women
organizers. And where are these today?

A most emphatic presentation of the practical reasons why the man
organizer can rarely handle effectively young women workers, and why
therefore women are absolutely necessary if the organization on any
large scale is to be successful, was made before the Convention of the
American Federation of Labor in Toronto in 1909.

The speaker was Mr. Thomas Rumsey of Toledo. He described his own
helplessness before the problem. He told, how, to begin with, it was
not possible for a man to have that readiness of access to the girl
workers when in their own homes and in their leisure hours which the
woman organizer readily obtained.

"If a girl is living at home," he said, "it is not quite, so awkward,
but if she is in lodgings I can't possibly ask to see her in her own
room. If I talk to her at all it will be out on the street, which is
not pleasant, especially if it is snowing or freezing or blowing a
gale. It is not under these conditions that a girl is likely to see
the use of an organization or be attracted by its happier and more
social side." Then he went on to say that he himself often did not
know what best to say to his girl when he had caught her. He was
ignorant, perhaps almost as ignorant as an outsider, of the conditions
under which she did her work. He might know or be able to find out her
wages and hours; he might guess that there was fining and speeding up,
but he would know nothing of the details, and on any sanitary question
or any moral question he would be utterly at sea. He could neither
put the questions nor get the answers, nor in any way win the
girl's confidence. Therefore, Mr. Rumsey concluded, if the American
Federation of Labor is going to acknowledge its responsibilities in
the great field of labor propaganda among women it must seriously take
up the question of organizing women by women.

On a similar basis of reasoning it is easy to see that in the great
majority of cases the successful organization of the women in any
particular trade can be best carried out by one of themselves, a
woman from their own trade. Not only do the girls believe that she
understands their difficulties better than anyone else, but in most
instances she does indeed bring to her work that exact knowledge of
details and processes which gives the girls confidence that she
can fairly state their case, that she will not, through technical
ignorance, ask for impossibilities, nor