meet
and the hour at which members shall assemble. The place is therefore
often over a saloon, to which many girls naturally and rightly object.
Sometimes it is even in a disreputable district. The girls may prefer
that the meeting should begin shortly after closing time so that they
do not need to go home and return, or have to loiter about for two or
three hours. They like meetings to be over early. The men mostly name
eight o'clock as the time of beginning, but business very often will
not start much before nine. Then, too, the men feel that they have
come together to talk, and talk they do while they allow the real
business to drag. Of course, the girls are not interested in long
discussions on matters they do not understand and in which they have
no part and naturally they stay away, and so make matters worse, for
the men feel they are doing their best for the interests of the union,
resent the women's indifference, and are more sure than ever that
women do not make good unionists.

Among the remedies proposed for this unsatisfactory state of affairs
is compulsory attendance at a certain number of meetings per year
under penalty of a fine or even losing of the card. (A very drastic
measure this last and risky, unless the trade has the closed shop.)

Where the conditions of the trade permit it by far the best plan is to
have the women organized in separate locals. The meetings of women and
girls only draw better attendances, give far more opportunity for all
the members to take part in the business, and beyond all question form
the finest training ground for the women leaders who inconsiderable
numbers are needed so badly in the woman's side of the trade-union
movement today.

Those trade-union women who advocate mixed locals for every trade
which embraces both men and women are of two types. Some are mature,
perhaps elderly women, who have been trade unionists all their lives,
who have grown up in the same locals with men, who have in the long
years passed through and left behind their period of probation and
training, and to whose presence and active cooeperation the men have
become accustomed. These women are able to express their views in
public, can put or discuss a motion or take the chair as readily as
their brothers. The other type is represented by those individual
women or girls in whom exceptional ability takes the place of
experience, and who appreciate the educational advantages of working
along wi