e actual lobbying necessary has been
done by the girls themselves, and they have exercised a power out
of all proportion to their numbers or the tiny treasury at their
disposal. No arguments of sociologists were half so convincing to
legislators or so enlightening to the public as those of the girls who
had themselves been through the mill. "Every hour I carry my trays I
walk a mile," said Elizabeth Maloney of the Waitresses' Union. "Don't
you think that eight hours a day is enough for any girl to walk?"

When we turn to the National League itself, if there is less to record
of actual achievement, there are possibilities untold. Never before
have all the work of this country had an organization, open to all,
with which to express themselves on a national scale.

Early in 1905 the Executive Board of the League appointed a committee
with Mary McDowell chairman to secure the cooeperation of all
organizations interested in the welfare of woman in demanding a
federal investigation and report upon the conditions of working-women
and girls in all the principal industrial centers. Miss McDowell
called to her aid all the forces of organized labor, the General
Federation of Women's Clubs and other women's associations, the social
settlements and church workers. So strengthened and supported, the
committee then went to Washington, and consulted with President
Roosevelt and the then Commissioner of Labor, Dr. Charles P. Neill.

Miss McDowell, more than any other one person, was responsible for the
passing in 1907 of the measure which authorized and the appropriation
which made possible the investigation which during the next four
years the Department of Commerce and Labor made. The result of that
investigation is contained in the nineteen volumes of the report.

The first gatherings of any size at which League members met
and conferred together were the interstate conferences, held
simultaneously in Boston, New York and Chicago, the first in the
summer of 1907 and the second in 1908. The former was the first
interstate conference of women unionists ever held in the United
States, and it was therefore a most notable event. Especially was it
interesting because of the number of women delegates who came from
other states, and from quite distant points, Boston drawing them from
the New England states, New York from its own extensive industrial
territory, and Chicago from the Middle West. Inspired by what she
heard in Chicago, Hanna