Leonora O’Reilly

• Leonora O'Reilly
• Born: February 16, 1870
• Died: April 3, 1927

A founder of the Women’s Trade Union League and lifetime activist in both the labor reform and women’s rights movements, was born into an immigrant Irish family on New York City’s Lower East Side and grew up amid a lively and stimulating intellectual climate. Her father, John O’Reilly, was a printer and her mother, Winifred (Rooney) O’Reilly, worked in the city’s booming garment industry. John O’Reilly briefly tried his hand at an independent grocery business but could not keep the store going. With the failure of the business he was thrown back upon his wife’s income for support. The couple had a son who died before Leonora O’Reilly was born. Then, in 1871, John O’Reilly also died, leaving his wife and infant daughter with few financial resources. Winifred O’Reilly continued her work in the garment industry and at the age of thirteen Leonora followed her mother into the sweatshops.

For Leonora O’Reilly, the world of work on the Lower East Side combined harsh shop floor conditions with an exciting and growing movement for reform and labor organization. In 1886, with the encouragement of her mother, she joined the rapidly expanding Knights of Labor. There she met a number of labor activists who were to become lifelong friends and companions. O’Reilly’s experience in the Knights shaped her reform career throughout her life. The Knights were the largest national labor movement of the nineteenth century and the first actively to welcome women into their ranks. Through her involvement with them, O’Reilly began to organize a working women’s society on the Lower East Side. She was supported in this by fellow members of Knights of Labor, including Edward King, the “Socrates of the Lower East Side” and one of the labor movement’s most popular speakers. In the Knights she also met the socialist Victor Drury. The two became lifetime associates.

O’Reilly’s work with women in the Knights of Labor and her experience in organizing the Working Women’s Society brought her to the attention of many of the city’s leading social reformers. Josephine Shaw Lowell of the New York Board of Charities became especially interested in the society’s investigations of working conditions and its exposure of recalcitrant employers. Lowell, along with Louise Perkins, used much of the information collected by O’Reilly’s group to build the New York Consumers League in 1890.

O’Reilly’s connection with upper-class reformers remained a close one, and in 1894 Lillian Wald invited her to join the Social Reform Club of New York. Within three years O’Reilly became its vice president. She continued working with both labor groups and reform organizations throughout her life in an effort to bridge the gap between women of different class backgrounds. She often represented the voice of working-class women among the social reformers, and at the same time she frequently found herself a lone speaker for women’s rights among her colleagues in the labor movement.

During the 1880s and early 1890s, O’Reilly supported herself with jobs in the garment industry. By the end of the 1890s she had been instrumental in organizing a woman’s local of the United Garment Workers’ Association. But O’Reilly’s continued activism, combined with long hours in the shop, strained her energies. In 1897 some friends in the social reform movement funded her for a year of study. She gave up her shop work and entered a domestic arts program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

With the training she received at Pratt, O’Reilly began to conduct courses for garment workers, and in 1902 she went to work at the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. Since women were so often excluded from higher-paying jobs for lack of a skill, O’Reilly hoped that vocational education would increase young women’s skill levels and enable them to command better wages and working conditions. O’Reilly felt, moreover, that if women were more skilled in their jobs they would be more receptive to unionization.

O’Reilly’s commitment to trade unionism for women shaped her reform activities. In 1903 she participated in the founding of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). The league, established by a group of social reformers and a number of trade union women, was initially an effort to promote organization among working women, support the efforts of working-class women to join unions, and lend aid to women’s strikes.

The organization was fraught from the start with a division between the upper-class reformers and the women from the shops, but nonetheless the league managed in significant ways to overcome the differences. O’Reilly herself feared that the WTUL would become dominated by “do-gooders” who had no experience with working women, and at one point she resigned from the executive board. However, her friends on the board, particularly Mary Dreier and Margaret Dreier Robbins, pursuaded her to continue working in the league. O’Reilly became one of the league’s most popular speakers and was one of the organization’s key representatives in the historic strike of shirtwaist makers in 1909.

Along with Rose Schneiderman and other trade union women, O’Reilly helped to lay the foundation for the organization of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. O’Reilly remained on the executive board of the Women’s Trade Union League until 1913, when she was forced to resign for health reasons. Even after her resignation, when she was less able to travel and speak, she represented the league at international women’s conferences, including the gathering of women at The Hague in 1915.

By 1909 her reform activities had expanded to include issues beyond labor reform. That year, O’Reilly, along with Lillian Wald and Florence Kelley, were among those who signed the first call to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. O’Reilly also began to move closer to New York’s Socialist politics. Through her relationship with Victor Drury and her friendship with Florence Kelley, she finally joined the Socialist party in 1910. During this period, too, she often spoke on women’s rights and in 1912 she chaired the New York Suffrage party’s industrial committee.

O’Reilly lived with her mother throughout her life, often shouldering the financial burden of support for them both. In 1909 O’Reilly’s close friend Mary Dreier of the WTUL provided her with a lifetime annuity to enable her to devote full time to reform work. At their Brooklyn home, O’Reilly and her mother had a constant stream of visitors. Like many women activists of her time, O’Reilly never married; at one point she adopted a young girl, who tragically died two years later. She herself died at the age of fifty-seven, after suffering ill health for many years.

Leonora O’Reilly’s reform activities stand out as an attempt to break down the barriers between women of different backgrounds, uniting them in social movements and organizations. At the same time, she constantly fought to make the male-dominated labor movement aware of the importance of women’s issues.

Leonora O’Reilly’s papers are in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. A comprehensive biography appears in Notable American Women (1971). Two theses discuss her life and career: F. Howe, “Leonora O’Reilly, Socialist and Reformer,” honors thesis, Radcliffe College (1952) and E. L. Sandquist, “Leonora O’Reilly and the Progressive Movement,” honors thesis, Harvard (1966). For information on O’Reilly’s activities in the Women’s Trade Union League, see G. Boone, The Women’s Trade Union League in Great Britain and the United States of America (1942); P. S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement, vol. 1, From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I (1979); and B. Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America (1975).