Still, twenty-five years ago, the day of national organization had already dawned.  To organize a trade on a national scale is at best a slow process, and it naturally takes a much longer time for women to influence and enter into the administrative work of a national union, than of a separate local union, which perhaps they have helped to found.  They are therefore too apt to lose touch with the big national union, and even with its local branch in their own city.  It is almost like the difference between the small home kitchen, with whose possibilities a woman is familiar, and the great food-producing factory, run on a business scale, whose management seems to her something far-removed and unfamiliar.  It was not until 1904, when the National Women’s Trade Union League was formed out of unions with women members, that women workers, as women, can be said to have begun national organization at all.  The account of that body is reserved for another chapter.

Meanwhile as instances of the many determined localized efforts among women to raise wages and better conditions, there follow here outlines of the formation of the Working Women’s Society in New York, the successful organization of the Laundry Workers in San Francisco, and of the splendid but defeated struggle of the girls in the packing plants of Chicago.

In 1886 a small body of working-women, of whom Leonora O’Reilly was one, began holding meetings on the.  East Side of New York City, to inquire into and talk over bad conditions, and see how they could be remedied.  They were shortly joined by some women of position, who saw in this spontaneous effort one promising remedy, at least for some of the gross evils of underpayment, overwork and humiliation suffered by the working-women and girls of New York, in common with those in every industrial center.  Among those other women who thus gave their support, and gave it in the truly democratic spirit, were the famous Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Robert Abbe, Miss Arria Huntingdon and Miss L.S.  Perkins, who was the first treasurer of the little group.  Mrs. Lowell’s long experience in public work, and her unusual executive ability were of much value at first.  The result of the meetings was the formation of the Working Women’s Society.  They held their first public meeting on February 2, 1888.  In their announcement of principles they declared “the need of a central society, which shall gather together those already devoted to the cause of organization among women, shall collect statistics and publish facts, shall be ready to furnish information and advice, and, above all, shall continue and increase agitation on this subject.”  Among their specific objects were “to found trade organizations, where they do not exist, and to encourage and assist existing labor organizations, to the end of increasing wages and shortening hours.”  Another object was to promote the passing and the enforcement of laws for the protection of women and children in factories, and yet another the following up of cases of injustice in the shops.