But towards those set in high places she could be intensely scornful, as for instance when she is found appealing to the order itself, asking that “more consideration be given, and more thorough educational measures be adopted on behalf of the working-women of our land, the majority of whom are entirely ignorant of the economic and industrial question, which is to them of vital importance, and they must ever remain so while the selfishness of their brothers in toil is carried to such an extent as I find it to be among those who have sworn to demand equal pay for equal work.  Thus far in the history of our order that part of our platform has been but a mockery of the principle intended.”

Mrs. Barry started out to make regular investigations of different trades in which women were employed, in order that she might accurately inform herself and others as to what actual conditions were.  But here she received her first serious check.  She had no legal authority to enter any establishment where the proprietor objected, and even in other cases, where permission had been given, she discovered afterwards to her dismay that her visits had led to the dismissal of those who had in all innocence given her information, as in the case quoted of Sister Annie Conboy, a worker in a mill, in Auburn, New York.  But little was gained by shutting out such a bright and observant woman.  Mrs. Barry’s practical knowledge of factory conditions was already wide and her relations with workers of the poorest and most oppressed class so intimate that little that she wanted to know seems to have escaped her, and she was often the channel through which information was furnished to the then newly established state bureaus of labor.

Baffled, however, in the further carrying out of her plans for a thorough, and for that day, nation-wide investigation, she turned her attention mainly to education and organizing, establishing new local unions, helping those already in existence, and trying everywhere to strengthen the spirit of the workers in striving to procure for themselves improved standards.

In her second year of work Mrs. Barry had the assistance of a most able headquarters secretary, Mary O’Reilly, a cotton mill hand from Providence, Rhode Island.  During eleven months there were no fewer than three hundred and thirty-seven applications for the presence of the organizer.  Out of these Mrs. Barry filled two hundred and thirteen, traveling to nearly a hundred cities and towns, and delivering one hundred public addresses.  She was in great demand as a speaker before women’s organizations outside the labor movement, for it was just about that time that women more fortunately placed were beginning to be generally aroused to a shamefaced sense of their responsibility for the hard lot of their poorer sisters.  Thus she spoke before the aristocratic Century Club of Philadelphia, and attended the session of the International Women’s Congress held in Washington, D.C., in March and April, 1887.