A branch of the National Women’s Trade Union League was formed in Chicago in January, 1904; another in New York in March of the same year, and a third in Boston in June of the same year.  With these three industrial centers in line, the new campaign was fairly begun.

The first three years were occupied mainly with preparatory work, becoming known to the unions and the workers, and developing activities both through the office and in the field.

Early in 1907 Mrs. Raymond Robins, of Chicago, became National President, a position which she has held ever since.  To the tremendous task of aiding the young organization till it was at least out of its swaddling clothes she brought boundless energy and a single-minded devotion which admitted of attention to no rival cause.  Being a woman of independent means, she was able to give her time entirely to the work of the League.  She would be on the road for weeks at a time, speaking, interviewing working-women, manufacturers or legislators, all the while holding the threads, organization here, legislation there.

But the first opportunity for the Women’s Trade Union League to do work on a large scale, work truly national in its results, came with the huge strikes in the sewing trades of 1909-1911.  To these a separate chapter is devoted.  It is sufficient here to say that the backing given by the National League and its branches in New York, in Philadelphia and in Chicago was in great part responsible for the very considerable measure of success which has been the outcome of these fierce industrial struggles.  On the whole, the strikers gained much better terms than they could possibly have done unassisted.  Almost entirely foreigners, they had no adequate means of reaching with their story the English-speaking and reading public of their city.  The Leagues made it their particular business to see that the strikers’ side of the dispute was brought out in the press and in meetings and gatherings of different groups.  It is related of one manufacturer, whose house was strike-bound, that he was heard one day expressing to a friend in their club his bewilderment over the never-ending publicity given to this strike in the daily newspapers, adding that it was a pity; these affairs were always better settled quietly.

To win even from failure success, to win for success permanence, was the next aim of the League, and nowhere has this constructive policy of theirs brought about more significant results than in the aid which they were able to give to the workers in the sewing trades.  In New York it was the League which made possible the large organizations which exist today among the cloak-makers, the waist-makers and other white-goods-workers.  The League support during the great strikes, and its continued quiet work after the strikes were over, first showed the public that there was power and meaning in this new development, this new spirit among the most oppressed women workers.  The attitude of