Labor Journalism, Labor Feminism

About the Book

Founded in 1919, the Federated Press, the nation’s longest-running labor press association, relied on a network of correspondents and a small staff to collect, compile, and distribute news to labor newspapers. The women among those FP journalists played an important but largely unexamined role in the labor movement. By writing women into the labor news, by writing about the need for fair wages, equal pay, and an end to discrimination, by supporting protectionist legislation, by increasing women’s visibility in unions and the workforce, and by recognizing that women’s experiences in the workplace were shaped not just by their class, but also by their gender and their race, the journalists discussed in this book contributed to the growth of labor feminism. This collective biography of four women – Jessie Lloyd, Julia Ruuttila, Virginia Gardner, and Miriam Kolkin – explores how the FP, one of many organizations that served as a hub for progressive women’s activism between World War I and World War II, embedded gender-based issues within larger critiques of the American political and economic system. Their journalism and their activism formed a bridge linking the Old Left to the New Left, while the Federated Press served as a model of alternative journalism for later generations.