woman
protested from the floor against the appointment of a committee to
deal with industrial conditions. She added that she was all in favor
of the Federation working against child labor, but they had no call to
interfere in industrial questions.

This is an illustration of how the rank and file of the clubwomen
became committed to industrial reform as part of their program, and
incidentally, although there were those among their leaders who well
knew whither the movement was tending. The Women's Trade Union League
represents one of the forces that is leading on the most conservative
among them to stand forth for industrial justice consciously and
deliberately, while the League's special aims are brought the nearer
to accomplishment by the support of this other group of women.

The Women's Trade Union League is, and as long as it fulfills its
present function, will surely remain, a federation of trade unions
with women members, but it finds a niche and provides an honorable and
useful function for the wives of workingmen, for ex-trade-union women,
and for others who endorse trade unionism and gladly give their
support to a constructive work, aiming at strengthening the weakest
wing of labor, the unorganized, down-driven, underpaid working-girls.

If the League is to be an organization open to, and aiming at
including eventually the great majority of working-women, it must be
so flexible as to admit the woman who works in the home without formal
wages, as well as the woman who works for an employer for wages. Both
are in many respects upon the same footing in relation to society.
Both are earners and producers. Both require the help of organization.
Both should be an integral part of the labor movement. Both therefore
may be consistently received as dues-paying members into Women's Trade
Union Leagues, even although we are still too confused and puzzled
to permit of housewives forming their own unions, and therefore such
members have to be received as allies.

In thus leaving open a door, however, through which all working-women
may enter the League, the founders were mindful of the fact, and have
it embodied in the constitution, that the main strength must lie in
the increasing number of wage-earning girls and women who are socially
developed up to the point of being themselves organized into trade
unions. The League has so far grown, and can in the future grow
normally, only so far as it is the highest organized e