The conventional narrative of American labor history in the early twentieth century tells a simple, tragic tale, centered almost entirely on male workers. Steelworkers among the most oppressed industrial workers in the country organized a huge strike in 1919 that failed; as a result, craft unionism remained unchallenged and Samuel Gompers maintained his conservative grip over the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Women, supposedly, were irrelevant to the steel strike because they did not march, strike in support of the men, or launch their own drives toward trade union recognition. And with Gompers in charge after 1919, no women darkened labor's doorway until well into the twentieth century. Female factory workers were viewed as the clients of middle-class reformers, while women white-collar workers appeared to be both marginal and tied to management. This vision of labor history holds up only if we consider labor history to be the story of laboring men. Eric Hobsbawm's book by the same title has encouraged me to seek a wider angle on the narrative of American history and the role of women especially white-collar women workers in the public sector -1 with special attention to the so-called labor aristocracy. Starting with an analysis of the theory of the labor aristocracy, this essay focuses on two unions of women workers in the public sector: school teachers and (for the duration of World War I) telephone workers. Both unions took shape at the dawn of the 20th century, both represented whitecollar workers, and both had a female constituency with a feminist leadership. At the same time, this essay retells the familiar story of the competing labor strategies of three labor leaders Samuel Gompers,