Emblem of the Women's Trade Union League Courtesy Library of Congress

Delegates to the first WTUL convention (left to right: Hannah Hennesey, Ida Rauh, Mary Dreier, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Margaret Dreier Robins, Margie Jones, Agnes Nestor, Helen Marot), Richmond, Virginia, 1907 Courtesy Library of Congress

Garment workers found allies in the women's reform movements. As early as the 1860s, women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony took up the cause of seamstresses, exposing their working conditions in her publications. Founded in 1903, the National Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) gained national attention by bringing together women of all social classes to help organize working women. Although plagued by tensions and misunderstandings among women of different economic backgrounds, the WTUL provided crucially needed money and public support to the workers' cause.