A Separate Peace: Alice Henry on Women and Unions

Abstract: The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), established in 1903 by reformers seeking to combine the forces of trade unionism and feminism, faced particular obstacles when organizing women into unions. In this 1915 essay, published in The Trade Union Woman , WTUL leader Alice Henry discussed some of those problems and advocated separate women's locals as a possible solution. Another important organizing problem, which Henry did not discuss, was the tension between the middle-class reformers of the WTUL and the working-class women they wanted to organize but sometimes viewed with condescension. Henry was an Australian journalist of pro-labor and anti-imperialist sympathies. In 1906, she immigrated to the U.S., joined the fight for suffrage, and became a leader of the WTUL. Although she started out sharing the racist views of many Australians (where a "White Australia" policy was widely accepted), her time in America led her to adopt more favorable views of African Americans and immigrants.

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