Jennie Collins (1828¿87) began working at age fourteen in New England textile mills, where she labored for some years before becoming a domestic servant and later a garment shop seamstress. In the 1860s she began to speak publicly and write about labor causes and women¿s rights. In 1870 she left garment shop work and founded Boffin¿s Bower, a Boston charity to aid poor and working women.¿Judith A. Ranta is an independent scholar whose published works include The Life and Writings of Betsey Chamberlain: Native American Mill Worker and Women and Children of the Mills: An Annotated Guide to Nineteenth-Century American Textile Factory Literature.