Born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 6, 1868, Margaret Dreier was the daughter of German immigrant parents. She attended private schools and pursued studies in history and philosophy on her own. At nineteen she volunteered for the women╒s auxiliary of Brooklyn Hospital, becoming secretary-treasurer of the group. In 1902 she became a member of the State Charities Aid Association╒s city visiting committee for insane asylums, and in 1903╨1904 she was chairman of the legislative committee of the Women╒s Municipal League, a post in which she led a campaign for legislation regulating private employment agencies. In 1904 she joined the new Women╒s Trade Union League and became president of the New York branch. In June 1905 she married Raymond Robins, head of the Northwestern University Settlement in Chicago. In that city she soon met the leaders of reform and social work movements, including Jane Addams of Hull-House and Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement.
From 1907 to 1913 she was president of the Chicago branch of the Women╒s Trade Union League (she was succeeded in that post by her colleague Agnes Nestor), and from 1907 to 1922 she was president of the National Women╒s Trade Union League. She played a major role in organizing support for the strikes of 1909╨1911 against the garment industry. She was the principal force behind the League╒s establishment of a training program for women union leaders in 1914, a program that continued until 1926, and she was for many years an editor of the League╒s journal, Life and Labor. She also served in 1908╨1917 on the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and in 1915 she was appointed to the Illinois Unemployment Commission.
Robins was chairman of the League of Women Voters committee on women in industry and in 1919╨1920 was a member of the women╒s division of the Republican National Committee. In 1919 she called an International Congress of Working Women, which met in Washington, D.C., and she was elected president of the International Federation of Working Women formed at a second such congress held in Geneva in 1921. She resigned that post in 1923. In 1924 she and her husband retired to Chinsegut Hill, an estate near Brooksville, Florida, but she continued active in public affairs. She was a member of the Republican National Committee in 1928 and headed the women in industry section of the women╒s division. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover named her to the planning committee of the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. In the 1930s she became an ardent supporter of the New Deal. She was reelected to the executive board of the Women╒s Trade Union League in 1934. She died at her estate near Brooksville, Florida, on February 21, 1945.
