Lara Vapnek

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of giving a Breadwinners book talk at the Tenement Museum, one of my favorite cultural institutions in NYC.  I focused on Leonora O’Reilly (1870-1927), who grew up nearby.  At one point, she and her mother, Winifred, lived on Division Street, just a few blocks away.  Even after she became a well-known labor organizer and suffragist, Leonora O’Reilly identified with the women of the tenements, who waged a fierce struggle to support themselves and their families.  In 1909, O’Reilly clashed publicly with Mary Dean Adams, an immigration inspector and an anti-suffragist, who warned that women who lived in the tenements would “sell their vote for a pound of macaroni.”  O’Reilly defended the rights of tenement house dwellers to vote, explaining that women in the workforce needed suffrage to protect themselves from exploitation.  Female labor organizers like O’Reilly played an important role in the campaign for suffrage in New York State in 1917, drawing public attention to women’s roles as care givers and family supporters, and helping to convince working class men to support votes for women.