devoted most of its energies to encouraging the purchase and use of union-made products.  The women’s auxiliaries have been formed from the wives of men from that particular union.  They have often maintained a fund for sick and out-of-work members and their families, and have besides furnished a social environment in which all could become better acquainted, and they would besides take an active part in the entertainment of a national convention, whenever it came to their city.  But except indirectly, none of these associations have aided in the organization of women wage-earners, still less have taken it for their allotted task.  Perhaps earlier, the formation of such a body as the National Women’s Trade would have been impracticable.  But it certainly responds to the urgent needs of today, and is, after all, but a natural development of the trade-union movement, with especial reference to the crying needs of women and children in the highly specialized industries.

The individual worker, restless under the miseries of her lot, and awakening also, it may be, to a sense of the meaning of our industrial system, learns to see the need of the union of her trade.  When she does so, she has taken a distinct step forward.  If an extensive trade, the local is affiliated with the international, but neither local nor international, as we shall see, as yet grant to the woman worker the same attention as they give to the man, because to men trade unionists the men’s problems are the chief and most absorbing.  So what more natural than that women belonging to various unions should come together to discuss the problems that are common to them all as women workers, whatever their trade, and aid one another in their difficulties, cooeperate in their various activities, and thus, also, be able to present to their brothers the collective expression of their needs?  Upon this simple basis is the local Women’s Trade Union League formed.  Linking together the organized women of the same city, it brings them, through the National League, into touch and communication with the trade-union women in other cities.

While it is true that organization can neither be imposed nor forced upon any group, it is no less true that when girls are ready such a compact body, founded upon so broad a basis, can bring about results both in the line of education and organization which no other branch of the labor movement is equipped or fitted to do.  And many labor leaders, who have sadly enough acknowledged that the labor movement that did not embrace women was like a giant carrying one arm in a sling, have already gratefully admitted that such a league of women’s unions can produce results under circumstances where men, unaided, would have been helpless.