A native of England, Irene Mary Ashby had worked with the West London Social Guild on improving working conditions for women.  On a lecture tour in the U.S. in the spring of 1900, trade unionists in Birmingham, Ala., asked her to join their campaign against child labor. Posing as a tourist, Ashby subsequently investigated conditions in the state's textile mills, visiting twenty-four mills between Dec. 12, 1900, and Jan. 15, 1901, and interviewing workers, managers, and community members. She helped prepare the child labor and compulsory education bills that were submitted to the 1901 session of the state legislature. In October 1901 she was hired by the AFL to lobby for child labor laws in the South. She continued with this work until the spring of 1902.

Barrett, James Festus (1882-1959) lived in Ashville, N.C. A printer by trade,he worked for various newspapers and played an active role in the state and local labor movement.

Golden, John (1863-1921), was born in Lancashire, England, where he worked in the cotton mills and was a member of the Mule Spinners' Union. Blacklisted for union activities, he immigrated to Fall River, Mass., in 1884, where he was employed as a spinner and served as treasurer (1898-1904) of the Fall River Mule Spinners' Association. Golden was president (1904-21) of the United Textile Workers of America and editor (1915-21) of the union's official journal, moving to Brooklyn to oversee its production. He was also a member of the National Civic Federation executive committee from 1913 to 1921.

Jones, Mary Harris "Mother" (1830-1930), was born in County Cork, Ireland, and grew up in Toronto, where her father worked as a railroad construction laborer. She was employed as a teacher in Monroe, Mich., as a dressmaker in Chicago, and then again as a teacher in Memphis, where she was married in 1861. Jones lost her husband and four children to a yellow fever epidemic in 1867 and soon after moved to Chicago, where she took up dressmaking again. Losing her business in the great Chicago fire of 1871, she became active in the Knights of Labor and, during the railroad strike of 1877, went to Pittsburgh to assist the strikers. From that time on she labored as an organizer, working particularly with miners but also on behalf of child laborers and a wide range of others, including textile, streetcar, and steel workers. She remained active in labor affairs into her nineties.