But how unconscious the vast number of women of this type were, either of the true nature of the force they were obeying or the point whither they were tending, was graphically illustrated at the Biennial Federation of Women’s Clubs in St. Paul, in 1906, when a woman protested from the floor against the appointment of a committee to deal with industrial conditions.  She added that she was all in favor of the Federation working against child labor, but they had no call to interfere in industrial questions.

This is an illustration of how the rank and file of the clubwomen became committed to industrial reform as part of their program, and incidentally, although there were those among their leaders who well knew whither the movement was tending.  The Women’s Trade Union League represents one of the forces that is leading on the most conservative among them to stand forth for industrial justice consciously and deliberately, while the League’s special aims are brought the nearer to accomplishment by the support of this other group of women.

The Women’s Trade Union League is, and as long as it fulfills its present function, will surely remain, a federation of trade unions with women members, but it finds a niche and provides an honorable and useful function for the wives of workingmen, for ex-trade-union women, and for others who endorse trade unionism and gladly give their support to a constructive work, aiming at strengthening the weakest wing of labor, the unorganized, down-driven, underpaid working-girls.

If the League is to be an organization open to, and aiming at including eventually the great majority of working-women, it must be so flexible as to admit the woman who works in the home without formal wages, as well as the woman who works for an employer for wages.  Both are in many respects upon the same footing in relation to society.  Both are earners and producers.  Both require the help of organization.  Both should be an integral part of the labor movement.  Both therefore may be consistently received as dues-paying members into Women’s Trade Union Leagues, even although we are still too confused and puzzled to permit of housewives forming their own unions, and therefore such members have to be received as allies.

In thus leaving open a door, however, through which all working-women may enter the League, the founders were mindful of the fact, and have it embodied in the constitution, that the main strength must lie in the increasing number of wage-earning girls and women who are socially developed up to the point of being themselves organized into trade unions.  The League has so far grown, and can in the future grow normally, only so far as it is the highest organized expression of the ideals, the wishes and the needs of the wage-earning girl.