In 1909-1910, the WTUL took a leading role in supporting the Shirtwaist Strike, raising money for relief funds and bail, reviving an ILGWU local, organizing mass meetings and marches and providing pickets and publicity. Helen Marot, executive secretary of the New York WTUL branch, was the chief leader and organizer of this strike for the WTUL.
William English Walling, Mary Dreier, Helen Marot, Mary E. McDowell, Leonora O'Reilly and Lillian D. Wald were among the founders in 1909 of the NAACP, and this new organization helped support the Shirtwaist Strike by thwarting an effort of the managers to bring in black strikebreakers.
The WTUL continued to expand support of organizing campaigns, investigating working conditions, and aiding women strikers, in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin.
From 1909 on, the League also worked for the 8-hour day and for minimum wages for women, through legislation. The latter of those battles was won in fourteen states between 1913 and 1923; the victory was seen by the AFL as a threat to collective bargaining.
In 1912, after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, the WTUL was active in the investigation and in promoting legislative changes to prevent future tragedies such as this one.
That same year, in the Lawrence Strike by the IWW, the WTUL provided relief to strikers (soup kitchens, financial help) until the United Textile Workers pushed them out of the relief efforts, denying assistance to any strikers who refused to return to work. The WTUL/AFL relationship, always a bit uncomfortable, was further strained by this event, but the WTUL chose to continue to ally itself with the AFL.
In the Chicago garment strike, the WTUL had helped to support the women strikers, working with the Chicago Federation of Labor. But the United Garment Workers suddenly called off the strike without consulting these allies, leading to the founding of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers by Sidney Hillman, and a continuing close relationship between the ACW and the League.
In 1915, the Chicago Leagues started a school to train women as labor leaders and organizers.
In that decade, too, the league began to work actively for woman suffrage, working with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The League, seeing woman suffrage as a route to gain protective labor legislation benefiting women workers, founded the Wage-Earners League for Woman Suffrage, and WTUL activist, IGLWU organizer and former Triangle Shirtwaist worker Pauline Newman was especially involved in these efforts, as was Rose Schneiderman. It was during these pro-suffrage efforts, in 1912, that the phrase "Bread and Roses" came into use to symbolize the dual goals of reform efforts: basic economic rights and security, but also dignity and hope for a good life.
