on movement among women were so strong and so extensive that
any woman, young or old, could travel from place to place as a member
of a truly world-wide organization. Then she would have a better
chance of arriving well posted as to ways of earning her living, and
of finding friends in every city and every town and village.

It may be urged that there exist already organizations world-wide in
their scope, such as the religious associations, for the very purpose
of safeguarding wandering girlhood. There are, and they accomplish a
notable amount of good. But their appeal is not universal; they never
have money or workers enough to cope adequately with a task like this,
and they are not built upon the sound economic basis of the trade
union.

The immigrant problem was not encountered by the first factory workers
here, who were American-born. So we find the earliest leaders in the
trade organization of women were wholly drawn from the daughters of
the native settlers. They felt and spoke always as free-women, "the
daughters of freemen." When this class of girls withdrew from the
factories, they gave place to the Irish immigrant, in some respects a
less advanced type than themselves. I have briefly traced some of the
economic reasons which affected the rise, growth and eventual passing
away of the various phases of trade unionism among women in this
country. The progress of these was radically modified by the influx
into the trades of workers from one nation after another; by the
passing from a trade or a group of trades of body after body of the
old workers, starved out or giving way before the recent arrivals,
whose pitiful power to seize the jobs of the others and earn some sort
of a living, has lain in their very weakness and helplessness.

So the first Irish girls who came into the factory life of New England
were peasants, with no knowledge of city life, but quick and ready to
learn. They went into the new occupations, and picked up the new ways
of doing things. And by the time they had grasped the meaning of this
strange industrial world in which they found themselves, they were
in the relentless grasp of machine-controlled industry. Under
untold handicaps they had to begin at the very beginning, and start
rebellions on their own account. From the sixties on we can detect the
preponderance of Irish names in the annals of early trade unionism.
When they had adapted themselves to their conditions, for they quickly
be