ion.

Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep,
bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in
1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York
Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an
unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had
recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a
delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the
Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in
opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations
against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union
members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they
called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take
men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not
understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been
fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they
completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had
supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her _Revolution_, they
claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and
her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract
outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not
realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she
would have set up a union shop had the funds been available.

Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they were
also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was
not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply
criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association.

"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she
reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think
they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association
is not a _trade_ organization; and while I join heart and hand with
the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by
which they can protect themselves against the oppression of
capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is
more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general
questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the
condition of working people generally."[230]

She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New
England d