in failure, in the return to work
on no better terms of the rank and file, and in the black-listing of
the leaders. But the idea of organization had taken root, and this
group of Irish girls still clung together. "We can't have a union,"
said one, "but we must have something. Let us have a club, and we'll
call it the Maud Gonne Club." This is touching remembrance of the
Irish woman patriot.

Time passed on, and one evening during the winter of 1903 Miss Mary
McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, was talking at a
Union Label League meeting, and she brought out some facts from what
she knew of the condition of the women workers in the packing-houses,
showing what a menace to the whole of the working world was the
underpaid woman. This got into the papers, and Maggie Condon and her
sister read it, and felt that here was a woman who understood. And she
was in their own district, too.

So it came about that the Maud Gonne Club became slowly transformed
into a real union. This took quite a while. The girls interested used
to come over once a week to the Settlement, where Michael Donnelly
was their tutor and helper. Miss McDowell carefully absented herself,
feeling that she wanted the girls to manage their own affairs, until
it transpired that they wished her to be there, and thought it strange
that she should be so punctilious. After that she attended almost
every meeting. When they felt ready, they obtained the charter with
eight charter members and were known as Local 183 of the Amalgamated
Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. Little by little
the local grew in numbers. One July night the meeting was particularly
well attended and particularly lively, none the less so that
the discussion was carried on to the accompaniment of a violent
thunderstorm, the remarks of the excitable speakers being punctuated
by flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. The matter under
consideration was to parade or not to parade on the coming Labor Day.
The anxious question to decide was whether they could by their
numbers make an impression great enough to balance the dangers of the
individual and risky publicity.

The vote was cast in favor of parading. When the day came the affair
was an entire success. Two wagons gaily trimmed were filled with girls
in white dresses, carrying banners and singing labor songs. The happy
results were seen at subsequent meetings of the union, for after that
other girls from ot