h Hennessy went back to found the St. Louis
Women's Trade Union League. It was at the first interstate conference,
also, that a committee was appointed to wait upon the American
Federation of Labor Executive Board, during the Norfolk Convention
in November, 1907. The Illinois State Committee of the Women's Trade
Union League, whose fine legislative work helped to secure the passage
of the present ten-hour law for women, also grew out of the discussion
which came up in the Chicago conference.

The lines on which the League is developing can be observed through
the work done and reported upon at the biennial conventions of which
five have been held. The first, at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907, was
an informal gathering of but seven delegates, women who had been
attending the convention of the American Federation of Labor of that
year. Subsequent conventions have taken place every two years since
then. These have been held in Chicago, Boston and St. Louis and New
York respectively. On each occasion about seventy delegates have
reported. They are certainly a picked lot of girls. They are trained,
trained not in fancy debate, but in practical discussion. They have
met with employers in trade conferences where an error in statement or
a hasty word might mean a cut in wages or an increase in hours for
two years to come. They have met with their fellow-workers in union
meetings, where, if a girl aspires to lead her sisters or brothers,
she has to show both readiness of wit and good-humored patience in
differing from the others.

These women are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's
firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of
today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every
one of them, and not one can be evaded.

Industrial legislation, judicial decisions, the right to organize, the
power to vote, are to the awakened working-woman not just academic
questions, but something that affects her wages, her hours. They may
mean enough to eat, time to rest, and beyond these home happiness and
social freedom.

In two directions especially can the growing importance of the women's
trade-union movement be observed: on the one hand in the incessant
appeals, coming from all over the continent, to the National League,
for advice and assistance in organizing women into the local unions
of their trade; on the other in the degree in which it is gradually
coming to be recognized by pub