The strike was, however, less than wholly successful: Italian workers crossed the picket lines in large numbers and the strikers lacked the resources to hold out longer than the employers. In addition, although activists within the WTUL, including William E. Walling and Lillian D. Wald, were also among the founders of the NAACP that year and fought the employers' plan to use African-American strikebreakers to defeat the strike, others in the black community actively encouraged black workers to cross the picket lines. Even so, the strike produced some limited gains for workers, while giving both the WTUL and women garment workers a practical education in organizing. The garment strikes did not end in New York City, as Chicago too became embroiled in the trend. From 1910 to 1911, the Chicago branch of the WTUL helped organize the garment workers' strike against Hart, Schaffner and Marx (HSM). The CWTUL helped coordinate 20,000 women in the strike and, in the end, accomplished their goal of improved standards in the workplace. The WTUL was also active in cities like Boston, where the League's local branch was involved in a flurry of activism. In 1914, the BWTUL organized the downtown office cleaners into a union which was recognized and chartered by the AFL. In 1915, it worked directly with the AFL on behalf of candy workers in the city. During the campaign, the BWTUL was able to significantly increase wages for the workers, though not without some clash with the AFL. Five years later, in 1920, the BWTUL followed up on this success by organizing a union for predominately marginalized service workers, mostly young women who worked at newsstands. The NYWTUL also continued its organizing into the 1930s, helping organize strikes against Sunshine Laundry in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Colonial Laundry in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The former employed mostly white women, while the latter predominantly African-American women. The WTUL strike came to both groups' aid, helping organize a population which had been historically on the outside of labor organization. The strikes were conducted to protest the employers' inaction in raising the minimum wage from 14-15 cents an hour to the NRA mandated 31 cents. Engaging in long periods of protesting and picketing, the activists of the WTUL were subjected to brutalization by both police and strikebreakers, in addition to the harsh New York winter. Indeed, conditions were so bad that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (herself a member