In every one of these states the Women’s Trade Union League has first of all provided an opportunity for the organized women of different trades to come together and decide upon a common policy; next, to cooeperate with other bodies, such as the State Federation of Labor, and the city centrals, the Consumers’ League, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the women’s clubs, in support of such humane legislation.  Much of the actual lobbying necessary has been done by the girls themselves, and they have exercised a power out of all proportion to their numbers or the tiny treasury at their disposal.  No arguments of sociologists were half so convincing to legislators or so enlightening to the public as those of the girls who had themselves been through the mill.  “Every hour I carry my trays I walk a mile,” said Elizabeth Maloney of the Waitresses’ Union.  “Don’t you think that eight hours a day is enough for any girl to walk?”

When we turn to the National League itself, if there is less to record of actual achievement, there are possibilities untold.  Never before have all the work of this country had an organization, open to all, with which to express themselves on a national scale.

Early in 1905 the Executive Board of the League appointed a committee with Mary McDowell chairman to secure the cooeperation of all organizations interested in the welfare of woman in demanding a federal investigation and report upon the conditions of working-women and girls in all the principal industrial centers.  Miss McDowell called to her aid all the forces of organized labor, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and other women’s associations, the social settlements and church workers.  So strengthened and supported, the committee then went to Washington, and consulted with President Roosevelt and the then Commissioner of Labor, Dr. Charles P. Neill.

Miss McDowell, more than any other one person, was responsible for the passing in 1907 of the measure which authorized and the appropriation which made possible the investigation which during the next four years the Department of Commerce and Labor made.  The result of that investigation is contained in the nineteen volumes of the report.

The first gatherings of any size at which League members met and conferred together were the interstate conferences, held simultaneously in Boston, New York and Chicago, the first in the summer of 1907 and the second in 1908.  The former was the first interstate conference of women unionists ever held in the United States, and it was therefore a most notable event.  Especially was it interesting because of the number of women delegates who came from other states, and from quite distant points, Boston drawing them from the New England states, New York from its own extensive industrial territory, and Chicago from the Middle West.  Inspired by what she heard in Chicago, Hannah Hennessy went back to found the St. Louis Women’s Trade Union