Margaret Dreier Robins was a Female Labor leader, social reformer, president of New York branch of National Women's Trade Union League after 1904, president of the Chicago branch from 1907.
Background
Margaret Dreier Robins was born on 6 September 1868 in Brooklyn, New York, the first of five children of German parents, Theodor and Dorothea (Adelheid) Dreier. Her father had migrated to America in 1849 from Bremen, where for generations the Dreiers had been merchants and civic leaders. Finding employment in the New York branch of an English iron firm, he launched a successful career in the metal trade. On a visit to Germany in 1864, he married a cousin, the daughter of a country parson in the German Evangelical Church. Settling in Brooklyn, the Dreiers rose to local prominence. Margaret had a sunny childhood, growing up as she did in most comfortable circumstances amid a large, affectionate family. Her father, himself an active civic leader, also instilled in her a spirit of service and idealism.
Education
She attended small private schools in Brooklyn but did not go to college because her parents considered cultural pursuits more fitting.
Quickly wearying of the conventional round of social activities, she undertook as a young woman a private course of study in history and philosophy and increasingly moved in a high-minded circle of Brooklyn educators, ministers, and doctors.
Career
From the age of nineteen served as secretary-treasurer of the women's auxiliary of the Brooklyn Hospital.
In its wards she was first exposed in a direct way to the plight of the poor.
In her early thirties, as the momentum of social reform mounted in New York, Margaret Dreier found her vocation. Invited in 1902 to join the State Charities Aid Association's city visiting committee for the state insane asylums, she became a strong advocate of improved treatment of the insane.
She also helped transform the Women's Municipal League, originally founded to aid the candidacy of Seth Low for mayor of New York City in 1901, into a continuing organization for mobilizing women in support of social legislation.
These activities drew Miss Dreier under the tutelage of such notable reformers as Homer Folks.
She had discovered her calling, but not yet her distinctive place.
The National Women's Trade Union League had been formed in 1903 during the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor.
Although the initiative had come primarily from outside the labor movement--William English Walling was a prime mover--and membership was not restricted to wage workers, the League held closely to the trade union objectives of organizing female workers and improving their conditions through collective bargaining. In early 1904 Margaret and her sister Mary were enlisted into the League's struggling New York branch, and Margaret quickly became its president.
Thenceforth organized labor was the primary interest of the Dreier sisters. They gave it priority over legislation and social welfare for working women. It was not only a matter of wages and hours, Margaret argued.
On June 21, 1905, she married Raymond Robins, head of the Northwestern University Settlement in Chicago, and transferred her activities to that city.
In 1907 Mrs. Robins became president of the National Women's Trade Union League, as well as president of the Chicago branch.
She played a leading part in the great strikes of garment workers during the years 1909-11.
In Philadelphia she mobilized the middle-class women who raised money, acted as watchers on picket lines to prevent police brutality, and publicized the plight of the striking girls.
In Chicago she served on the strike committee and helped organize the commissary that fed thousands of strikers and their families.
At her instigation, the National Women's Trade Union League in 1914 established a school to train working women for trade union leadership--a pioneering effort in the American labor movement.
After World War I, Mrs. Robins's labor interests became international.
She called the first International Congress of Working Women, which convened in Washington, D. C. , in 1919, and served as its president until 1923. Until her retirement as N. W. T. U. L. president in 1922, she did yeoman service for the League, helping to edit its journal, Life and Labor, raising funds (including her own) for its activities, and through her vibrant and sympathetic personality giving it strong leadership.
Mrs. Robins engaged in a wide range of other activities, often along with her husband.
She participated in the woman suffrage movement and aided the work of her husband for municipal reform.
An active member of the Progressive party in 1912, she served on its state executive committee.
Achievements
As chairman of the League's legislative committee, she led the strenuous campaign of 1903-04 that resulted in a pioneering state law regulating private employment agencies in New York.
At her instigation, the National Women's Trade Union League in 1914 established a school to train working women for trade union leadership--a pioneering effort in the American labor movement.
After 1916 she supported the Republican party, and in 1919 and 1920 was a member of the women's division of the Republican National Committee.
In the 1930's, however, she became an enthusiastic supporter of the New Deal.
Views
Her father, himself an active civic leader, also instilled in her a spirit of service and idealism.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Beyond these [issues of wages and working hours] is the incentive for initiative and social leadership. .. The union shop calls up the moral and reasoning faculties, the sense of fellowship, independence and group strength. In every workshop there is unknown wealth of intellectual and moral resources" (New York Times, Feb. 22, 1945). To release these energies among America's depressed laboring women, Margaret Dreier committed herself to the Women's Trade Union League, and became thereby one of the handful of Progressives--and the most notable among them--who channeled their efforts primarily into trade unionism.
"More than any other single person, " in the judgment of a recent historian, "she was responsible for making the League an effective and efficient force for the organization and protection of women wage earners" (Davis, Spearheads for Reform, p. 146).
Connections
On June 21, 1905, Margaret married Raymond Robins, head of the Northwestern University Settlement in Chicago, and transferred her activities to that city.
Although both were independently wealthy, they moved into a cold-water flat in a tenement in Chicago's slum-ridden West Side and resided there through most of their active careers. They had no children.
Mrs. Robins engaged in a wide range of other activities, often along with her husband.
In 1925 Mrs. Robins and her husband moved permanently to their estate, Chinsegut Hill, in Hernando County, Florida, where they had vacationed ever since their marriage.
Suffering from pernicious anemia and rheumatic heart disease, she died there in 1945 and was buried on the estate.
