than that of most men's locals. At the time of the bricklayers' strike in September 1868,
Mullany praised the "ladies connected with the laundry union who were just as competent as
gentlemen." When a reporter from the New York Sun interviewed Kate Mullany in September
1868, he suggested that the organization of working women in New York City lagged because
women weren't capable of being officers in trade union. Mullany defended women's leadership
abilities, responding that "there are numbers of ladies connected with the laundry union who
were just as competent as any gentlemen." She then offered to send Trojan women to New York
and to pay their expenses in training local women as trade unionists. 23 It was this sort of
response that led to the national recognition of Mullany's unionizing abilities, and her subsequent
election as National Labor Union vice-president.
As already noted, male unionists cited the Collar Laundry Union as an example of
self-sufficiency that should be used as a model for other women in organizing. Alexander
21 Charles P. Neill, Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1911), vol. 10; History of Women in Trade Unions, by W.D.P. Bliss and John B.
Andrews, 107. as cited in Page Putnam Miller et. al., "Draft, National Historic Landmark Nomination,
Mullaney, Kate, House," Section 8, p. 3.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 113; Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 133;
Kennedy, If All We Did Was to Weep at Home, p. 85.
"Turbin in Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, Women of America: A History, (New York, New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), pp. 210.
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Troup of New York City's typographers recommended that the women compositors organize,
using as an example "the great power of the Troy Collar Union
When they strike they
compel the manufacturers to accede to them." On October 8, 1868, less than two weeks from
the time Troup made this suggestion, the Women's Typographical Union No. 1 was formed
under the leadership of Augusta Lewis. 24 Particularly impressive was the fact that by the
beginning of 1866 the Collar Laundry Union had succeeded in increasing their wages from
$2-3 a week to $8-12 or occasionally to fourteen dollars a week, an amount that was higher
than most working women and almost on parity with some men's wages 25 By the time of
Mullany's selection as an officer in the National Labor Union, the Collar Laundry Union had
grown to over five hundred members.
Until 1869 Mullany and her union were successful in getting the laundry operators to meet
their demands, especially for wage increases, because of the strategic position the ironers held
in the laundering process. As the last people to work on the garments before they were
prepared for marketing, ironers were able to apply coercive tactics like withholding their
labor. Since the individual laundry owners ran relatively small operations without a lot of
capital to sustain them if they were not producing for the manufacturers, they gave in to the
laundresses' demands by raising the price they charged the manufacturers. It was different in
1869, however. When the Collar Laundry Union went on strike on May 28, asking for higher
wages, proprietors refused the union's demand. This time, the collar manufacturers took the
initiative, forming an association to further their business interests and combining with the
laundry proprietors to kill the union. The manufacturers insisted that laundry owners unite
with them against the union rather than dealing with employees' demands in the usual way by
asking manufacturers to absorb increases. The manufacturers pressured laundry owners into
holding out indefinitely against the union by refusing to send new collars and cuffs to any
laundry employing union ironers. Collar manufacturers also helped laundry owners obtain a
new non-union workforce by helping to recruit and train new workers. 26
All parties to the dispute continued to hold out despite hardships because the stakes were high.
For workers it was a test of their union's ability to survive; for the manufacturers and laundry
owners it was a question of living with reduced production. The ironers were determined not
to return to work without their union's protection. As union official Esther Keegan addressed
the New York State Workingmen's Assembly in July 1869: "Since the union protected their
rights as workers for six years, they were 'not willing to go back into that state of slavery in
which they were six years ago.'" Assuming that the working men shared with laundresses an
understanding of trade unionism, Keegan told her listeners: "You know what a union is; you
know full well the value of cooperation." Expressing pride in her union's determination and
unity, Keegan eloquently continued: "We have been out of money six weeks and but two of
our number have given in I fancy but there are few men's organizations that can show such
a record, and we are nothing but women." Their unity was the "mother of success" and the
"Kennedy, If All We Did Was to Weep at Home, p. 86.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 114.
"Ibid, p. 158.
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Collar Laundry Union's success was the "mother of their commitment to trade unionism."
Keegan's reference to the laundresses as "nothing but women" suggests that "collar
laundresses considered themselves to be not only freeborn women with equal rights but also
working-class women who were subordinate" yet men's equals as trade unionists. While
"identifying themselves squarely within the labor movement, collar laundresses were
concerned with women's issues that were directly related to working-class families' daily life
and economic goals, not with rights or identities shared by all women.'
Clearly, the objectives of suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
and those of women trade unionists, particularly Kate Mullany and Esther Keegan, were not
the same. This was made plain to Mullany during a visit she made with Keegan in July 1869
to the Working Women's Association, founded by Stanton and Anthony. Mullany and Keegan
visited the New York City office of the association hoping to secure badly needed funds to
support the strike, but as Mullany observed, "they were not the working-women whom she
had been accustomed to see. She had to work all day in the shop, and this she did not think,
judging from their appearance, they did." The association responded in a lukewarm manner
with a thirty dollar donation to the laundresses of Troy. The level of the association's
contribution suggested to Mullany that the interests of Stanton's and Anthony's Working
Women's Association were much more with women gaining the right to vote than with
advancing the cause of working women. 28
While the Working Women's Association's contribution to the Collar Laundry Union's strike
fund was less than expected, almost every union in New York City responded generously.²
Back in Troy there was also widespread support. Most noteworthy was the contribution of the
molders, who resolved only a few days after the strike began: "We will to a man support our
fellow workingwomen who are now struggling for their just dues and independence. Our hand
is in theirs and the purse in it." The molders agreed to open Molders' Hall to the ironers'
meetings and to donate $500 per week to the ironers "as long as the strike shall last." In late
July there was a picnic, at which five to six thousand people donated $1,200 to assist the
ironers. At the picnic, local labor leader Dugald Campbell read a letter from William Sylvis
in which the president of the National Labor Union praised "the Troy Girls for working hard,
doing what they could in a practical way to work out their own salvation." Continuing his
praise, Sylvis noted, "They have acted out the old saying, 'Who would be free must
themselves strike the [first] blow. 1930 A few days after this letter of support was read, Sylvis
died after a short and sudden illness. The labor movement had lost a great leader and the
National Labor Union never recovered from his death. Kate Mullany and the Collar Laundry
Union had also lost a great friend, and never at a more inopportune time. In the ensuing
tailspin in NLU headquarters, union financial aid was temporarily suspended.
"Ibid, pp. 124-127.
"Ibid. pp. 142-43.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p.162.
p. 162.
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Although contributions continued to come in ($4,510 had been received by September 1869)
Kate Mullany and her fellow officers decided to have the union establish its own cooperative
laundry. This proved unsuccessful when local manufacturers prevented out-of-town collar
makers from supplying the cooperative with newly made collars. The next entrepreneurial
endeavor was to start a cooperative collar and cuff factory of their own. Establishing such a
cooperative was proposed by Mullany as a means of allowing wage earners to escape the wage
system by becoming small entrepreneurs.³¹ Also, it was very much in keeping with the trade
unionists' belief that a cooperative allowed its operators to benefit directly from their own
labor, thereby eventually eliminating the wage system, considered to be at the core of workers'
difficulties.
32
Plans for the cooperative were announced by union vice president Keegan in her July 3
presentation to the New York Workingmen's Assembly: "We are determined as the last resort
to buy the materials and manufacture for ourselves, and put the union label upon our work;
and we look confidently to you that you will not buy a collar or a shirt that does not have the
union brand on it." Keegan was confident that "every Union man" would buy their "work, and
also every fair man in the country. "33 Keegan's presentation won for the union the unqualified
support of William Jessup, the assembly's president, whose job was to investigate conflicts to
determine those worthy of contributions. During 1868-69, only two conflicts in New York
State qualified: the ironers' strike and the New York City bricklayers' strike. The assembly's
support included the issuance of a circular explaining the cause of the strike and asking for
broader support: "Workingmen, will you stand idly by and see this without lending a hand to
their support? This is the first time in the annals of our history that you have been appealed to
for aid and support in behalf of a female labor organization." Jessup explained that the
ironers' strike was an effort for them to maintain their right to protect themselves from
employers and manufacturers who were trying to destroy the union by starving its members
into subjection to accept the employers' terms. He went on to point out that the Collar
Laundry Union shared trade unionists' goal of avoiding coercive strategies like strikes in favor
of producers' cooperatives. The collar laundresses were taking the "higher step" of attaining
self-sufficiency by establishing a producers' cooperative. "The object is feasible," he said, so
"let us all contribute with a willing heart and an open hand. "34
The cooperative collar and cuff factory was formed with Kate Mullany as president and
Dugald Campbell, one of the founders of the iron molders' cooperative of Troy and one of the
most ardent supporters of the laundresses, as the first agent. He encouraged prospective
investors to purchase shares of stock and located retailers who would market the cooperative's
product. Things looked promising for the cooperative when "the merchant prince of New
"Ibid., p. 143.
³²Ibid., p. 163.
"Tbid., pp. 121-22.
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York, A.T. Stewart," agreed "to take all the goods manufactured by the laundry girls'
cooperative and place them immediately on the market. #35
Despite the ironers' strong determination to save their union and the generous support of the
labor movement, the manufacturers and laundry owners eventually won the battle. The union
was dissolved in early September 1869 and, with the exception of the leaders who were
refused employment, ironers went back to work at the old wages. 36 The cooperative collar
factory and laundry continued in existence, however, until at least the spring of 1870, and
possibly until 1872. 37
Susan B. Anthony had the opportunity to see the cooperative in operation during a visit in
February 1870 with Kate Mullany and three of her associates (most likely Ann Tellers,
formerly the union's secretary, Sarah McQuillan, former treasurer, and Esther Keegan, former
vice president.) This appears to have been Mullany's first meeting with Anthony, since
Anthony was away on a speaking engagement when Mullany and Keegan had visited the
Workingwomen's Association in New York in the summer of 1869. Although Mullany and
Anthony disagreed on matters pertaining to the suffragist movement as they related to working
women's rights, Anthony expressed considerable appreciation for the work Mullany and her
associates had done while the union was active, calling the union the best organized women's
union she had known. She was equally complimentary of what Mullany was trying to do with
the cooperative. Describing Mullany as a "bright young Irish girl," Anthony reported on her
visit to Troy in a speech at Cooper Institute in New York City. Mullany and "several other
young Irish women," were working in "an upper room of a large building," and were dressed
in "the simplest calico." Although they earned "barely enough to cover their rent they were
trying to establish the fact, that women can be employers." Anthony expressed deep sympathy
for "this working-women's venture. "I have not had my heart [so] stirred for long years with
the terrible fact of the struggle that women have to get a place and position beside men in
business, as by the story and efforts of these three girls." On questioning, Mullany attributed
the failure of the strike not to the laundresses' gender but to their inability as workers to
control the middle class press, which allied itself with the employers. Anthony concluded
nevertheless that "If those collar laundry women had been voters, they would have held, in
that little city of Troy, the 'balance of political power'
The condition of those collar
laundry women but represents the utter helplessness of disenfranchisement. "38
In considering how Mullany related to suffragists such as Anthony, one needs to keep in mind
that Mullany identified primarily as a worker rather than a woman, and the interests she
shared with suffragists "were related less to what they had in common as women, than to trade
"Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 156.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 163.
³⁷Miller, "Draft National Historic Landmark Nomination Kate Mullaney House, Section 8, p. 4.
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, pp. 143-144.
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unionists' and some suffragists' shared concerns about wage earners. "39 Mullany kept in touch
with suffragists who agreed with trade unionists that "women wage earners could escape wage
slavery by transforming themselves into small entrepreneurs who were not dependent on wages
for their livelihood." She wrote to Anthony's publication, The Revolution, in April 1870, to
report on the cooperative factory, saying that the "girls" hoped "to proceed on a purely
business basis, by doing the work themselves," and that they planned to "buy up all the
stock." The "girls," she reported, had made good progress in securing the needed capital,
$10,000. Additional support for the cooperative was given by the newly formed
Workingwomen's State Labor Union of New York, who commended "our working girls of
Troy" and pledged to do all they could to help "both in subscribing for stock in their
enterprise and advocating the sale of their goods, which we believe to be the best and cheapest
manufactured."
That same month, The Workingman's Advocate reported that Alexander Troup of the
typographers' union in New York City, had gone "to Troy to reside" to "devote himself to the
interests of the women's cooperative." Since this represented a major change for Troup, it is
believed that he and Mullany fully expected the cooperative to continue for some time. The
1870 city directory for Troy lists the cooperative as "Union Co-operative Collar Manuf.,
Union House block, Broadway." (The building no longer stands.) The directory also lists
Alexander Troup as superintendent and Kate Mullany as a cooperative collar manufacturer.
No further listings of the factory exist in directories, and the exact date of the closing of the
cooperative is not known. 40 It, like the National Labor Union, certainly did not survive the
national panic of 1873 and probably closed before then.
Little definitive information is known about Kate Mullany's life after 1870, the only time she
is mentioned in the city directories with that name. Because she was a union officer, she had
long been thought to have been "blackballed" by local laundries and unable to obtain
employment after 1872. Interestingly, the New York State census of 1875 does seem to
indicate that Kate was still in Troy working as a laundress in that year, but by 1880 she was
no longer living with her sisters.41
Kate Mullany married John Fogarty sometime after 1882 and seems to have remained in the
Troy area. In 1903 Catherine (Kate) Fogarty moved back to 350 Eighth Street to live with her
sister Mary Mullaney. Catharine Fogarty "widow of John" first appears in Troy directories in
1903 and is listed annually at 350 8th street until her death is noted in 1906. Catherine Mullany
Fogarty died at 350 8th Street at the age of 65, on August 17, 1906. Interestingly, the property at
350-352 Eighth Street is noted in deed records in 1897 as being last taxed or assessed to Mary
"Ibid, p. 143.
"Ibid, pp. 164, 170.
"A Mullany daughter of Kate's age and occupation is listed bya census enumerator as "Bridget", while the
true sister Bridget, by then married to John McMahon, is also listed in a separate household at the same address.
Bridget McMahon's married name was rewritten by the enumerator over his first entry of "Bridget Mullany".
(New York State Census, 1875, 10th Ward, p.1.)
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E. Mullany and "Catherine A. Mullany," a full name for a formal document that could have
been shortened among family to "Kate."
Although Kate Mullany and members of the Collar Laundry Union had to dissolve the union
after their unsuccessful three months strike in the summer of 1869, the militant spirit that
characterized the union of the 1860s was not totally extinguished. Union organization all over
America declined significantly during the economic depressions of the 1870s, but increased
again in the following decade. In the spring of 1886 the collar laundresses of Troy, some of
them veterans of the earlier Collar Laundry Union, formed the four-thousand member Joan of
Arc Assembly of the Knights of Labor. It was the largest of Troy's thirty-eight Knights of
Labor locals, and the largest assembly of women knights in the nation. 42 Troy's collar
laundresses were again a significant part of the national labor movement. Their long but
ultimately unsuccessful strike in 1886 was closely tied with the story of the influence and
decline of the national Knights of Labor movement, as were later affiliations and activities by
collar women of Troy in AFL-affiliated locals.
A last nationally-publicized strike was organized by Trojan collar starchers in 1905 with the
support of the local Central Labor Federation and Iron Worker's Union, the Women's Trade
Union League of New York City, Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of
Labor, and the International Shirt, Waist, and Laundry Workers Union. The ten-month strike was
a failure, however, in the face of a united Collar Manufacturers Association, the opposition of the
local press, and the lack of support from other collar workers. By 1906 labor unions had ceased
to exist in the largely female work force of the collar industry.
Research has yet to confirm, but it seems quite possible that Kate Mullany continued to be active
in organizing local women workers throughout her lifetime. Her death certificate lists her
occupation as that of starcher, and one of the most prominent floral tributes at her funeral in 1906
was sent by members of Starchers Union No. 43 In addition, at least two of the leaders of that
starchers' strike, Rose Byron and Katie Fitzgerald, lived less than one block away on Ninth
Street.
As the leader and organizer of Troy's first successful "bonafide" women's union, Kate
Mullany was directly responsible for this strong tradition of women's union activity. Augusta
Lewis, president of the Women's Typographical Union No. 1, travelled with Mullany on her
fundraising trip to New York City in the summer of 1869. Biographical information strongly
suggests that she was the author of a widely reprinted article in the New York Sun, July 5, 1869,
by "A Working. Woman." In that article she called the Troy Collar Laundry Union "a real
working women's association", which acted to free itself rather than theorized. She pointed to the
union as a national example of working women uniting for a common cause. "Others will be
encouraged by their success, and be stimulated by their example to see to elevate their own
"Turbin, Working Women of Collar City, p. 3; Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, p. 207.
"Troy Record, August 21, 1906, p. 8; Troy (New York) Times, August 20, 1906.
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condition, as the female cap makers of this city are now doing. In thus elevating one class of
workingwomen, the good results will be felt by every other 1144
Her recognition on a national level for the accomplishments of the Troy Collar Laundry
Union, as well as the position she held in her own right as the National Labor Union's first
female assistant secretary, mark Kate Mullany as one of early American labor history's most
important women. Her home at 350 Eighth Street, Troy, New York, the only surviving
structure associated with her life and the physical embodiment of the true meaning of union
activities, is truly deserving of National Historic Landmark status.
"Turbin in Berkin/Norton, Women of America: A History, pp. 221-222.
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9. MAJOR BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
Berkin, Carol Ruth; Norton, Mary Beth. Women of America: A History. New York, New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979.
Boyer, Paul S.; Clark, Clifford E. Jr.; Kett, Joseph F.; Purvis, Thomas L.; Sitkoff, Harvard;
Woloch, Nancy. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Lexington,
Massachusetts, Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1990.
Dulles, Foster Rhea; Dubofsky, Melvyn. Labor in America: A History. Arlington Heights,
Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., Fourth Edition, 1984.
Foner, Philip S. Women in the American Labor Movement from Colonial Times to the Eve of
World War I. New York: The Free Press, 1979.
Kennedy, Susan Estabrook. If All We Did Was to Weep at Home: A History of White
Working-Class Women in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Miller, Page Putnam; Mesirow, Jill S.; Laas, Andrew. "Draft, National Historic Landmark
Nomination, Mullaney, Kate, House," February 27, 1992.
Padula, Ferdinand F. Stand Fast! A Chronicle of the Workers' Movement in New York State.
Albany: New York State Department of Labor, 1993.
Troy (New York) Record, August 18-21, 1906.
Troy (New York) Times, August 20, 1906.
Turbin, Carole. Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, New
York, 1864-1886. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Walkowitz, Daniel J. Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy
and Cohoes, New York 1855-84. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1978.
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Previous documentation on file (NPS):
Preliminary Determination of Individual Listing (36 CFR 67) has been requested.
Previously Listed in the National Register.
Previously Determined Eligible by the National Register.
Designated a National Historic Landmark.
Recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey: #
Recorded by Historic American Engineering Record: #
Primary Location of Additional Data:
State Historic Preservation Office
Other State Agency
Federal Agency
Local Government
University
Other (Specify Repository):
10. GEOGRAPHICAL DATA
Acreage of Property: Less than one acre.
UTM References:
Zone Easting
Northing
A
18
607900
4732560
Verbal Boundary Description:
The nominated property comprises the southern half of lot 30 in block 5, section
101.23, in the City of Troy, Rensselaer County, New York.
Boundary Justification:
The boundary includes the southern half of lot 30 in block 5, section 101.23, that was
historically used off and on by labor leader, Kate Mullany, her mother, three sisters,
and one brother from 1869 until at least 1910. This is the only extant residence of this
nationally significant labor leader and her place of residence during her period of
nationally significant leadership in the labor movement.
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11. FORM PREPARED BY
Name/Title: Page Putnam Miller (Director), Jill S. Mesirow, and Andrew Laas,
National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (Original 1992 Draft)
John W. Bond, Historical Consultant (Revised 1995)
Rachel Bliven, Historian (Revised 1997)
Telephone:
202-544-2422 (Page Putnam Miller)
609-424-4653 (John Bond)
518-283-6353 (Rachel Bliven)
Date: September 4, 1997 (Revised)
NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS SURVEY
September 4, 1997
KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Troy, NY
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Kitchen
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Living Room
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Grade
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KATE MULLANY HOUSE
Troy, New York
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