Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union. 1889
  Hotel and Restaurant Employes Union. 1890
  Retail Clerks’ International Protective Association. 1890
  United Garment Workers of America. 1891
  International Brotherhood of Bookbinders. 1892
  Tobacco Workers’ International Union. 1895
  International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. 1900
  Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers International U’n. 1900
  United Textile Workers’ Union. 1901
  International Glove Workers’ Union of N. America. 1902

One group of unions, older than any of these, dating back to 1885, are the locals of the hat trimmers.  These workers belong to no national organization, and it is only recently that they have been affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.  They are not, as might be judged from the title, milliners; they trim and bind men’s hats.  They cooeperate with the Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers and Operators.  In New York the hat trimmers and the workers in straw are combined into one organization, under the name of the United Felt, Panama and Straw Hat Trimmers’ and Operators’ Union of Greater New York.  The Hat Trimmers are almost wholly a women’s organization, and their affairs are controlled almost entirely by women.  The various locals cooeperate with and support one another.  But in their stage of organization this group of unions closely resembles the local unions, whether of men or women, which existed in so many trades before the day of nation-wide organizations set in.  Eventually it must come about that they join the national organization.  Outside of New York there are locals in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.  The parent union is that of Danbury, Connecticut.

The girl hat-trimmers, under the leadership of Melinda Scott, of Newark and New York, have during the last ten years improved both wages and conditions and have besides increased their numbers and aided in forming new locals in other centers.  They are known in the annals of organized labor chiefly for the loyalty and devotion they showed during the strike of the Danbury hatters in 1909.  They not only refused, to a girl, to go back to work, when that would have broken the strike, but time after time, when money was collected and sent to them, even as large a sum as one thousand dollars, they handed it over to the men’s organizations, feeling that the men, with wives and children dependent upon them, were in even greater need than themselves.  “Seeing the larger vision and recognizing the greater need, these young women gave to the mother and the child of their working brothers.  Although a small group, there is none whose members have shown a more complete understanding of the inner meaning of trade unionism, or a finer spirit of self-sacrifice in the service of their fellows.”

When we try to estimate the power of a movement, we judge it by its numbers, by its activities, and by its influence upon other movements.