The Trade Union Woman

by Alice Henry

The mere youth, however, of the girl workers is not in itself the chief or the most, insuperable difficulty. If these girls were boys we might look forward to their growing up in the trade, gaining experience and becoming ever more valuable elements in the union membership. But after a few years the larger percentage of the girls marry and are lost to the union and to unionism for good. Nay, a girl is often such a temporary hand that she does not even remain out her term of working years in one trade, but drifts into and out of half-a-dozen unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and works for twenty different employers in the course of a few years. The head of a public-school social center made it her business to inquire of fifty girls, all over sixteen, and probably none over eighteen how long each had held her present job. Two only had been over a year at the one place. The rest accounted for such short periods as four months, six weeks, two weeks, at paper-box-making, candy-packing or book-binding with, of course, dull seasons and periods of unemployment between.

In the organized trades conditions are not quite so exasperating, but even in these the short working term of the girl employé means an utter lack of continuity in the membership of the trade and therefore of the union. The element of permanence in men's organizations is in great measure the result of the fact that men, whether they remain in one particular trade or shift to another, are at least in industry for life as wage-earners, unless indeed they pass on into the employing or wage-paying class.

But instead of seeing in the temporary employment of so many girls only another reason why they need the protection and the educational advantages of organization, we have been too contented to let ill alone, and all alike, the girl, the workingman, and the community are suffering for this inertia.

In this connection the first and most important matter to take up is that of women organizers, for women workers will never be enrolled in the labor movement of America in adequate numbers except through women organizers. And where are these today?

A most emphatic presentation of the practical reasons why the man organizer can rarely handle effectively young women workers, and why therefore women are absolutely necessary if the organization on any large scale is to be successful, was made before the Convention of the American Federation of Labor in Toronto in 1909.

The speaker was Mr. Thomas Rumsey of Toledo. He described his own helplessness before the problem. He told, how, to begin with, it was not possible for a man to have that readiness of access to the girl workers when in their own homes and in their leisure hours which the woman organizer readily obtained.

"If a girl is living at home," he said, "it is not quite, so awkward, but if she is in lodgings I can't possibly ask to see her in her own room. If I talk to her at all it will be out on the street, which is not pleasant, especially if it is snowing or freezing or blowing a gale. It is not under these conditions that a girl is likely to see the use of an organization or be attracted by its happier and more social side." Then he went on to say that he himself often did not know what best to say to his girl when he had caught her. He was ignorant, perhaps almost as ignorant as an outsider, of the conditions under which she did her work. He might know or be able to find out her wages and hours; he might guess that there was fining and speeding up, but he would know nothing of the details, and on any sanitary question or any moral question he would be utterly at sea. He could neither put the questions nor get the answers, nor in any way win the girl's confidence. Therefore, Mr. Rumsey concluded, if the American Federation of Labor is going to acknowledge its responsibilities in the great field of labor propaganda among women it must seriously take up the question of organizing women by women.

On a similar basis of reasoning it is easy to see that in the great majority of cases the successful organization of the women in any particular trade can be best carried out by one of themselves, a woman from their own trade. Not only do the girls believe that she understands their difficulties better than anyone else, but in most instances she does indeed bring to her work that exact knowledge of details and processes which gives the girls confidence that she can fairly state their case, that she will not, through technical ignorance, ask for impossibilities, nor on the other hand permit herself to be browbeaten by a foreman or superintendent because she does not know anything about the quality of material used, the peculiarities of a machine or the local or seasonal needs of the trade. Employers and managers also quickly recognize when organizers know whereof they talk. They, like the employés, realize that with such competent and efficient organizers or business agents they, too, are on firmer ground, even though they may not always acknowledge it.

To these sound general rules there are exceptions. There are cases where a man organizer can be invaluable, especially in some great, even if temporary, crisis. Also, there are in the American labor movement a few women who possess a genius for organizing on the very broadest lines. So profound is their sympathy with all their sisters, so thorough their grasp of general principles, so quick their perception of details, so intimate their knowledge of human nature and so sound and cool their judgment that they can be sent far afield into trades quite foreign to those of which they have had personal experience, and make a success of it. But such as these are rare and, when found, to be prized and cherished. The ordinary everyday way of drawing the women workers into the union and into the labor movement would be to have in every trade women from that trade at work all the time organizing their fellow-workers and holding them in the organization.

When the preliminary difficulties of organization have been met and overcome, when the new union has been set on its feet or the old one strengthened, there remains for the girl leader to keep her forces together.