But both steam laundries and French laundries, both employers and workers, both unionists and non-unionists are at least found in agreement in their united opposition to the Japanese laundries, from whose competition all parties suffer, and in this they are backed by the whole of organized labor.  The possibility of unionizing the Japanese laundries is not even considered.

The story of the Steam Laundry Workers’ Union of San Francisco is an encouraging lesson to those toilers in any craft who go on strike.  But it also holds for them a warning.  A successful strike is a good thing, for the most part, but its gains can be made permanent only if, when the excitement of the strike is over, the workers act up to their principles and keep their union together.  The leaders must remember that numbers alone do not make strength, that most of the rank and file, and not unfrequently the leaders too, need the apprenticeship of long experience before any union can be a strong organization.  The union’s choicest gift to its membership lies in the opportunity thus offered to the whole of the members to grow into the spirit of fellowship.

A few words should be said here of another strike among laundry-workers, this time almost entirely women, which although as bravely contested, ended in complete failure.  This was the strike of the starchers in the Troy, New York, shirt and collar trade.  In the Federal Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners, Mr. W.P.D.  Bliss gives a brief account of it.  In 1905 the starchers had their wages cut, and at the same time some heavy machinery was introduced.  The starchers went out, and organized a union, which over one thousand women joined.  They kept up the struggle from June, 1905, throughout a whole summer, autumn and winter till March, 1906.  It was up till that time, probably the largest women’s strike that had ever taken place in this country and was conducted with uncommon persistence and steadiness of purpose.  They were backed by the international union, and appointing a committee visited various cities, and obtained, it is said, about twenty-five thousand dollars in this way for the support of their members.  Many meetings and street demonstrations were held in Troy, and much bitter feeling existed between the strikers and the non-union help brought in.  The strike at length collapsed; the firms continued to introduce more machinery, and the girls had to submit.  Mr. Bliss concludes:  “The Troy union was broken up and since then has had little more than a nominal existence.”

During the nineties there were a number of efforts made to organize working-women in Chicago.  Some unions were organized at Hull House, where Mrs. Alzina P. Stevens and Mrs. Florence Kelley were then residents.  Mrs. George Rodgers (K. of L.), Mrs. Robert Howe, Dr. Fannie Dickenson, Mrs. Corinne Brown, Mrs. T.J.  Morgan, Mrs. Frank J. Pearson, Mrs. Fannie Kavanagh and Miss Lizzie Ford were active workers.  Miss Mary E. Kenney (Mrs. O’Sullivan), afterwards the first woman organizer under the American Federation of Labor, was another.  She was successful in reaching the girls in her own trade (book-binding), besides those in the garment trades and in the shoe factories, also in bringing the need for collective bargaining strongly before social and settlement workers.