losses in presenting a wage-scale or accepting an agreement.  At the same time she is not so overwhelmed by their superiority, born of long practice in handling such situations, but that she retains her own independence of judgment and clearness of vision, and at the fitting moment will rise and place the woman’s point of view before her male co-workers.  Oh yes, for herself she is right, and for the coming woman she is right, too.  But the risk is rather that she and such as she pressing on in their individual advancement will outstep the rank and file of their sisters at the present stage while trade unionism among women is still so young a movement, and one which under the most hopeful circumstances will have to fulfill for many years the task of receiving, teaching and assimilating vast numbers of young and quite untrained, in many cases non-English-speaking girls.

The mixed local for all mixed trades is, I believe, the ultimate goal which women trade unionists ought to keep in mind.  But with the average girl today the plan does not work.  The mixed local does not, as a general rule, offer the best training-class for new girl recruits, in which they may obtain their training in collective bargaining or cooeperative effort.  To begin with, they are often so absurdly young that they stand in the position of children put into a class at school two or three grades ahead of their capacity and expected to do work for which they have had no preparation through the earlier grades.  Many of the discussions that go on are quite above the girls’ heads.  And even when a young girl has something to say and wishes to say it, want of practice and timidity often keep her silent.  It is to be regretted, too, that some trade-union men are far from realizing either the girls’ needs in their daily work or their difficulties in meetings, and lecture, reprove or bully, where they ought to listen and persuade.

The girls, as a rule, are not only happier in their own women’s local, but they have the interest of running the meetings themselves.  They choose their own hall and fix their own time of meeting.  Their officers are of their own selecting and taken from among themselves.  The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end.  Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer.