Greetings in the new year! 

In 2025, we're going to find ways (large and small) to support and protect what we most care about.  

One thing that gives me hope is that thousands of people across our country have organized since 2016. Local and national human rights groups are now much better prepared for resistance and we are not underestimating the threat of the MAGA agenda and the billionaires backing it. More on that in News and Links below.

But first, here’s the story of a woman who understood the power of people standing together and spent her life leading by example.

"I have been so tired all day I could hardly work.” Again and again, teenager Agnes Nestor confided this in her diary. At 14, she worked 60 hour weeks at the Eisendrath Glove Company in Chicago.

​​​​​​​Rows of women sewing gloves at a factory similar to the one where Agnes worked. Worcester, UK

Late 19th Century, (equalvisioncic.co.uk)

But, though we all seemed happy at first," Agnes wrote later, "gradually it dawned dimly within us that we were not beating the piecework system; it was beating us.

Every week when they got their paychecks, fifty cents was deducted for the use of their sewing machines. They also had to buy their own needles and sewing machine oil. And the foremen harassed them with petty rules such as not letting Agnes sit with her sister at lunch because she worked in another room. 

The company continually looked for ways to increase profits and decided to try and increase production by subdividing the work. Each worker would be assigned to sew one smaller part of each glove. The women feared a decrease in pay and knew this arrangement would make their work more monotonous.

One group of women, the banders were asked to try the new system. They refused and walked out.

Anne's group decided, "We should be loyal to the girls who had walked out, and we told the foreman that if the company tried to put new girls in the places of the banders, we would walk out, too!"

The strike started on Saturday and by Monday company management decided to drop the plan and everyone went back to work.

"We had taken a bold step," Anne wrote later. "Almost with spontaneity we had acted in support of one another. Now we all felt tremulous, vulnerable, exposed. With no regular organization, without even a qualified spokesman, how long would such unified action last?"

With that thought, Agnes eagerly attended at meeting of the male glove-cutters union the next night along with other women glove makers and within three days most of the women had signed up to join the union. Before the end of the week, management fired a cutter and the men talked of striking in protest.

"We were young and inexperienced in union procedure; and, as I look back now," Agnes wrote, I see that because of that lack of experience, and because we were newly organized and therefore anxious to use our new organization, we did a rash thing. We started a strike movement in protest at the discharge of the cutter and also for the redress of our own grievances."

Agnes emerged as a leader of the group, though prior to this she had not been outspoken. "No more machine rent; no paying for needles; free machine oil; union shop; raises for the cutters who were paid the lowest wages,” she said. 

When the strike continued for a week, company management offered to meet the women's demands for higher pay and no charge for the use of the sewing machines, but the women held out.

"Our safety and our future, we knew, lay in our union," Agnes wrote. "We decided not to return to work just yet. Meanwhile we doubled our picket line, determined that none of our group should falter."

After only ten days, the company agreed to meet the all the union's demands. Eisendrath Glove became a union shop and the women returned to work.

Over the next year, Agnes tired of the men's leadership in the union and helped found a women's glove workers local and served as president. In time, she became a leader in the International Glove Workers Union was the first female president elected to head an international labor union. and then Women’s Trade Union League where she sat on the executive board. 

She became a knowledgeable and skilled negotiator, helping organize unions in other industries, notably the needle trades, but she expanded her efforts on behalf of women in many jobs ranging from milliners to stockyard workers.

Her most important achievement was the Illinois Ten-Hour-Day Law of 1909, and the second act that extended this protection to women who worked outside of factories to hotel and restaurant workers.

  Campaign poster for Agnes Nestor, Democratic Candidate for State Representative in 1928.

The Ralph E Becker Collection of Political Americana (National Museum of American History)

Agnes Nestor fought for working women throughout her life, focusing on safe working environments and fair wages. She joined the leading women's suffragists to speak out for women's voting rights. Some credit her influence for workers gaining the national eight-hour-day in 1937. 

She also pushed for better maternal health care, the right to parental leave and further education. She helped craft the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which provided the first federal aid for vocational education, and arranged the use public schools that were empty in the evenings to hold courses for working women and girls. 

Some of what Agnes Nestor fought for nearly a hundred years ago, we still have not gained today. It appears she was one of those rare women who dedicated their entire focus, time and energy to improving the lives of others.

Most of us have not been so singularly engaged, but we can follow her example of finding common cause with others to multiply our impact.

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