th experienced trade-union leaders. I have in my mind at this
moment one girl over whose face comes all the rapture of the keen
student as she explains how much she has learnt from working with men
in their meetings. She ardently advocates mixed locals for all. For
the born captain the plea is sound. Always she is quick enough to
profit by the men's experience, by their ways of managing conferences
and balancing advantages and losses in presenting a wage-scale or
accepting an agreement. At the same time she is not so overwhelmed by
their superiority, born of long practice in handling such situations,
but that she retains her own independence of judgment and clearness
of vision, and at the fitting moment will rise and place the woman's
point of view before her male co-workers. Oh yes, for herself she is
right, and for the coming woman she is right, too. But the risk is
rather that she and such as she pressing on in their individual
advancement will outstep the rank and file of their sisters at the
present stage while trade unionism among women is still so young a
movement, and one which under the most hopeful circumstances will
have to fulfill for many years the task of receiving, teaching and
assimilating vast numbers of young and quite untrained, in many cases
non-English-speaking girls.

The mixed local for all mixed trades is, I believe, the ultimate
goal which women trade unionists ought to keep in mind. But with the
average girl today the plan does not work. The mixed local does
not, as a general rule, offer the best training-class for new girl
recruits, in which they may obtain their training in collective
bargaining or cooeperative effort. To begin with, they are often so
absurdly young that they stand in the position of children put into
a class at school two or three grades ahead of their capacity and
expected to do work for which they have had no preparation through the
earlier grades. Many of the discussions that go on are quite above
the girls' heads. And even when a young girl has something to say and
wishes to say it, want of practice and timidity often keep her silent.
It is to be regretted, too, that some trade-union men are far from
realizing either the girls' needs in their daily work or their
difficulties in meetings, and lecture, reprove or bully, where they
ought to listen and persuade.

The girls, as a rule, are not only happier in their own women's local,
but they have the interest of running th