Organizing the Purchasing Power of Everett’s Wives
Mrs. Rose B. Moore brings a new strategy to the Labor Temple: mobilizing women to force local merchants to stock union-labeled goods.
The open meeting in the Labor Temple Monday night, under the auspices of the Women's Label League, was largely attended. Special organizer Mrs. Rose B. Moore sounded the keynote of a thirty-day organization campaign. The goals are twofold: organizing working girls into craft unions and empowering the wives, sisters, and mothers of male unionists to use their purchasing power to demand union-labeled goods. Organizers believe that if the family pay envelope is spent on non-union, low-wage goods, the struggle of the labor unions is effectively undermined at home.
“In the hands of our women lies the purchasing power of the wages paid by Everett's industries.”
This reflects an early recognition of the 'consumer side' of labor organizing. It highlights the gendered division of labor in 1911, where union men turned to their families to use economic leverage as a form of social pressure against non-union businesses.
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