not. But altogether apart from such sporadic
risings as these, there were, as we have seen, from a very early
period, genuine trade unions composed of working-women.

The Women's Trade Union League is the first organization which has
attempted to deal with the whole of the problems of the woman in
industry on a national scale. As we have seen, there have been,
besides the many women's unions, and the men's unions to which women
have been and are admitted, the large body, the Women's National Union
Label League, and a number of women's auxiliaries in connection with
such unions as the Switchmen, the Machinists, and the Typographical
Union. The Women's Union Label League has, however, devoted most
of its energies to encouraging the purchase and use of union-made
products. The women's auxiliaries have been formed from the wives of
men from that particular union. They have often maintained a fund for
sick and out-of-work members and their families, and have besides
furnished a social environment in which all could become better
acquainted, and they would besides take an active part in the
entertainment of a national convention, whenever it came to their
city. But except indirectly, none of these associations have aided in
the organization of women wage-earners, still less have taken it for
their allotted task. Perhaps earlier, the formation of such a body
as the National Women's Trade would have been impracticable. But it
certainly responds to the urgent needs of today, and is, after all,
but a natural development of the trade-union movement, with especial
reference to the crying needs of women and children in the highly
specialized industries.

The individual worker, restless under the miseries of her lot, and
awakening also, it may be, to a sense of the meaning of our industrial
system, learns to see the need of the union of her trade. When she
does so, she has taken a distinct step forward. If an extensive trade,
the local is affiliated with the international, but neither local nor
international, as we shall see, as yet grant to the woman worker the
same attention as they give to the man, because to men trade unionists
the men's problems are the chief and most absorbing. So what more
natural than that women belonging to various unions should come
together to discuss the problems that are common to them all as
women workers, whatever their trade, and aid one another in their
difficulties, cooeperate in their various ac