This historical paper traces the development and implementation of New York state's nurse registration law from 1898 until 1908. It recounts the disorganization, conflict, and division within the nursing community during its early years of professionalization and the work that Lavinia Dock, Sophia Palmer, and others did to organize the nursing profession. Dock and Palmer, working through the Society of Superintendents of Training Schools, as well as Ethel Gordon Fenwick, who founded the International Council of Nurses, stimulated the development of state nursing associations within the U.S. Immediately after its organization, the New York State Nurses Association undertook the legislative process that led to what was considered a model registration law. The paper traces the political process that New York's nursing leaders pursued to develop the legislation, and the educational and practice reforms that evolved from their efforts.