Leonora Barry

By Annabelle Sebastian

Leonora Barry (1849-1923) was the first woman paid to be a labor investigator.

Upon being barred from teaching after her marriage, Barry turned to work in a hosiery factory, where after a week, she earned only $0.65. After receiving her pay, Barry turned to the Knights of Labor in 1984. The Knights of Labor was a workers’ union that accepted any worker regardless of gender, race, or skill level, and it was at the Knights of Labor where she began to climb the ranks, despite facing discrimination from her male colleagues. In 1885 she became the Master Workman of the District Assembly 65, where she managed 52 local assemblies, comprising a total of over 9000 workers, mostly men. Additionally, she led over 900 women in the Victory Assembly on a successful mill strike in 1986, and resolved a major dispute between the Knights of Labor and the Wanamaker company.

Impressed with her union work for the Knights of Labor, the union leadership appointed her as the first general investigator of women’s work. As part of her appointment, she traveled to over 100 cities across the country, where she took down statistics and detailed working conditions for women in the workplace. Her travels took her to New Jersey as well, where she recorded both good and bad places of work for women. In Newark, she wrote of unfair penalties for women working in a corset factory, where they were fined $0.10 for singing, talking, eating, or laughing. 

Barry is responsible for an increased awareness of working conditions for women, who were often underpaid, mistreated, not taken seriously, and abused in the workplace, and her collection of works comprise the first set of national statistics about the working woman. Barry sought to bring awareness to the issue through public and private meetings where she shared her findings. Additionally, Barry campaigned for women to join unions, such as the Knights of Labor, which had over 65,000 women members at a time of very low participation by women in labor unions. 

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References:

Kepes, Betsy. Leonora Barry: First Voice for Working Women. Labor’s Heritage 12, no. 1 (2003): 38-49.

Weir, Robert E.. Workers in America : A Historical Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2013. Accessed August 1, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Whitman, Alden. 1985. American reformers: an H.W. Wilson biographical dictionary. New York: H.W. Wilson Company. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11621754

Woloch, Nancy. 1997. Early American women: a documentary history, 1600-1900. New York: McGraw-Hill. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34705100

Suggested Citation:

Sebastian, Annabelle. “Leonora Barry.” New Jersey Women’s History, Rowan University Libraries, 2024. https://njwomenshistory.org/biographies/leonora-barry/.