Mary
Kenney
was
born in Hannibal, Missouri, on 8th January, 1864. After a brief formal
education Kenney worked as a dressmaker to help support her invalid
mother.
In 1889 Kenney moved to Chicago where she worked in several different
factories. Kenney became a trade union organizer and was eventually
invited to Hull House to meet Jane
Addams. It was agreed that Kenney and fellow trade unionists could
hold their meetings at the house.
Kenney moved into Hull House and in
1891 established the Jane
Club, a co-operative house where girls with low wages could live together.
There were six apartments in the house. Within a year they were all
occupied with each person paying $3.00 for rent, food and services.
Working-class women, such as Kenney and Alzina
Stevens, who had developed an interest in social reform as a result
of their trade union work, played an important
role in the education of the middle-class residents at Hull House.
They in turn influenced the working-class women. As Kenney was later
to say, they "gave my life new meaning and hope".
Kenney became a well-known trade union figure and in 1892 Samuel
Gompers, president of the American
Federation of Labour, appointed her as his first woman organizer.
In 1892, John Peter Altgeld was was elected
governor of Illinois in 1892 and the following year he appointed Florence
Kelley as the state's first chief factory inspector. Kelley recruited
a staff of twelve, including Kenney and Alzina
Stevens. In 1894 Altgeld and Kelley managed to persuade the state
legislature to pass legislation controlling child
labour. This included a law limiting women and children to a maximum
eight-hour day. This success was short-lived and in 1895 the Illinois
Association of Manufacturers got the law repealed.
Kenney moved to Boston where she married John O'Sullivan, a journalist
working for the Boston Globe.
She was employed by the Women's Educational and Industrial Union and
helped to organize garment and laundry workers.
In 1903 Kenney joined with William Walling
to form the Women's Trade Union League. The
main objective of the organization was to educate women about the
advantages of union membership, to support women's demands for better
working conditions, and to raise awareness about the exploitation
of women workers.
In November, 1914, Kenney was appointed as a factory inspector by
the Department of Labor, a post she was to hold for twenty years.
Mary Kenney O'Sullivan died in West Medford on 18th January,
1943.
Leaders
of the Women's Trade Union in 1907. Shown
from left to right
are Hannah Hennessy, Ida Rauh, Mary Dreir, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan,
Margaret Robins, Margie Jones, Agnes
Nestor and Helen Marot.
(1)
Mary Kenney wrote about her experiences at Hull
House in her unpublished autobiography.
One day, while I was working at my trade, I received a letter
from Miss Jane Addams. She invited me to for dinner. She said she
wanted me to meet some people from England who were interested in
the labour movement.
When I went into Hull House, I saw furnishings and large rooms different
from anything I had ever seen before. With one look at the reception
room, my first thought was, "If the Union could only meet here."
Miss Addams greeted me and introduced the guests from England and
all the residents. My first impression was that they were all rich
and not friends of the workers.
Small wages and the meagre way mother and I had been living had been
making me grow more and more class conscious. By my manner Miss Addams
must have known that I wasn't friendly. She asked me questions about
our Trade Union. "Is there anything I can do to help your organization?"
she said.
I couldn't believe I had heard right. "Does she really want to
help our Trade Union?" I asked myself. She said, "I would
like to help. What can I do?" I answered, "There are many
things we need. We haven't a good meeting place. We are meeting over
a saloon on Clark Street and it is a dirty and noisy place, but he
can't afford anything better. I confided in her that, as I passed
through the large reception room, I had thought of what a wonderful
meeting place it would make.
"Can I help in any other way? she said. I said we needed someone
to distribute circulars. She said she would. When I saw there was
someone who cared enough to help us and to help us in our way, it
was like having a new world opened up.
Miss Addams not only had the circulars distributed, but paid for them.
She asked us how we wanted to have them worded. She climbed stairs,
high and narrow. Many of the entrances were in back alleys. There
were signs to "Keep Out". She managed to see the workers
at their noon hour, and invited them to classes and meetings at Hull
House.
Later, she asked me to come to Hull House to live. Knowing Hull House
and what it stood for, I know it "heaven". My whole attitude
toward life changed. I attended classes there. My first was in English.
My first was in English. I realized for the first time how handicapped
I was and how handicapped the children of other wage workers were
that left school at fourteen.
(2)
Mary Kenney became a close friend of Ellen
Gates Starr at Hull House.
Miss Starr I quickly learned to love dearly. She had a sense of
humour unequaled by anyone I'd ever known. At my first appearance
in Hull House, she seemed to sense my defiance and laughed. I was
sensitive and I gave her a cold stare.
When I went to live in Hull House I tried to ignore Miss Starr, but
she came to me, and after we talked things over, we became friends.
It was a great privilege to have her as a friend. She was like an
older sister. When I made mistakes, she "took me in hand,"
and she wasn't afraid to tell me just what she thought.
(3)
In 1891 Mary Kenney established the Jane Club, that became
part of the Hull House Settlement.
One day Miss Addams said, "Mary, if you get the members for
a cooperative boarding club, I will pay the first month's rent, and
supply the furnishings. There's a vacant apartment on Ewing Street."
I knew what it would mean for working women to have a house near Hull
House. "I'll get the members," I said. Soon the apartments
were ready, and at the end of the following week there were six members
with a cook and a general worker.
We elected a president, who was also steward, and a treasurer, and
we agreed to meet weekly. We voted to tax ourselves $3.00 each for
weekly dues, which covered expenses for food, quarters and service.
There were six apartments in the house. At the end of three months
we occupied three of them with eighteen members. At the end of a year,
we occupied all six. The social spirit was just as cooperative as
the financial relationship. We enjoyed doing things together.
(4)
Florence Kelley, Survey Magazine
(June, 1927)
A superb embodiment of youth in the Mississippi Valley was Mary
Kenny. Born in Keokuk, Iowa, of Irish immigrant parents, she had moved
with her mother to a nearby brick tenement house, a distinguished
three-story edifice in that region of drab one and two story frame
cottages, in order to be a close neighbour to Hull House and participate
in its efforts to improve industrial conditions. Tall, erect, broad-shouldered,
with ruddy face and shining eyes, she carried hope and confidence
wherever she went. Her rich Irish voice and friendly smile inspired
men, women, and children alike to do what she wished.
A highly skilled printer, she was employed by a company which gave
preference to union employees. As a numberer she earned fourteen dollars
a week, supporting herself and her lovely old mother on that wage.
Hers was the initiative in making of the brick tenement a cooperative
house for working girls known as the Jane Club, a large part of the
success of which was for many years due to the gentle sweetness of
Mrs. Kenny, who mothered the cooperators as though they had been her
own.
(5)
Samuel Gompers,
Seventy Years of Life and Labour (1925)
In 1891 I had, upon one of my visits to Chicago, met Mary Kenny, a
member of the Bookbinders' Union, whom I found to be an intelligent
union woman with more to learn and anxious to learn and anxious to
be of service. As we accumulated a little money in the treasury of
the Federation, I determined to inaugurate a special effort to organize
women workers. I wrote to Mary Kenny and asked her whether she would
not spend several months in and around New York. She readily assented.
She was anxious to help. I sent her a commission and with it a check
to pay her immediate expenses. She came to New York and worked there
for a few months. Mary Kenney proved a most valuable worker for the
Federation and I made arrangements to send her to Boston. I sent a
letter to John F. O'Sullivan telling of my appointment of Miss Kenny
and asking him to assist her in the work (they later married).
(6)
Dorothea Moore, A Day at Hill House,
American Journal of Sociology (March, 1897)
The old house is almost submerged. With its hooded top story of
fanciful brick, and its large flanking of additions to right and left,
there remain but the long windows and wide doorway to hint of the
aspect that was its own in the long gone privacy of the estate of
which it was an important and hospitable part of the quiet days before
the invasion of crowd and hurry and competition.
These additions are more intrinsic than external - growing out of
growing needs - and therefore present in themselves a kind of rough
estimate of history of them. Thus, the most extensive area and the
highest wall belong to the Children's Building, on the right flank,
the corresponding smaller wing being used for lecture and class rooms,
with dormitory space above.
About the house are its tributaries, some in material form and some
visible only in spirit. Around the southern corner is a brick building,
the home of the Jane Club, an active club of working women who in
a life of five years have solved some of the most vexing questions
of co-operative living in their own social and economic satisfaction.
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