Conboy in 1910.

Sara Agnes Mclaughlin Conboy (April 3, 1870 – January 7, 1928) was a labor organizer in the United States.

She was born Sara Agnes Mclaughlin in Boston, Massachusetts. At the age of 11 she began working in a candy factory, then spent time in a button factory before becoming a skilled weaver. During this period she was married to a mailman named Joseph P. Conboy, but he died two years afterward. While working at a carpet factory in Roxbury, she led a strike that lasted from 1909–10.[1]

Rising to prominence in the labor movement, Sara helped organize the United Textile Workers of America, eventually becoming their secretary-treasurer in 1915.[2] During World War I she was appointed to the Council of National Defense. In 1920 she was the first woman to serve as a United States delegate to the British Trades Union Congress. She was also the first woman to direct a bank in the state of New York,[3] and she served on several government committees.[1][4]

References

  1. 1 2 McHenry, Robert (1983). Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 75–76. ISBN 0486245233.
  2. ↑ (9 May 1919). Mrs. Sara A. Conboy - Helped Textile Workers To Get 48-Hour Week, New York Tribune
  3. ↑ "Conboy, Sara née McLaughlin". Allwords.com. Retrieved 2008-03-17.
  4. ↑ (9 January 1928). Mrs. Sara Conboy, Labor Leader, Dies, The New York Times
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