In a class by themselves, however, were the female labor reform associations, which for some years did excellent work in widely separated cities.  These were strictly trade unions, in spite of their somewhat vague name.  They seem to have drawn their membership from the workers in the local trades.  That of Lowell, perhaps the best known, originated among the mill girls, but admitted other workers.  Lowell, as usual, was to the fore in the quality of its women leaders.  The first president of the Association was the brilliant and able Sarah G. Bagley.  She and other delegates went before the Massachusetts legislative committee in 1845, and gave evidence as to the conditions in the textile mills.  This, the first American governmental investigation, was brought about almost solely in response to the petitions of the working-women, who had already secured thousands of signatures of factory operatives to a petition asking for a ten-hour law.

The Lowell Association had their correspondent to the Voice of Industry, and also a press committee to take note of and contradict false statements appearing in the papers concerning factory operatives.  They had most modern ideas on the value of publicity, and neglected no opportunity of keeping, the workers’ cause well in evidence, whether through “factory tracts,” letters to the papers, speeches or personal correspondence.  They boldly attacked legislators who were false to their trust, and in one case, at least, succeeded in influencing an election, helping to secure the defeat of William Schouler, chairman of that legislative committee before which the women delegates had appeared, which they charged with dishonesty in withholding from the legislature all the most important facts brought forward by the trade-union witnesses.

Other female labor reform associations existed about this period in Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire.  The first-named was particularly active in securing the passage of the too soon wrecked ten-hour law.  In New York a similar body of women workers was organized in 1845 as the Female Industrial Association.  The sewing trades in many branches, cap-makers, straw-workers, book-folders and stitchers and lace-makers were among the trades represented.  In Philadelphia the tailoresses in 1850 formed an industrial union.  It maintained a cooeperative tailoring shop, backed by the support of such cooeperative advocates as George Lippard, John Shedden, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Oakes Smith.  In 1853 the Industrial Union published a report of its activities, showing that in two years the business had paid away in wages to tailoresses more than four thousand dollars.

In the men’s conventions of this time a number of women besides the redoubtable Sarah Bagley took an active part, being seated as delegates from their own labor reform associations.  At the meeting in 1846 of the New England Workingmen’s Association, for instance, Miss Huldah J. Stone, of Lowell, was elected recording secretary, and Mrs. C.N.M.  Quimby was appointed one of the board of six directors.  At all the meetings of the New England Congress, which met several times a year, the women’s point of view was well presented by the delegates from the various trades.