Founded in 1919, the Federated Press (FP) collected, compiled, and distributed news to America’s labor and radical newspapers. Victoria M. Grieve focuses on the lives and work of four correspondents and staffers—Jessie Lloyd, Julia Ruuttila, Virginia Gardner, and Miriam Kolkin—to examine the impact of women at the FP and across the labor movement.

These journalists wrote women into labor news by shedding light on essential issues like the need for equal pay and an end to discrimination. Their work increased women’s visibility in unions and the workforce while revealing that not only class but gender and race shaped their on-the-job experiences. Grieve also examines labor feminism within the larger stories of links between the Old Left and New Left and the FP’s pioneering role in articulating early iterations of intersectional feminism.

A compelling portrait of four women and a movement, Labor Journalism, Labor Feminism looks at an essential labor press organization and profiles politically active, leftist women who created relationships, established networks, and worked for social change.

Victoria M. Grieve is a professor of history at Utah State University. Her books include Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood During the Cold War and The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture.

“Victoria Grieve speaks to this moment in our history by invoking a long-forgotten past. Taking on as her subject the Federated Press, a crucial but little-known labor news service, Grieve gives us a deeper understanding of the labor press and the role of women in it. In the 1920s, as today, the scope of the news had narrowed. Activists established the Federated Press as the answer, providing not just regional and national coverage but international news that mattered. The stories Grieve tells represent the reach of the Federated Press and its women reporters. Central to their labor advocacy was the Woman Question, debated on the Left but experienced as well in unions and workplaces and the lives of women. It’s a great read and a revelation.”—Elizabeth Faue, author of Writing the Wrongs: Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism