It is at a psychological moment that she is making herself felt in the councils of organized labor.  Just as the labor movement is itself being reorganized, with the modern development of the union and of union activity; just as woman herself is coming into her own; just as we are passing through the transition period from one form of society to another; and just as we catch a glimpse of a distant future in which the world will become, for the first time, one.

From the very fact that they are women, women trade unionists have their own distinct contribution to make to the movement.  The feminine, and especially the maternal qualities that man appreciates so in the home, he is learning (some men have learnt already) to appreciate in the larger home of the union.

In speaking thus, I freely, if regretfully, admit that the rartk and file of both sexes are far indeed from playing their full part.  We have still to depend more largely than is quite fitting or democratic upon the leaders as standard-bearers.  It is also true that there are women who are willing to accept low ideals in unionism as in everything else.  Their influence is bound to pass.  If women are to make their own peculiar contribution to the labor movement, it will be by working in glad cooeperation with the higher idealism of the men leaders.

And when the day comes (may its coming be hastened!) that women are even only as extensively organized as men are today, the organization of men will indeed proceed by leaps and bounds.  It will not be by arithmetical, but by geometrical progression, that the union will count their increases, for it is the masses of unskilled, unorganized, ill-paid women and girl workers today, who in so many trades today increase the difficulties of the men tenfold.  That dead weight removed, they could make better terms for themselves and enroll far more men into their ranks.  What increase of power, what new and untried forces women may bring with them into the common store, just what these may be, and the manner of their working out, it is too early to say.

But the future was never so full of hope as today, not because conditions are not cruelly hard, and problems not baffling, but, because, over against these conditions, and helping-to solve these problems, are ranged the great forces of evolution, ever on the side of the workers, slowly building up the democracy of the future.

APPENDIX I

This document, which is the contract under which a union waitress works, is typical.

AGREEMENT

Between the Hotel and Restaurant Employes’ International Alliance Affiliated with the American and the Chicago Federation of Labor.

This contract made and entered into this 10th day of April, 1914, by and between the H.R.E.I.A. affiliated with the American and Chicago Federation of Labor of the City of Chicago, County of Cook and State of Illinois, party of the first part, and: