The Women's Trade Union League, nearly forgotten in much of the mainstream, feminist and labor history written in the mid-20th century, was a key institution in reforming women's working conditions in the early 20th century.
The WTUL not only played a pivotal role in organizing the garment workers and textile workers, but in working for protective labor legislation for women and better factory working conditions for all.
The WTUL also served as a community of support for women working within the labor movement, where they were often unwelcome and barely tolerated by the male national and local officers. The women formed friendships, often across class lines, as working-class immigrant women and wealthier, educated women worked together for both union victories and legislative reforms.
Many of the twentieth century's best-known women reformers were connected in some way with the WTUL: Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, Lillian Wald and Eleanor Roosevelt among them.
