Queer Places:
Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery
Hillside, Cook County, Illinois, USA
.jpg/320px-Agnes_Nestor_(15539).jpg)
Agnes
Nestor (24 June 1880 – 28 December 1948) was an American labor
leader, politician, and social reformer.[1] She
is best remembered for her membership and leadership roles in the International
Glove Workers Union (IGWU) and the Women's
Trade Union League (WTUL), where she organized for women's
suffrage and workers' rights .[2] Nestor's
prominent activities included organizing women workers in Chicago in the early
1900s, running for public office, serving on national commissions to promote
education, and securing work-hour limitations for women.[1]
Agnes Nestor was born on June 24, 1880, in Grand
Rapids, Michigan to Thomas Nestor and Anna McEwen.[3] Her
father owned a grocery store there, but due to the depression of the 1890s he
returned to his old trade as a machinist in Chicago,
Illinois.[4] In
spring of 1897, Nestor and the rest of her family followed after their father
and headed to Chicago.[5]
Nestor, still in her teens, found work in Chicago's Eisendrath Glove
Company (a non-union shop).[4] In
her autobiography Woman's Labor Leader, Nestor discusses the company's unjust
practices such as: the company charged workers fifty cents a week for machine
rental, workers had to provide their own needles (and if somebody was to break
a needle they were charged for a new one to replace it), and also workers had
to purchase their own machine oil, however, these unjust practices would not
go unchallenged. In 1902 Nestor stepped forward as leader in a strike of women
workers at the Eisendrath Glove Company (encouraged and supported by the unionised men),
which lasted ten days.[6] The
strike was successful, all the women's demands were met; workers received a
raise in pay, no longer had to pay rent for their machines, and the Eisendrath
company took greater responsibility for their machinery, its greatest outcome
being the implementation of a union shop.[1][4]
Following the success of the strike, Nestor took on more leadership roles.
In 1902, the same small organization of women who took part in the Eisendrath
Glove Company strike formed Glove Makers Local 2,[7] with
Nestor as a founder and leader. Nestor was the national vice president of the
International Glove Workers Union from 1903 to 1906, secretary-treasurer from
1906 to 1913, general president from 1913 to 1915, vice-president, again, from
1915 to 1938, and director of research and education from 1938 until her death
in 1948.[8] As
a leader in the International Glove Workers Union, Nestor gained prominence
among labor leaders and earned access to network with notable women in Chicago
society, many of whom she met through her involvement with women's
clubs.[1] Though
there were differences between "club women" and "working women," particularly
in terms of class, domestic roles, and educational attainment, the
relationship and outreach efforts Nestor built with club women were to further
the agenda of the International Glove Workers Union.[1]
Nestor was also an active member of the Women's
Trading Center (WTUL) of Chicago beginning in 1904,[9] and
served as its president from 1913 to 1948.[10] Unlike
other women's clubs, the Women's Trade Union League admitted women regardless
of class,[1] the
club's aim was to secure the organization of all women workers of the U.S.
into trade unions in
the hopes of gaining better working conditions, a reduced work day, a living
wage, and full citizenship of women.[4] At
the Women's Trade Union League, Nestor worked alongside prominent women labor
leaders Mary
Kenney O'Sullivan, Jane
Addams, Mary
McDowell, Margaret
Haley, Helen Marot, Florence
Kelley, Elizabeth Maloney, Mary
Anderson, Josephine
Casey, and Sophonisba
Breckinridge, together they were able to lobby, organize, fundraise, and
create the WTUL into an influential and transformative organization.[8][1][11]
The Women's Trade Union League seal exhibits the phrases "The Eight Hour Day,"
"A Living Wage," and "To Guard the Home," thereby conveying the message that
the WTUL believed that in advocating for reduced work hours, and raising
wages, women workers would be able to better attend domestic responsibilities
at home.[1] They
would come to work diligently to achieve the status they longed for displayed
on their seal. For many years attempts were made by various labor groups to
enact legislation to protect women workers from overlong working hours, from
the dangers of unprotected machinery, and sweatshop conditions.[4] The
WTUL took action in composing a bill that would make the previous goals
attainable, the bill called for an eight-hour
day. They worked for three years gathering reports on conditions under
which women were working, including unorganized women who did factory work in
their own homes (these women had no standard wages, and payments ranged, the
poorer the woman the worse the tragedies).[4] The
reports were presented in the Women's Trade Union League's first exhibit,
which was called "Exhibit of Dyanamic Sweatshops," they presented the
eight-hour day bill as a health measure, because it was on those grounds that
the Oregon ten-hour day was passed.[4] The
bill did not pass, Senator Jones suggested they exclude hotel and restaurant
workers from the protection of the proposed law, and accept a ten-hour day,
the WTUL refused to exclude any working women but did accept the ten-hour day,
thus, in 1909 passed the Illinois ten-hour day (their proposed eight-hour day
would be reached in 1937).[4] In
1913, as president of WTUL, Nestor rode the "Suffrage Train" from Chicago to
Springfield to speak and lobby on behalf of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Act[12] and
wrote "The Working Girl's Need for Suffrage" about how union women can improve
work conditions by influencing legislation.[3] The
IESA passed giving Illinois women limited suffrage, but the ability to vote
for President and local offices. The topic of education for working women was
just as crucial to the WTUL, they created an education program for working
girls, in hopes of providing them with opportunities to explore cultural
avenues which they had been denied from.[4] In
1917, they worked out a plan with the Chicago
Board of Education for the use of the classrooms of public schools (when
they were not in use) to hold classes for the working women, Nestor
particularly helped work out a course in the history of the trade-union
movement.[4] In
1918, Nestor joined a group organized by Samuel
Gompers to travel on a Labor mission to Europe,
the purpose of the mission was to cultivate international relationships
between labor groups in the United States and in Europe and to demonstrate the
readiness to help war-stricken Europe and cooperate once World
War I ended.[4]
When Nestor returned to Chicago, she formed the Cooperative Glove Association
of Chicago in 1921 to compete against non-union shops, but it failed in 1925
because it could not compete effectively.[3] She
became involved in politics, running unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary
for state legislature in 1928,[3] serving
on the Chicago Recreation Commission (1934), the Board of Trustees of
Chicago's Century
of Progress Exposition (1933-1934), and the Advisory Committee of the
Chicago Planning Commission (1939).[3] She
opposed the National
Woman's Party and the Equal
Rights Amendment, arguing that the constitutional amendment would remove
protections working women.[3]
By the 1930s, the Great
Depression would have effected both the WTUL and the IGWU financially, the
latter suffered greater than the former.[1] Even
with such setback, Nestor continued her work as a labor leader and spent a lot
of time fundraising for the unions.[1] At
one point, she served as the Director of Research and education for the
IGWU-AFL.[3] Nestor
served on the National
Recovery Administration in its work to regulate worker safety.[3] In
the last decade of her life, Nestor never retired, rather she spent her
remaining years recruiting unorganized glove workers, and preventing the
relaxation of labor laws during World
War II.[1]
Nestor died on December 28, 1948 (aged 68) in Chicago after years of
suffering from infections and respiratory illnesses.[13] She
is buried in Mount
Carmel Cemetery.[14]
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