From then on the story lived on the front page of all the newspapers, and speakers to address unions, meetings of strikers, women’s clubs and churches were in constant demand.  Here again, the suffragist and the socialist women showed where their sympathies lay and of what mettle they were made.  Visiting speakers, such as Miss Margaret Bondfield and Mrs. Philip Snowden, took their turn also.  The socialist women of Chicago issued a special strike edition of the Daily Socialist.  With the help of the striking girls as “newsies” they gathered in the city on one Saturday the handsome sum of $3,345.  Another group of very poor Poles sent in regularly about two hundred dollars per week, sometimes the bulk of it in nickels and dimes.  A sewing gathering composed of old ladies in one of the suburbs sewed industriously for weeks on quilts and coverings for the strikers.  Some small children in a Wisconsin village were to have had a goose for their Christmas dinner, but hearing of little children who might have no dinner, sent the price of the bird, one dollar and sixty-five cents, into the strikers’ treasury.

At first strike pay was handed out every Friday from out of the funds of the United Garment Workers.  But on Friday, November 11, the number of applicants for strike pay was far beyond what it was possible to handle in the cramped office quarters.  Through some misunderstanding, which has to this day never been explained, the crowd, many thousands of men, women and children, were denied admittance to the large wheat pit of the Open Board of Trade, which, it was understood, had been reserved for their use.  It was a heart-rending sight, as from early morning till late afternoon they waited in the halls and corridors and outside in the streets.  At first in dumb patience and afterwards in bewilderment, but all along with unexampled gentleness and quietness.

At this point, Mr. John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, took hold of a situation already difficult, and which might soon have become dangerous.  He explained to the crowd that everyone would be attended to in their various district halls, and that all vouchers already out would be redeemed.  This relieved the tension, but the Joint Strike Committee were driven to take over at once the question of relief, so that none should be reduced to accept that hunger bargain, which, as Mrs. Robins put it, meant the surrender of civilization.

With such an immense number of strike-bound families to support, the utmost economy of resources was necessary, and it was resolved hereafter to give out as little cash as possible, but to follow the example of the United Mine Workers and others and open commissary stations.  This plan was carried out, and more than any other one plan, saved the day.  Benefits were handed over, in the form of groceries on a fixed ration scale.  As far as we know, such a plan had never before been adapted to the needs of women and