Chicago has long been the largest and the most important among the centers of the meat-packing industry.  None of the food trades have received more investigation and publicity, and the need for yet more publicity, and for stricter and yet stricter supervision is perpetually being emphasized.  But most of the efforts that have been made to awake and keep alive a sense of public rights and responsibility in the conducting of huge institutions like the Chicago packing-plants, have centered on the danger to the health of the consumer through eating diseased or decomposed meat.  The public cares little, and has not troubled to learn much about the conditions of the workers, without whom there could be no stockyards and no meat-packing industry.  Not that some of the investigators have not tried to bring this point forward.  It was the chief aim of Upton Sinclair, when he wrote “The Jungle,” and yet even he discovered to his dismay that, as he bitterly phrased it, he had hoped to strike at the heart of the American people, and he had only hit them in their stomach.

But that is a story by itself.  Let us go back to the brave struggle begun by the women in the packing-plants in the year 1902 to improve their conditions by organizing.

For a great many years prior to this, women had been employed in certain branches of the work, such as painting cans and pasting on labels.  But towards the close of the nineties the packers began to put women into departments that had always been staffed by men.  So it was when girls began to wield the knife that the men workers first began to fear the competition of the “petticoat butchers.”  The idea of organizing the girls, were they painters or butchers, as a way of meeting this new menace, did not occur to them.

At this time, in the fall of 1902, the oldest and best workers were Irish girls, with all the wit and quickness of their race.  Especially was Maggie Condon a favorite and a leader.  She was an extremely quick worker.  With the temperament of an idealist, she took a pride in her work, liked to do it well, and was especially successful in turning out a great amount of work.  Quicker and quicker she became till, on the basis of the good wages she was making, she built up dreams of comfort for herself and her family.  One of her choicest ambitions was to be able to afford a room of her own.  But just so surely as she reached the point where such a luxury would be possible, just so surely would come the cut in wages, and she had to begin this driving of herself all over again.  Three times this happened.  When her well and hardly earned twenty-two dollars was cut the third time Maggie realized that this was no way to mend matters.  The harder she worked, the worse she was paid!  And not only was she paid worse, she who as one of the best workers could stand a reduction better than most, but the cut went all down the line, and affected the poorest paid and the slowest workers as well.