rict
Council, the strikers' own Executive Committee, the Chicago Federation
of Labor, and the Women's Trade Union League.

This meant the close of the struggle. Three out of the four commissary
stations were closed the following day, and the fourth a week later.

As regards the great mass of strikers then left, it was but a hunger
bargain. They had to return to work without any guarantee for fair
treatment, without any agency through which grievances could be dealt
with, or even brought before the employers. And hundreds of the
workers had not even the poor comfort that they could go back.
Business was disorganized, work was slack, and the Association houses
would not even try to make room for their rebellious employes. The
refusal of work would be made more bitter by the manner of its
refusal. Several were met with the gibe, "You're a good speaker,
go down to your halls, they want you there." One employer actually
invited a returned striker into his private office, shook hands with
him as if in welcome, and then told him it was his last visit, he
might go!

The beginning of the present stage of the industrial rebellion among
working-women in the United States may be said to have been made with
the immense garment-workers' strikes. All have been strikes of the
unorganized, the common theory that strikes must have their origin in
the mischief-breeding activities of the walking delegate finding no
confirmation here. They were strikes of people who knew not what
a union was, making protest in the only way known to them against
intolerable conditions, and the strikers were mostly very young women.
One most significant fact was that they had the support of a national
body of trade-union women, banded together in a federation, working
on the one hand with organized labor, and on the other bringing in as
helpers large groups of outside women. Such measure of success as came
to the strikers, and the indirect strengthening of the woman's cause,
which has since borne such fruit, was in great part due to the
splendid reinforcement of organized labor, through the efforts of this
league of women's unions.

I need touch but lightly on the strikes in other branches of the
sewing trades, where the history of the uprising was very similar.

In July, 1910, 70,000 cloak-makers of New York were out on strike
for nine weeks asking shorter hours, increase of wages; and sanitary
conditions in their workshops. All these and some minor de