In the organized trades conditions are not quite so exasperating, but even in these the short working term of the girl employe means an utter lack of continuity in the membership of the trade and therefore of the union.  The element of permanence in men’s organizations is in great measure the result of the fact that men, whether they remain in one particular trade or shift to another, are at least in industry for life as wage-earners, unless indeed they pass on into the employing or wage-paying class.

But instead of seeing in the temporary employment of so many girls only another reason why they need the protection and the educational advantages of organization, we have been too contented to let ill alone, and all alike, the girl, the workingman, and the community are suffering for this inertia.

In this connection the first and most important matter to take up is that of women organizers, for women workers will never be enrolled in the labor movement of America in adequate numbers except through women organizers.  And where are these today?

A most emphatic presentation of the practical reasons why the man organizer can rarely handle effectively young women workers, and why therefore women are absolutely necessary if the organization on any large scale is to be successful, was made before the Convention of the American Federation of Labor in Toronto in 1909.

The speaker was Mr. Thomas Rumsey of Toledo.  He described his own helplessness before the problem.  He told, how, to begin with, it was not possible for a man to have that readiness of access to the girl workers when in their own homes and in their leisure hours which the woman organizer readily obtained.

“If a girl is living at home,” he said, “it is not quite, so awkward, but if she is in lodgings I can’t possibly ask to see her in her own room.  If I talk to her at all it will be out on the street, which is not pleasant, especially if it is snowing or freezing or blowing a gale.  It is not under these conditions that a girl is likely to see the use of an organization or be attracted by its happier and more social side.”  Then he went on to say that he himself often did not know what best to say to his girl when he had caught her.  He was ignorant, perhaps almost as ignorant as an outsider, of the conditions under which she did her work.  He might know or be able to find out her wages and hours; he might guess that there was fining and speeding up, but he would know nothing of the details, and on any sanitary question or any moral question he would be utterly at sea.  He could neither put the questions nor get the answers, nor in any way win the girl’s confidence.  Therefore, Mr. Rumsey concluded, if the American Federation of Labor is going to acknowledge its responsibilities in the great field of labor propaganda among women it must seriously take up the question of organizing women by women.