before the Massachusetts
legislative committee in 1845, and gave evidence as to the conditions
in the textile mills. This, the first American governmental
investigation, was brought about almost solely in response to the
petitions of the working-women, who had already secured thousands of
signatures of factory operatives to a petition asking for a ten-hour
law.

The Lowell Association had their correspondent to the _Voice of
Industry_, and also a press committee to take note of and contradict
false statements appearing in the papers concerning factory
operatives. They had most modern ideas on the value of publicity,
and neglected no opportunity of keeping, the workers' cause well in
evidence, whether through "factory tracts," letters to the papers,
speeches or personal correspondence. They boldly attacked legislators
who were false to their trust, and in one case, at least, succeeded
in influencing an election, helping to secure the defeat of William
Schouler, chairman of that legislative committee before which the
women delegates had appeared, which they charged with dishonesty in
withholding from the legislature all the most important facts brought
forward by the trade-union witnesses.

Other female labor reform associations existed about this period in
Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire. The first-named was particularly
active in securing the passage of the too soon wrecked ten-hour law.
In New York a similar body of women workers was organized in 1845 as
the Female Industrial Association. The sewing trades in many branches,
cap-makers, straw-workers, book-folders and stitchers and lace-makers
were among the trades represented. In Philadelphia the tailoresses in
1850 formed an industrial union. It maintained a cooeperative tailoring
shop, backed by the support of such cooeperative advocates as George
Lippard, John Shedden, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. In
1853 the Industrial Union published a report of its activities,
showing that in two years the business had paid away in wages to
tailoresses more than four thousand dollars.

In the men's conventions of this time a number of women besides
the redoubtable Sarah Bagley took an active part, being seated as
delegates from their own labor reform associations. At the meeting in
1846 of the New England Workingmen's Association, for instance, Miss
Huldah J. Stone, of Lowell, was elected recording secretary, and Mrs.
C.N.M. Quimby was appointed one of the boa