tivities, and thus, also,
be able to present to their brothers the collective expression of
their needs? Upon this simple basis is the local Women's Trade Union
League formed. Linking together the organized women of the same
city, it brings them, through the National League, into touch and
communication with the trade-union women in other cities.

While it is true that organization can neither be imposed nor forced
upon any group, it is no less true that when girls are ready such a
compact body, founded upon so broad a basis, can bring about results
both in the line of education and organization which no other branch
of the labor movement is equipped or fitted to do. And many labor
leaders, who have sadly enough acknowledged that the labor movement
that did not embrace women was like a giant carrying one arm in a
sling, have already gratefully admitted that such a league of women's
unions can produce results under circumstances where men, unaided,
would have been helpless.

For the origin of the Women's Trade Union League, we must go back to
1874, when Mrs. Emma Patterson, the wife of an English trade unionist
and herself deeply impressed with the deplorable condition of women
wage-earners everywhere, was on a visit to the United States. The
importance of combination as a remedy was freshly brought home to her
through what she saw of the women's organizations then most prominent
and flourishing in New York, the Parasol and Umbrella Makers' Union,
the Women's Typographical Union, and the Women's Protective Union.
She returned to England with a plan for helping women workers to help
themselves. Shortly afterwards she and others whom she interested
formed the Women's Protective and Provident League, the title later
on being changed to the bolder and more radical British Women's Trade
Union League, a federation of women's unions, with an individual
membership as well. It is known to the public on this side of the
water through the visits of Mary Macarthur, its very able secretary.

This body had been in existence nearly thirty years before the
corresponding organization was formed in this country. About 1902 Mr.
William English Walling had his attention drawn to what the British
Women's Trade Union League was accomplishing among some of the poorest
working-women in England.

He mentioned what he had learned to others. Among the earliest to
welcome the idea of forming such a league was Mrs. Mary Kenney
O'Sullivan, a bin