Margaret Dreier Robins

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Margaret Dreier Robins (1911)

Margaret Dreier Robins (born Margaret Dreier on September 6, 1868 in Brooklyn ; died on February 21, 1945 in Brooksville ) was an American trade unionist and suffragette .

Life

Margaret Dreier's father Theodor Dreier had emigrated from Germany after the revolution in 1848 , he worked as a merchant for a middle-class existence and in 1864 brought Dorothea Dreier, a distant cousin, from Bremen to join him . They had a son and four daughters. Dorothea Dreier and Katherine Dreier became painters, Mary Dreier (1875–1963), like Margaret Dreier, was involved in social policy and from the twentieth century in the women's movement. The children of the threesome received private tuition, especially in the arts, but the daughters did not attend college. At the age of 19 Margaret Dreier began to work (unpaid) at Brooklyn Hospital and took part in various social initiatives that, for example, took care of prostitutes or the living conditions of female domestic workers . In 1902 she was impressed by a meeting with the social reformer Josephine Lowell .

In 1905 Dreier married the lawyer and social politician Raymond Robins (1873-1964), they lived in Chicago and in the country house Chinsegut Hill acquired in 1904 by Robins and his sister Elizabeth Robins near Brooksville , Florida .

In 1904 she joined the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) and in 1905 she was union secretary in New York and from 1907 to 1914 in Chicago , where she was also a representative in the overarching union cartel . Already in 1907 she was elected union chairman of the WTUL and held this office until 1922. In 1910 she was one of the organizers of the nationwide strike of women textile workers, which, however, was neglected by the union leaders of the men's unions. She fought for reductions in working hours and in the union she cared for an organized training of trust women . In 1912 she supported Theodore Roosevelt's (renewed) presidential candidacy as a representative of the Progressive Party . She herself ran unsuccessfully for trustee of the University of Illinois that year .

In 1915 the governor of the state of Illinois put her on the state unemployment commission.

Dreier helped prepare the First International Congress of Women Workers in Paris in 1919, which followed the establishment of the International Labor Organization (ILO), when Rose Schneiderman was sent as a WTUL delegate , who later also became the union's chairwoman. Dreier retired in 1924 and from then on lived with her husband in Florida. She was then still active for the Young Women's Christian Association , the American Red Cross and the League of Women Voters.

Fonts (selection)

  • Self-government in the workshop: the demand of the Women's Trade Union League . Chicago: National Women's Trade Union League of America, 1919, 5 pages
  • Educational plans of the National Women's Trade Union League. National Women's Trade Union League of America, ca.1914, 4 pages
  • International Congress of Working Women, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, October 17, 1921: address to the delegates . Chicago: National Women's Trade Union League of America, 1921

literature

  • Mary Dreyer: Margaret Dreier Robins: Her Life, Letters and Work . New York: Island Press Cooperative, 1950
  • Elizabeth Anne Payne: Reform, labor, and feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women's Trade Union League . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988 ISBN 0-252-01445-6
  • Sandra Opdycke: Robins, Margaret Dreier , in: American National Biography , 1999

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mary Dreyer , in: Sheila Rowbotham : A Century of Women. The History of Women in Britain and the United States . London: Viking, 1997 ISBN 0-670-87420-5 , p. 596
  2. ↑ a b Margaret Dreier Robins , Her Hat Was In the Ring
  3. ^ Raymond Robins , at: spartacus
  4. ↑ Buying a house is documented in the article on Elizabeth Robins at ODNB. For information for the Wikipedia reader: en: Chinsegut Hill Manor House in the English Wikipedia, there also a photo of the property. At Commons there is a supposedly public domain photo of Margaret and Raymond renovating the property.
  5. ^ Margaret Dreier Robins , in: Encyclopædia Britannica
personal data
SURNAME Dreier Robins, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robins, Margaret Dreier; Dreier, Margaret (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American trade unionist and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1945
Place of death Brooksville (Florida)