Gendering the history of the labour movement: the importance of

internationalization

Maria Tamboukou,Centre for Narrative Research

University of East London

In this paper I draw on archival research with the papers of women labour organizers in Paris and New York. More specifically I will talk today about my research with Jeanne Bouvier’s papers at the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris and with Fannia Cohn’s papers at the New York Public Library. The choice of the two cities is not accidental as this paper is part of an overall project of writing a feminist genealogy of the seamstress and Paris and New York are of course the two major urban centres of the garment industry. Here I have to acknowledge the British Academy and the University of East London in the UK for generously funded this research. What we also have here in this slide is a material and visual representation of the mingling of women organizers in these two cities as these are photographs of visiting cards from three major figures in the US labour movement that I found in the papers of Jeanne Bouvier, Margaret Dreier Robbins, first president of the International Federation of Working Women, Rose Schneiderman, a prominent leader in the Women’s Trade Union League or the ‘bread and roses mind’ as she is well known and of course Fannia Mary Cohn who I will talk more about shortly.

Jeanne Bouvier (1875-1964)

Jeanne Bouvier (1865-1964) was born to a peasant family in eastern France, she started working at the age of 11 and by the age of 21 she had become a skilled seamstress living and working in Paris. She became an ardent trade unionist in the French garment industry. In 1936, she published her memoirs recounting her industrial activities between 1876 and 1935. Her papers include 23 boxes of published and unpublished manuscripts, essays, journal and newspaper articles, personal writings and correspondence. Apart from her memoirs, she is the author of four books: La lingerie et les lingères, (1928), Deux époques, deux hommes (1927), Histoire des dammes employées dans les postes, télégraphes et telephones, de 1714 a 1929 (1930); Les femmes pendant la révolution (1931). As she has proudly declared in her memoirs she was one of the few women workers writers, although my genealogical work with the French seamstress has revealed many more in the 19th century.

Fannia Mary Cohn (1885-1962)

Ten years younger than Bouvier, Fannia Mary Cohn (1885-1962) was born in Russia and emigrated to the US in 1904. Despite her well-off family background both in Russia and the US, she worked in the garment industry and became one of the few women vice presidents of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) between 1916-1925, while she served as executive secretary of its Educational Department from 1918-1962. Indeed her work shaped the union’s Educational Work in the first half of the twentieth century. Her papers include 15 boxes of correspondence, essays, articles, labour skits and personal writings.

Despite their differences conditioned by geographical, historical, political and cultural specificities, what these two women organizers shared was a passion for the labour movement, but also a fate of marginalization and rejection by their male comrades.

Bouvier fell out with the leadership of the Confederation General du Travail (CGT) and stepped down as a vice president of the International Committee of Labour in 1923

This is the first page of a letter dated April 19, 1929 that Bouvier sent to the leader of the CGT. Amongst other grievances, she refuses to represent the Federation at a work council: ‘I am surprised’ she writes that you have asked me to represent the Federation at this council … You seem to have forgotten all the grievances that exist between the Federation and me … I cannot represent a Federation that I know nothing about … and I cannot represent a Federation that has judged and condemned me without allowing me to defend myself’

(BHDVP, Jeanne Bouvier’s papers)

And here we have a letter dated September 13th, 1923 from Marion Philipps, the UK representative and Secretary of the International Federation of Working Women, who became an MP of the second labour government in the UK in 1929 and was also in frequent correspondence with Fannia Cohn. ‘My dear Mle Bouvier, I write to tell you how much I regret that you are not vice-president of the Federation any more’ Phillips wrote about the fact that Bouvier had to step down in 1923 after falling out with the CGT leadership.

(BHDVP, Jeanne Bouvier’s papers)

Fannia Cohn’s service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of worker’s education […] She remains a tragic figured amidst her own fellow workers, whom she helped to gain prestige with the outside educational world. Were she a man, it would have been entirely different. (Rose Pesotta to David Dubinsky, 7/11/, 1939, NYPL/RPP )

Cohn was not happier in her relations with the ILGWU’s leadership and her archive is also a constant reminder of her continuous fight. As Rose Pesotta, an anarchist labour organizer and one of the few women ILGWU vice presidents dramatically put it in a letter to the union’s leader David Dubinsky in 1939:

The story of having attacks on my health goes back to 1922 when I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But on the advice of my Doctor and the insistence of my friends, especially Theresa Wolfson, Evelyn and Arthur Gleason, I took a trip to Europe, where I spent six weeks attending the First International Conference of Workers’ Education held in the Belgian Labor College in Brussels. I had then returned entirely recovered and was as energetic and vigorous as ever. But in 1923 the Doctor again advised a rest and I went to Bermuda and after that, in 1924 I made a trip to England to attend the Second International Conference on Workers’ Education that was held in Ruskin College, Oxford. The ocean trip had a soothing effect upon me.

(Letter from Fannia Cohn to friend, 1930)

Cohn was literally tormented by the tensions of her relationships with the trade union leaders and health breakdowns became a life-long and issue for her. (see Cohen, 1976)

As she was writing to a friend in an undated letter from the Aurora Health Farm in 1930.

What therefore kept those women afloat during the crises was their international links through conferences, publications and visits that supported them in challenging the sexism of their unions and thus created conditions of possibility for gendering the history of the labour movement.

It was Bouvier’s life-long devotion to the labour movement that gradually brought her national and international recognition and made her travel to Washington as a French delegate of the first International Congress of Women Workers (ICWW) in 1919, to Geneva in 1921 for the International Conference of Work and to Vienna for the third International Congress of Women Workers in 1923.

I had an extraordinary impression, while I was feeling the boat sweetly moving away from the shore. It seemed to me that there was nothing tying me to my country anymore, that all the bonds had been broken… (Bouvier, Mes Memoirs, 125)

This feeling of existential freedom, while sailing away from one’s country is a recurrent theme in women workers’ autobiographical writings, a transitional moment when memories of the past and images of the future blend and fuse in the experience of the traveller

I confess that my first impression was a bit confused and I have retained much of the inevitable trouble landing in a country whose language is unknown, the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the crushing sensation that give the fifty storey houses gave you [...] But what a cordial welcome awaited us from the American delegates on our first visit! We felt immediately at our ease: we found a family […] But the Government’s attitude towards the International Labour Conference […] was truly unique. Not only did the government systematically ignore the work of the Conference, but we felt much hostility: we were the ‘undesirables’. Some U.S. newspapers have even said that we should be deported or imprisoned as ‘Bolshevik’! Quite charming, is it not?

Bouvier, ‘Au Congrès féminin International’ in Madame et Citoyenne, c. 1919, (BHVP/AMB/FJB/B.20/Divers).

Bouvier wrote vividly about these travels both in her memoirs, as well as in numerous journal articles. She had a clear political eye to understand differences and similarities among nations and to criticise national governments, without hurting international bonds and solidarity among workers. Her article in Madame et Citoyenne , about her Washington experience is filled with acute observations, gratitude, admiration, but also irony and humour. The article recounts their constant company with interpreters, their sightseeing trips, as well as the opportunities they had to learn about the different organizations of workers’ education in the US.

This was the first International Women’s Congress. We already knew about its inevitable disputes, but what prevailed during its meetings, was the great feeling of human fraternity. Thus, a place was reserved for German delegates and an association of black women was accepted by acclamation […] The Resolutions are known. First of all, the eight hours working day and the forty-four hours working week. Then, the right to rest before and after childbirth: all employed and salaried women to be entitled to rest six weeks before and six weeks after delivery and receive a state compensation equivalent to the minimum wage provided in the region. It is ultimately the regulation of admission of children to work at the age of sixteen and not before.

Bouvier, ‘Au Congrès féminin International’ in Madame et Citoyenne, c. 1919, (BHVP/AMB/FJB/B.20/Divers)

Her report of the business of the Congress highlighted its important resolutions, but did not include the many tensions that arose amongst the delegates, including disagreements around questions of race, about who could count as a worker and whether women workers should be protected or seek equal treatment as men. Solidarity and fraternity were more important for Bouvier, particularly as the Congress represented a feminist response to women’s marginalization from the newly founded International Labour Organization (ILO)

I am following up with great interest, your work among the labor. Unfortunately in our country, the important social force that wives of trade unionists can be to the labor movement is hardly appreciated; and they are entirely neglected. I have written five articles on the wives of trade unionists, which were reprinted in almost 30% of the labor press, and I was glad to hear that many leading men and women in the labor movement were impressed with the possibility of ladies’ auxiliaries taking proper place in our movement. Of course, the word “ladies” is not mine. That is how they call themselves, but when I criticised it and suggested that they change it to ‘women’s’ there was general approval…Fannia Cohn to Marion Phillips, letter dated, 29/7/1927, Correspondence, FCP/NYPL.

The victory is all the more significant and substantial when we consider that it is due to many, many years of education, agitation and research effort on the part of these men and women in the labor movement. I can imagine Mr Baldwin’s disappointment at his defeat. His object in giving the vote to five million “flappers” was undoubtedly a gamble on their intelligence. He relied too much on their inexperience as voters and hoped they would be carried away by the slogan “Safety First”. I do not exaggerate if I repeat here what I said in my article of “The Results of the British Elections” that the Women’s Section of the Labor Party, so ably, intelligently and energetically headed by you was much to be credited that the “flappers” helped the Labour Party in its success.

Letter from Fannia Cohn to Marion Philipps, dated 7/7/1929, congratulating her on the victory of the Labour Party

But apart from the opportunity of meeting women from all over the world and exchanging ideas about women’s organization in the labour movement, these international networks, also created opportunities for personal relations and friendship.

My dear Mlle Bouvier,

This letter will introduce you to Miss Amy G. Maher and Miss Rachel Gallacher, both from Toledo, Ohio. Miss Maher is the Chairman of the Ohio Council of Women and Children. This Council is composed of the different women's organisations in the State, together with the State Federation of Labor and their work no doubt as Miss Maher will explain. Miss Gallacher is Miss Maher’s very able assistant. They are both very anxious to see the labour movement of France and if there are any meetings, which interested persons may attend, they may be allowed to do so.

Letter from Mary Anderson (1872-1964), Director of the Women’s Bureau of the US Department of Labour

So this introduction to two women organizers from Ohio was the beginning of a life-long friendship between Bouvier and Maher…

Finally in celebrating women’s connections and solidarity we should also remember the problems of such connections, the differences not only of ideas but also of languages and the inevitable marginalization of some languages and some parts of the world over the dominance of Eurocentrism.

• moving and travelling: the recurring theme of ‘getting away’ in women’s lives, here escaping the oppression of the comrades

• the global and the local: not everybody was able to travel and move but there was a certain pattern of moving from North America to Paris or London.

• The ‘east’ and ‘the west’: we therefore need to consider and problematize the eurocentrism of the internationalization as well as the way it is being transformed today, particularly with all the visa restrictions, as well as cost of living

• lost in translation? we should also consider problems of language

• oppositions as contrasts• friendship and solidarity• remembering/imagining: archival technologies of the self