This series contains the minutes of general membership meetings, (usually held once a month except for July and August), minutes of meetings of the executive board (held once or twice a month), and monthly reports on the League's work, usually by the secretary but occasionally by the president. Other items included are minutes of the strike council, beginning in December 1910, reports of League committees on organization, legislation, and other matters, monthly reports of the League's organizer, and occasional annual reports of one or more of the officers.

The series has a few gaps; scheduled meetings were sometimes omitted and occasional minutes and secretary's reports appear to be missing. The minutes of the League's annual meeting, held in March and devoted to annual reports and to election officers for the comming year, do not appear in the files until 1920. The minutes and reports reconstruct much of its day-to-day activity: its attempts to make contact with working women, its organizing efforts in various trades, its relations with local trade unions and the labor movement generally, and its legislative work. The executive board minutes are useful for recording changes in the League's ideology and priorities.

This series contains correspondence, the bulk of which comes from 1919-1926 and 1944-1955, with correspondence scattered throughout the rest of the organization's duration. It is mostly concerned with internal matters such as fundraising and the management of the League's clubhouse. The most substantial topic is the League's work for legislation at the state and national level.

Researchers interested in the National WTUL will find here substantial portions of the official correspondence of two successive national presidents, Swartz and Schneiderman, carried on from the office of the New York League and interfiled with its correspondence.

This series contains materials on special topics, which had League support and some participation by the League leaders. The largest bodies of papers within this series are the records of three ad hoc, cross organizational groups seeking legislative goals: the New York Conference for Unemployment Insurance Legislation (1931-1934), the New York Joint Committee for Ratification of the Child Labor Agreement (1937-1938), and the Campaign Committee against the Equal Rights Amendment (1938-1939). Mary Dreier was the last secretary the New York Conference for Unemployment Insurance Legislation and the chairman of the New York Joint Committee for Ratification of the Child Labor Agreement. Other files relate to the International Congress/Federation of Working Women (1919-1924), which contain correspondence and other papers kept by Maud Swartz in her capacity as the Congress's secretary and American vice president of the rechristened International Federation of Working Women.

Records generated by the New York WTUL begin with a small group of papers dating from 1911 and pertaining to the League's campaign against safety and sanitation abuses in New York factories. Other materials are made up of correspondence and related papers of the New York League's compensation service, set up to assist working women in making claims for job related injuries under the state's workmen's compensation act (1922-1924). Other materials relate to New York League benefits and to songs and skits prepared for League occasions, labor plays, and articles and speeches prepared by League members.

The printed and duplicated series contains the New York League's Annual Reports, Convention Reports, and Monthly Bulletins. It also contains items issued by the National and New York Leagues and other organizations and of state and federal legislative bills, assembled by the New York League.

This series includes newspaper clippings pertaining to the New York WTUL, a scrapbook of the annual announcements of its Educational Department, and notes for a history of the League compiled in the late 1930s as part of a Work Progress Administration project. This series also contains financial and audit reports for the League.

This series contains a card catalog of the collection, likely created by the Library of the Department of Labor.

This series mostly contains black-and-white photographs of varying sizes, related to the New York WTUL. The photographs are made up of headshots of leaders and other shots of WTUL officials, publicity shots, events, meetings, performances, conventions, and other photographs. There a significant amount of photographs that feature Eleanor Roosevelt. The series also contains a cloth banner bearing the legend: "New York Women's Trade Union League; Organized 1903."