school are the
workers-to-be taught anything concerning the labor movement or the
meaning of collective bargaining. Even if they should have attained
the eighth grade with its dizzy heights of learning, the little
teaching they have received in civics has not touched upon either of
the most vital problems of our day, the labor movement or the woman
movement.

The mere youth, however, of the girl workers is not in itself the
chief or the most, insuperable difficulty. If these girls were boys
we might look forward to their growing up in the trade, gaining
experience and becoming ever more valuable elements in the union
membership. But after a few years the larger percentage of the girls
marry and are lost to the union and to unionism for good. Nay, a girl
is often such a temporary hand that she does not even remain out
her term of working years in one trade, but drifts into and out of
half-a-dozen unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and works for
twenty different employers in the course of a few years. The head of a
public-school social center made it her business to inquire of fifty
girls, all over sixteen, and probably none over eighteen how long each
had held her present job. Two only had been over a year at the one
place. The rest accounted for such short periods as four months, six
weeks, two weeks, at paper-box-making, candy-packing or book-binding
with, of course, dull seasons and periods of unemployment between.

In the organized trades conditions are not quite so exasperating, but
even in these the short working term of the girl employe means an
utter lack of continuity in the membership of the trade and therefore
of the union. The element of permanence in men's organizations is in
great measure the result of the fact that men, whether they remain in
one particular trade or shift to another, are at least in industry for
life as wage-earners, unless indeed they pass on into the employing or
wage-paying class.

But instead of seeing in the temporary employment of so many girls
only another reason why they need the protection and the educational
advantages of organization, we have been too contented to let ill
alone, and all alike, the girl, the workingman, and the community are
suffering for this inertia.

In this connection the first and most important matter to take up is
that of women organizers, for women workers will never be enrolled in
the labor movement of America in adequate numbers except through