The Trade Union Woman

by Alice Henry

In New York and Boston, Chicago and St. Louis and Kansas City the local leagues have in every case had a marked effect upon industrial legislation for women. They have been prime movers in the campaigns for better fire protection in the factories in both New York and Chicago, and for the limitation of hours of working-women in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Missouri, and for minimum-wage legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois.

In every one of these states the Women's Trade Union League has first of all provided an opportunity for the organized women of different trades to come together and decide upon a common policy; next, to coöperate with other bodies, such as the State Federation of Labor, and the city centrals, the Consumers' League, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the women's clubs, in support of such humane legislation. Much of the actual lobbying necessary has been done by the girls themselves, and they have exercised a power out of all proportion to their numbers or the tiny treasury at their disposal. No arguments of sociologists were half so convincing to legislators or so enlightening to the public as those of the girls who had themselves been through the mill. "Every hour I carry my trays I walk a mile," said Elizabeth Maloney of the Waitresses' Union. "Don't you think that eight hours a day is enough for any girl to walk?"

When we turn to the National League itself, if there is less to record of actual achievement, there are possibilities untold. Never before have all the work of this country had an organization, open to all, with which to express themselves on a national scale.

Early in 1905 the Executive Board of the League appointed a committee with Mary McDowell chairman to secure the coöperation of all organizations interested in the welfare of woman in demanding a federal investigation and report upon the conditions of working-women and girls in all the principal industrial centers. Miss McDowell called to her aid all the forces of organized labor, the General Federation of Women's Clubs and other women's associations, the social settlements and church workers. So strengthened and supported, the committee then went to Washington, and consulted with President Roosevelt and the then Commissioner of Labor, Dr. Charles P. Neill.

Miss McDowell, more than any other one person, was responsible for the passing in 1907 of the measure which authorized and the appropriation which made possible the investigation which during the next four years the Department of Commerce and Labor made. The result of that investigation is contained in the nineteen volumes of the report.

The first gatherings of any size at which League members met and conferred together were the interstate conferences, held simultaneously in Boston, New York and Chicago, the first in the summer of 1907 and the second in 1908. The former was the first interstate conference of women unionists ever held in the United States, and it was therefore a most notable event. Especially was it interesting because of the number of women delegates who came from other states, and from quite distant points, Boston drawing them from the New England states, New York from its own extensive industrial territory, and Chicago from the Middle West. Inspired by what she heard in Chicago, Hannah Hennessy went back to found the St. Louis Women's Trade Union League. It was at the first interstate conference, also, that a committee was appointed to wait upon the American Federation of Labor Executive Board, during the Norfolk Convention in November, 1907. The Illinois State Committee of the Women's Trade Union League, whose fine legislative work helped to secure the passage of the present ten-hour law for women, also grew out of the discussion which came up in the Chicago conference.

The lines on which the League is developing can be observed through the work done and reported upon at the biennial conventions of which five have been held. The first, at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907, was an informal gathering of but seven delegates, women who had been attending the convention of the American Federation of Labor of that year. Subsequent conventions have taken place every two years since then. These have been held in Chicago, Boston and St. Louis and New York respectively. On each occasion about seventy delegates have reported. They are certainly a picked lot of girls. They are trained, trained not in fancy debate, but in practical discussion. They have met with employers in trade conferences where an error in statement or a hasty word might mean a cut in wages or an increase in hours for two years to come. They have met with their fellow-workers in union meetings, where, if a girl aspires to lead her sisters or brothers, she has to show both readiness of wit and good-humored patience in differing from the others.

These women are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every one of them, and not one can be evaded.

Industrial legislation, judicial decisions, the right to organize, the power to vote, are to the awakened working-woman not just academic questions, but something that affects her wages, her hours. They may mean enough to eat, time to rest, and beyond these home happiness and social freedom.

In two directions especially can the growing importance of the women's trade-union movement be observed: on the one hand in the incessant appeals, coming from all over the continent, to the National League, for advice and assistance in organizing women into the local unions of their trade; on the other in the degree in which it is gradually coming to be recognized by public men, by politicians, by business men, as well as by students and thinkers, that it is to organized women they must turn, whenever they want an authoritative expression as to the working-women's needs and desires.