Leonora Barry

Leonora Barry (August 13,1849 - July 18, 1923) was born in County Cork, Ireland, to John and Honor Granger Kearney. As the only woman to hold national office within the Knights of Labor, she brought attention to the conditions of working women through her involvement in the labor reform movement while also furthering the progress of woman’s rights during the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction. [Susan Levine, “Labor’s True Woman: Domesticity and Equal Rights in the Knights of Labor,” The Journal of American History 70, no. 2 (1983): 331.]

Early life

Leonora ’s early life did not indicate future involvement in any reform movements. [Women in World History. A biographical encyclopedia, s.v. “Barry, Leonora M” (Connecticut: Yorkin Publications, 2002), 186.] Her father, an Irish farmer, relocated his family to the rural community of Pierrepont, New York, to escape a potato famine. [Dictionary of American Immigration History, s.v. “Barry, Leonora Kearney” (New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1990), 67.] She attended the local school. During this time her mother died and, upon her father’s remarriage, Barry decided to attend teaching school. She took the initiative to contact the head of a girls’ school in nearby Colton, New York, from whom she received private instruction. At the age of sixteen Barry received her teacher’s certificate and, over the following years, taught at a local school. [Notable American Women, 1607-1950. A biographical dictionary, s.v. “Barry, Leonora Marie Kearney” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971), 101.]

Activism

Leonora Barry married William E. Barry, an Ireland native who emigrated to Canada and then to New York, on November 30, 1871. A painter and musician, he moved with his wife to Potsdam, New York, where the couple had their first child, Marion Frances, in 1873. [Alden Whitman, ed., American Reformers (New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1985), 57.] The family moved frequently, including to Haydensville, Massachusetts, and Amsterdam, New York, and their family grew with the birth of two sons, William Standish in 1875 and Charles Joseph in 1880. Barry’s daughter died soon after. Left with two sons to support, Barry began work as a seamstress but found the job too tiring. [Ibid.] She then took a job in an Amsterdam hosiery factory where she and her fellow working women faced harsh conditions, long hours, and low pay. [Charles Van Doren, ed., Webster’s American Biographies (Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1974), 68.] As a means of taking action against the injustice faced by women in the workforce, Barry joined the local women’s branch of the Knights of Labor in 1884, a time when the national organization’s membership reached its peak. The organization originally served as a secret organization for Philadelphia garment workers but transformed into an association with the objective of promoting the labor reform movement from a uniform position. [Whitman, American Reformers, 57.] Barry represented the organization’s ideal working woman: one forced out of the private female sphere of antebellum ideology into the world of factory labor because of economic necessity. [Levine, Labor’s True Woman, 333.] Barry’s local branch of the Knights held about 1,500 members at this time. [Notable American Women, 101.] Barry rose within the Knights of Labor and soon became the master workman, or president, of her local branch. [Van Doren, Webster’s American Biographies, 68.] In 1885 she became president of District Assembly 65, which included fifty-two local branches and over nine thousand members. [Women in World History, 187.] One year later she attended the district convention in Albany and served as one of the district’s five delegates to the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor in Richmond, Virginia [Notable American Women, 101.] Delegates of this convention voted her as head of the recently created Department of Women’s Work. [Dictionary of American Immigration History, 67.] (The General Assembly created a committee to gather information on women’s conditions in the labor industry, and the findings led to the creation of the Department of Women’s Work to be led by a general investigator. [Notable American Women, 101.] ) As the primary investigator, Barry dedicated her life to improving wages and working conditions for women throughout the United States, traveling across the nation to organize others and investigate the female working conditions while also serving as the spokesperson for the female laborer. [Van Doren, Webster’s American Biographies, 68. However, this complicated her views on traditional female society, for it forced her to leave her children and live in the public sphere. For further information, See Opdycke, “Barry, Leonora,” and Levine, Labor’s True Woman.] Her reports to the General Assembly in 1887, 1888, and 1889 described the horrific conditions in factories, conditions tantamount to the abuse of women and children. These reports made Barry the first person to collect national statistics on the American working woman. [Whitman, American Reformers, 57.] About 65,000 women belonged to the Knights at this time; the organization offered jobs and affordable goods to women while also organizing boycotts in support of female factory laborers’ interests. [Sandra Opdycke, “Barry, Leonora,” American National Biography Online (2000): http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00042.html.] About four hundred of the Knights’ local branches included women; membership in two-thirds of these was limited to women. [Levine, Labor’s True Woman, 325.] Barry, however, found herself unable to build a solid following due to the apathy of working women, divisions within the Knights of Labor, and difficulties faced by a woman attempting to organize men in a male-dominated society. [Notable American Women, 102. Opdycke, “Barry, Leonora.”] Employers also refused to allow her to investigate their factories. [Whitman, American Reformers, 57.] These factors pushed Barry to support state and federal legislation as a means of protecting laborers. [Levine, Labor’s True Woman, 334.] Her efforts in this regard are most visible in the 1889 passage of the first Pennsylvania factory inspection act. Barry, however, would not lobby politicians because she considered such activity “unladylike.” [Notable American Women, 102.]

Barry felt women should not work outside the household except in cases of economic need, and, upon her marriage to Obadiah Read Lake in 1890, Barry resigned from her position within the Knights of Labor, bringing an end to the Department of Woman’s Work. [Opdycke, “Barry, Leonora.” For more information on labor and women, see Eleanor Flexner, Ellen Carol DuBois, and Jacqueline Van Voris, 1895?-1995 (inclusive). Papers, located at the Jefferson School of Social Sciences in New York, NY.] Lake, a trained printer and the proofreader and telegraph editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, resided in St. Louis. [Notable American Women, 102.] Barry continued to travel and speak on behalf of the woman’s suffrage movement and the temperance movement, among other reform movements, after her retirement in St. Louis. [Van Doren, Webster’s American Biographies, 68.] She persevered in her pursuit of labor equality for women but in a less organized manner. Barry served primarily as a public speaker on issues of reform, as illustrated by her 1893 speech before the World’s Representative Congress of Women at the Columbian exposition in Chicago on “The Dignity of Labor.” [Women in World History, 187.] (Interestingly, Barry never used prepared texts.) [Notable American Women, 102.] She also proved vital to the successful campaign for woman suffrage in Colorado. [Ibid.] In 1916 she moved to Minooka, Illinois, and became active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America while also placing much emphasis on building public support for Prohibition and, later, the Volstead Act. [Van Doren, Webster’s American Biographies, 68.] A baseball fan, Barry frequented Chicago to enjoy games. [Notable American Women, 102.] Later in life known as Mother Lake, Barry died on , of cancer of the mouth. [Ibid.] Her influence on the labor movement, as well as the woman’s rights and temperance movements, well succeeded her.

References

*"Dictionary of American Immigration History", s.v. “Barry, Leonora Kearney.” 67. New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1990.
*Levine, Susan, “Labor’s True Woman: Domesticity and Equal Rights in the Knights of Labor.” "The Journal of American History" 70, no.2 (1983): 323-339. http://www.jstor.org/search.
*"Notable American Women, 1607-1950. A biographical dictionary". 101-102. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971.
*Opdycke, Sandra. “Barry, Leonora.” "American National Biography Online" (2000). http://www.wnab.org/articles/15/15-00043.html.
*Van Doren, Charles, ed. "Webster’s American Biographies". Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1974.
*Whitman, Alden, ed. "American Reformers". New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1985.
*"Women in World History. A biographical encyclopedia", s.v. “Barry, Leonora M.” 186-187. Connecticut: Yorkin Publications, 2002.