Margaret Dreier Robins

Margaret Dreier Robins (6 September 1868 – 21 February 1945) was an American labor leader.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1868. Her parents, Theodor Dreier, a successful businessman, and Dorthea Dreier, were both immigrants from Germany. Her mother's maiden name was Dreier and her parents were cousins from Bremen, Germany. Their ancestors where civic leaders and merchants. Theodor came to the United States in 1849 and became partner of the English iron firm of Naylor, Benson and Company's New York branch. He married Dorothea in 1864 during a visit to Bremen and brought her back with him to the United States and they lived in a brownstone house in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Margaret Dreier had a brother and three sisters. Her sister Mary was a social reformer. Her sisters Dorothea and Katherine were painters.

She was privately educated because her parents believed that the study of the arts was too often neglected in traditional education. In her teens Robins suffered from physical ailments which left her depressed and weak.

At age nineteen, she began doing charity work at Brooklyn Hospital and soon became involved in other progressive causes. She met the reformer Josephine Shaw Lowell in 1902 and through Lowell joined in the Woman’s Municipal League, an organization that helped women avoid prostitution. Another collaborator was Frances Kellor, with whom she founded the New York Association for Household Research which provided lodging and placement for women domestic workers.

In 1904, increasingly interested in workers’ rights, Dreier joined the Women's Trade Union League, then only a small, budding organization. She became the president of its New York chapter in 1905; president of the Chicago chapter 1907-1914; and treasurer of the national organization and rose quickly in its ranks. In 1907, she was elected president of the national organization and began a fifteen-year tenure as its leader. Meanwhile, she married the lawyer and social worker Raymond Robins in 1905. The newleyweds split their time between running a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois and Chinsegut Hill in Brooksville, Florida.

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