[6] In 1888, through the recommendation of Minnesota Knights leader Ignatious Donnelley, Valesh became more involved in the labor union and began to pursue investigative journalism,[2] writing columns for the St. Paul Globe.

Valesh wrote of guarded factories, where supervisors sought to prevent information about working conditions and pay from becoming public.

"[8] Two weeks after Valesh's piece came out, women workers at the Shotwell, Clerihew and Lothman garment factory went on strike, in part as a response to a new pay cut.

The recurring column often featured Valesh going undercover to see conditions for herself, trying out unskilled domestic work, various types of factory jobs and clerk positions.

Both the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance sought female members and elevated woman speakers; Valesh's peers included lecturers Sue Ross Keenan of Oregon and Emma DeVoe of Illinois.

[14] In 1891, Valesh was invited by Samuel Gompers, then the president of the AFL, to speak at the national convention, which took place in Birmingham, Alabama.

She pointed out that female workers were paid half as much as men, that their wages often did not cover the cost of living, and that the respect women may once have been afforded as industrious members of a small community was gone.

Women were denied the right to vote, and treated as cheap and dispensable labor: Life is simply a tug and a struggle to keep the wolf from the door, with none of the sunbeams to drive out the shadows.

What round of the social ladder could her granddaughter occupy today if she worked in a factory, no matter if she spun 1000 miles of flax a day?

[5] Shortly after her reporting trip to Europe in 1895, Valesh moved to Washington D.C. and lived with Samuel Gompers and his wife, Sophie.

[14] By 1897, through a connection at the Minneapolis Tribune, Valesh was able to secure a low-level reporting job at the New York Journal, a William Randolph Hearst publication.

Through a connection, Valesh was able to discover the identity of the woman and write the article, saving her job and paving the way for better subsequent assignments.

At the beginning of 1898, Hearst personally assigned Valesh to cover a group of female textile workers striking in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

[19] Valesh herself became more of a figure at the newspaper, with Hearst rebranding the reporter with the official-sounding title: "international labor commissioner.

"[15] Valesh did not remain a disinterested observer, and testified on behalf of a bill she helped write to address the grievances of the striking weavers before the Massachusetts state legislature in early February of that year.

[20] The bill's easy passage was hailed as a victory by the New York Journal, which claimed credit for helping resolve the strike.

When the article ran in the newspaper, the headline described Valesh as an "expert," meeting with the president to deliver her first-hand account and impressions of the strike.

Despite the theatrics, Alice Fahs, historian and author of "Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of the Modern Public Space" described the article as "rather bland" and "innocuous."

To ameliorate the conditions of the workers, McKinley advocated for increased immigration restriction, while musing on the business demands of the mill owners.

Valesh was committed to a style of reporting promulgated by Hearst, a "journalism that acts," and continued to involve herself in the New Bedford strike.

[15] On February 10, 1898, the Fall River Herald described Valesh as a woman who was "conspicuous largely because of her nerve and frequently uttered disbeliefs in the truth of anything that is said by anyone but herself.

Her editor reassigned her to cover the unfolding story in Cuba, and she sailed to the island aboard a Standard Oil-owned yacht, the Anita, alongside some U.S. senators and their wives.

Elizabeth Faue, who authored a biography of Valesh, surmised that issues arose both because of differing personal styles between the two and as a result of the larger social context within which the pair worked.

While Gompers was considered an "axe" of an editor, excising any superfluous detail, Valesh preferred to add more to the article and insert her personality.

She spoke at the Colony Club, an elite venue, and tried to persuade the wives and daughters of industrialists to take an interest in improving worker conditions.

This strike may be used to pave the way for forming clean, sensible labor unions, and I want to enroll every woman of leisure, every clubwoman, in the movement.

The Woman's Trade Union League is dominated by socialism, though I won't deny they have helped the shirtwaist strikers some.

[24]Following the speech, members of the League refused to attend a conference Valesh had organized in March, 1910 to discuss labor issues.

As an ambitious woman of working class origins, Valesh had difficulty finding her own place within the social strata of the movement.

[25] For example, in January, 1914, in a letter from the editor, Valesh advocated for allowing schools to remain open at night as social and civic centers for children, prison reform, increased kitchen sanitation and awareness of the number of adulterated food products being sold at the time.