#nothiddenlabor

The National Women’s Trade Union League (est. 1903) supported strikes that led to the establishment of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The NWTUL’s official seal was designed by the sculptor Julia Bracken Wendt. It depicts a young mother shaking hands with an allegorical female figure of victory. Wendt herself worked as a domestic servant until the woman who employed her enrolled her at the Art Institute of Chicago. This 1914 pamphlet promotes the NWTUL’s training school for women labor organizers. #NotHiddenLabor

As part of the #NotHiddenLabor challenge, this week we share this 1890 photograph showing laborers, including three African American men and one white youth without shoes, from the Philadelphia Grain Elevator Co. posing in front of a grain storage building. 

We are excited to join the Special Collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio, the Labor Archives of Washington, and Northwestern University’s Transportation Library in the September #NotHiddenLabor challenge! Each week this month we will be sharing items from our collection that document various aspects of the American labor movement, trade unions, and American workers in general. 

This Charles Pancoast photograph from our World War One Photograph and Ephemera Collection shows members of the National League of Workers taking a break from gardening at Little Wakefield in Germantown. Founded during World War One in 1917, the National League of Workers was formed by a group of women as a national organization geared toward the standardization of work of the women of the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it quickly became a nationwide force with a particularly large division in Pennsylvania.