Margaret Dreier Robins (6 September 1868 – 21 February 1945) was an American
labor leader and
philanthropist
Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...
.
Early life
She was born in
Brooklyn, New York on 6 September 1868.
Her parents, Theodor Dreier, a successful businessman, and Dorthea Dreier, were both immigrants from Germany.
[Carol Kort; Liz Sonneborn. ]
A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts
'. Infobase Publishing; 1 January 2002. . p. 55–56. Her mother's maiden name was Dreier and her parents were cousins from
Bremen, Germany. Their ancestors were civic leaders and merchants. Theodor came to the United States in 1849 and became partner of the English iron firm of Naylor, Benson and Company's New York branch. He married Dorothea in 1864 during a visit to Bremen and brought her back with him to the United States and they lived in a brownstone house in
Brooklyn Heights, New York.
[Barbara Sicherman; Carol Hurd Green. ]
Notable American Women: The Modern Period : a Biographical Dictionary
'. Harvard University Press; 1980. . p. 204–205.
Margaret Dreier had a brother and three sisters.
Her sister
Mary was a social reformer. Her sisters
Dorothea and
Katherine were painters.
She was privately educated because her parents believed that the study of the arts was too often neglected in traditional education. In her teens, Robins suffered from physical ailments which left her depressed and weak.
Social reform career
At age nineteen, she began doing charity work at
Brooklyn Hospital and soon became involved in other progressive causes. She met the reformer
Josephine Shaw Lowell in 1902, and through Lowell joined in the Woman’s Municipal League, an organization that helped women avoid prostitution. Another collaborator was
Frances Kellor, with whom she founded the New York Association for Household Research which provided lodging and placement for women domestic workers.
[
In 1904, increasingly interested in workers’ rights, Dreier joined the Women's Trade Union League, then only a small, budding organization. She became the president of its New York chapter in 1905; president of the Chicago chapter 1907-1914; and treasurer of the national organization and rose quickly in its ranks. In 1907, she was elected president of the national organization and began a fifteen-year tenure as its leader. Meanwhile, she married the lawyer and social worker Raymond Robins in 1905. The newlyweds split their time between running a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois and ]Chinsegut Hill
The Chinsegut Hill Manor House (also known as Mount Airy, Snow Hill, or simply The Hill) is a United States historic site approximately five miles northeast of the city of Brooksville, Florida on Chinsegut Hill. Chinsegut Hill, at an elevation ...
in Brooksville, Florida.
As president of the League, Robins helped organize women into unions, educate women workers, and advocate for progressive legislation. She created a Training School for Women to educate women workers about organizing and leadership skills. She supported and became active in a number of well publicized strikes, most notably the International Ladies Garment Workers’ strike in 1910. She pushed for protective legislation limiting the hours of women’s work, and she presided over the League during its most influential period.
She served on the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor after 1908, and in 1915 was appointed to the unemployment commission by the governor of Illinois.
Active in the Women's Suffrage Movement, Robins ran for office in 1912 as a Progressive Party candidate for Trustee at the University of Illinois. She earned over 300,000 votes but did not win a seat.Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include:
Listed by name
Paris Accords
may refer to:
* Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...
, where with other female labor leaders they organized an international labor women’s conference to prepare for the upcoming International Labour Organization convention in October in Washington, D.C.
In 1924, Robins retired from her activist work and moved full-time with her husband to Florida. She continued her philanthropic work there, helping found the YWCA and the first library and supporting local arts productions. She died in 1945.
Notes
Sources
*
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External links
Margaret Dreier Robins Papers
at the University of Florida
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robins, Margaret Dreier
1868 births
1945 deaths
People from Brooklyn Heights
American trade union leaders
Illinois Progressives (1912)
Activists from New York (state)
Progressive Era in the United States
Women's Trade Union League people