The first woman labor editor and labor leader in the United States, Sarah G. Bagley was also the first president of the Female Labor Reform Association of Lowell, Massachusetts. During the 1840s Bagley became an important figure in New England, earning respect from both male and female workers. Representing a new moral consciousness in the United States, she exposed the oppression of women within the capitalist economy and brought about a change in attitudes toward the role of working women in American society. Even in the twenty-first century, when she has been largely forgotten, her views on class and gender and her suggestions for reforms continue to be relevant.

Sarah George Bagley was born in Candia, New Hampshire, on 29 April 1806. She was the third of five children of Nathan and Rhoda Witham Bagley. Her father was a farmer of some means, while her mother came from a family...