By April 1, 1901, the conditions in the laundry industry were effectually revolutionized.  The boarding system was abolished, wages were substantially increased and the working day was shortened; girls who had been receiving $8 and $10 a month were now paid $6 and $10 a week; ten hours was declared to constitute the working day and nine holidays a year were allowed.  For overtime the employes were to be paid at the rate of time and a half.  An hour was to be taken at noon, and any employe violating this rule was to be fined.  The fine was devised as an educative reminder of the new obligation the laborers were under to protect one another, and to raise the standard of the industry upon which they must depend for a living, so fearful was the union that old conditions might creep insidiously back upon workers unaccustomed to independence.

The next step was the nine-hour day, and this in good time was obtained too, but only as the result of the power of the strong, well-managed union.

The union was just five years old, when unheard-of disaster fell on San Francisco, the earthquake and fire.  Well indeed did the members stand the test.  Like their fellow-unionists, the waitresses, they made such good use of their trade-union solidarity, and showed such courage, wisdom and resource, that the union became even more to the laundry-workers than it had been before this severe trial of its worth.  Two-thirds of the steam laundries had been destroyed, likewise the union headquarters.  Yet within a week all the camps and bread lines had been visited, and members requested to register at the secretary’s home, and called together to a meeting.

Temporary headquarters were found and opened as a relief station, where members were supplied with clothing and shoes.  Within another week the nine laundries that had escaped the fire resumed work, the employes going back under the old agreement.

By the time the next April came round nine of the burnt laundries were rebuilt, all on the most modern scale as to design and fittings, and equipped with the very newest machinery.  But still there were only eighteen steam laundries to meet all San Francisco’s needs, and therefore business was very brisk.  So in April, 1907, it seemed good to the union leaders to try for better terms when renewing their agreement.  When they made their demand for the eight-hour day as well as for increased wages, the proprietors refused, and eleven hundred workers went out, the entire working force of fourteen laundries.  The other four laundries, with but two hundred workers altogether, had the old agreement signed up, and kept on working.  The strike lasted eleven weeks, and cost the union over $24,000.  Meanwhile the Conciliation Committee of the Labor Council, after many conferences and much effort succeeded in arranging a compromise, the working week to be fifty-one hours, with a sliding scale under which the eight-hour day would be reached in April,