Again, it is only by making room for such women within the labor movement that women can be represented in sufficient numbers in the councils of labor.  As long as there was no recognized way of admitting the home woman to even a tiny corner of the labor field, as long as entry was restricted solely to the wage-earning woman, there seemed no chance of women being ever in anything but a hopeless minority in either local or international union, and that minority, too, composed so largely of young and inexperienced girls.  Is it any wonder, then, that the interests of the working-girls have suffered, and that, as a ready consequence, workingmen’s interests have suffered, too.

The Women’s Trade Union League is also bringing into touch with the labor movement other women’s organizations, and especially winning their increased cooeperation in the campaigns for legislation.  It is largely through the ally[A] membership that the Women’s Trade Union League has been able to reach the public ear as well as to attract assistance and cooeperation, especially from the suffragists and the women’s clubs.  The suffragists have always been more or less in sympathy with labor organizations, while outside labor circles, the largest body to second the efforts of organized labor in the direction of humanity has been the women’s clubs, whether expressing themselves through the General Federation, or through local activity in their home towns.  An immense group of women thus early became committed to an active opposition to the employment of children either in factories, or under the even more dangerous and demoralizing conditions which await mere babies in the street or in tenement homes.

[Footnote A:  An ally is a man or a woman of any class not a worker in any organized trade who believes in the organization of women and subscribes to the following League platform.

1.  Organization of all workers into trade unions. 2.  Equal pay for equal work. 3.  Eight-hour day. 4.  A living wage. 5.  Full citizenship for women.]

There is a similar movement going on within the National Young Women’s Christian Association.  The reason for this stand being taken by women’s organizations was characteristic.  The impelling force that urged those women on was something far deeper than mere philanthropy.  It was the acceptance by a whole group of women of the old responsibilities of motherhood, in the new form that these must take on if new conditions are to be met.  It was as if the motherhood of the country had said in so many words:  “Social conditions are changing, but we are still the mothers of the new generation.  Society is threatened with this calamity, that they will pass beyond our care before the needs and claims of childhood have been satisfied.  As individuals we are now powerless.  Let us see what cooeperation will do to right conditions that are fast slipping beyond our control.”