Activism
In 1864, she founded the Women's Garden Homestead League in order to ask the authorities to fund housing for women head of families around Boston. Along with Jennie Collins and Elizabeth La Pierre Daniels, two factory worker Phelps met in the New England Labor Reform League, she created the Boston Working Women's League. This league became an important outlet for poor women workers, most of whom had lost a father, husband or fiance during the war. Working Women's League activists asked for better salaries for seamstresses and other workers within the textile industry, decent housing for women and the creation or a free employment bureau.
Phelps became more and more active within the labor movement and became a journalist for American Workman in order to defend women factory workers' rights.
Women's Garden Homestead League's petition
In 1869, Phelps wrote up a petition as a Women's Garden Homestead League's member and passed it from hand to hand thanks to the Boston Working Women's League. She petitionned the Massachusetts' governement to ask for funds in order for women to purchase land and become independant farmers. Her project drew inspiration from the 1862 Homestead Act which permitted heads of families (women included) to go west and establish a home and business on (previously) public-owned lands. The Women's Garden Homestead League wanted to empower women to move on the outskirts of Boston in order to still have access to the city's infrastructures (like schools and markets) and to avoid urban inequalities (like unfit housing). The project made provisions for tools, seeds and houses in which women could live for 3 years without rent, so that they could have time to establish their farms.
Phelp's proposal is typical of british, american and irish labor union theory and practice. The main point is that in the face or industrialization and the introduction of machinery, land reform would lead to a differend kind of independance. Women could achieve the Jeffersonian American Dream by becoming independant proprietors and produce their own wealth.
The petition was successful among women workers because of its new way of advocating for women as fully fledged citizens and heads of families. For rhetorical reasons, the tone of the petition was almost self-patronizing. However, it was also the product of a civil conscience awoken by the war. The goal was to present a gift of land from the State as a payment for women's sacrifice during the war, when they had to spend day and night sewing uniforms, or become nurses. Moreover, the petition clearly stated working women's right and desire to speak for themselves, which went against the traditional asumption that educated, higher class women should do the talking for them. This petition was a statement for economic, politial and moral independance.
In April 1869, Phelps, Jennie Collins and Elizabeth La Pierre Daniels organised a meeting to present their project and the petition to the public. They invited land reformists and other affluent activists. The event was covered by journalists like Parker Pillsbury, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In the morning, they spoke to an audience of a couple dozen people, but in the evening, when the women were let out of work, the crowd reached 300 people.
During the meeting, they started by talking about women's working conditions and made a point to describe how hard their living conditions were as well, especially when they had to care for young children. Then, they attributed women's misery to two main causes : the huge disparity between skilled worker's salaries (the women who made luxury shirts for wealthy men) and laywomen factory workers, and the subdivision of labour where there used to be craftmanship. Although seamstresses who benefitted from good salaries did not necesserally want to move out of Boston, they supported the rights of all women to chose their own paths.
Aurora, Woburn
The State authorities set up a hearing for Phelps because of the popularity of her fight. Her demands weren't met directly but in 1871, the Women's Garden Homestead League was invited within the government structure with Phelps as a director. She collected US$5,000 (equivalent to $134,375 in 2025) from a thousand subscribers to buy land with. She purchased 60 acres of wooded land in Woburn, along a railway leading to Boston. The project was to divide the land in small allotments where her subscribers would be able to settle. They did move in and created a community Phelps named Aurora, after herself.
In Aurora, land ownership was for women only, and property passed down from mother to daughter. Rent was paid to reimburse the cost of the land. Each allotment was divided to allow for house and a garden. The gender role shift that took place in Aurora was remarked upon and sometimes mocked by journalists at the time.
Wanting to diversify Aurora's economy, Phelps invited labor unionists and residents to found a commercial laundry in 1873. The project was probably inspired by a unionized laundry founded by women workers in Troy. Despite great enthusiasm, the laundry was never built and Aurora struggled to survive, in part because women could not accumulate enough capital and were forbidden access to lawns.
