The vote was cast in favor of parading.  When the day came the affair was an entire success.  Two wagons gaily trimmed were filled with girls in white dresses, carrying banners and singing labor songs.  The happy results were seen at subsequent meetings of the union, for after that other girls from other than the Irish group came in fast, peasant girls, wearing their shawls, and colored girls, till, when the union was six months old, it had five hundred members.  The initiation of the first colored girl was a touching occasion.  Hannah O’Day had been present at one of the men’s meetings, on an evening when it had been a colored man who at the ceremony of initiation had presented white candidates for membership, and the sense of universal brotherhood had then come over her as a sort of revelation.  And there were others who felt with her.  One night, Hannah being doorkeeper at her own union meeting, a colored girl applied to be admitted.  Hannah called out:  “A colored sister is at the door; what’ll I do with her.”  It was the young president herself, Mollie Daley, though she had been brought up to think of colored folks as “trash,” who, with a disregard of strict parliamentary law, but with a beautiful cordiality, broke in with:  “I say, admit her at once, and let yez give her a hearty welcome.”  The girl who was very dark, but extremely handsome, had been not a little nervous over the reception that might await her.  She was quite overcome when she found herself greeted with hearty applause.

On another occasion, on the question being asked from the ritual:  “Any grievances?” a sensitive colored girl arose, and said a Polish girl had called her names.  The Polish girl defended herself by saying:  “Well, she called me Polak, and I won’t stand for that.”  The president summoned them both to the front.  “Ain’t you ashamed of yourselves?” She proceeded:  “Now shake and make up, and don’t bring your grievances here, unless they’re from the whole shop.”

The girls had good training in union principles from the first, so that if their phrases were sometimes a trifle crude, they were none the less the expression of genuine good sense.  For instance, some complaint would be brought forward, and in the early days the question would come:  “Is this your own kick, or is it all of our kick?” A sound distinction to make, quite as sound as when later on, the officers having learned the formal phrases, they would put it in another way, and say:  “Is this a private grievance or is it a collective grievance?”

Instead of the old hysterical getting mad, and laying down their tools and walking out, when things did not go right, grievances were now taken to the union, and discussed, and if supported by the body, taken to the foreman and managers by the business agent, Maud Sutter.

From the beginning the women delegates from Local 183 to the Packing Trades Council of Chicago were on an equality with the men, and girl delegates attended the convention of the National Association at Cincinnati and also at St. Louis.