[1] The Wage Earner’s League is an example of a predominately female led effort to bring working women into the suffrage movement to gain political momentum and influence.
[1] The National American Woman Suffrage Association was proving to be an atmosphere uncongenial to working women, while members such as Leonora O’Reilly and Rose Schneiderman injected new vigor into organizing and sought to break from its traditions.
Rose Schneiderman and Leonora O'Reilly officially founded the Wage Earner’s League for Woman Suffrage on March 22, 1911 in New York City.
Although it did not reject their participation, it did restrict their membership capacity, not allowing them to hold any sway in regard to the shaping of the league’s campaigns, literature, or speeches.
Resulting from the league’s leaders heavy focus upon factories and immigrant neighborhoods as grounds for its outreach, the organization’s membership was decidedly working-class.
[7] During the league’s first year, Leonora O'Reilly, Clara Lemlich, and Mollie Schepps spoke on a regular basis outside factories, as the shifts of workers were changing.
Don’t you think equal pay for all women who toil should be a given rather than a privilege?”[8] The reaction to the league’s distributed items, such as leaflets or handbills, is unknown due to the lack of any recorded responses.
The league’s leaders, O’Reilly, Lemlich, and Schepps, also spoke at night in worker neighborhoods in an effort to target housewives returning from their shopping.
Mary Beard's suggestion resulted in the rally not being structured as speakers delivering speeches, but rather as several prominent wage-earning women issuing a direct and formal response to the arguments presented by state senators speaking out against suffrage.
These responses centered upon statements made by senators regarding the protection of women from the vote, citing the need to preserve marital harmony, female morality, and femininity.
[12] Mollie Schepps recounted the treatment striking shirtwaist makers received from the New York City police and judges, emphasizing its brutality and attacked the notion that equal wages between the sexes would erode the sanctity of marriage.
These speeches made by Schneiderman, Lemlich, and Schepps combined to offer a working class critique of female behavior presented through a growing perception of industrial feminism.