Mary Kenny O'Sullivan, a wage-earner understood first hand the difficulties faced by the millions of semi-skilled and unskilled women who toiled in America's factories at the end of the 19th-Century. She sought to improve labour conditions through trade unionism. Appointed the first woman organizer for the American Federation of Labour in 1892 she went on to be a co-founder of the Womens' Trade Union League, formed in 1903 this was a cross-class alliance of women workers and their middle and upper class allies.