did union put out of
existence.

Miss Kate Mullaney, their leader, was so highly thought of that in
1868 she had been made national organizer of women for the National
Labor Union, the first appointment of the kind of which there is any
record. She tried to save what she could out of the wreck of the
union by forming the Cooeperative Linen, Collar and Cuff Factory, and
obtained for it the patronage of the great department store of A.T.
Stewart, in Broadway.

The experiences of the women printers have been typical of the
difficulties which women have had to face in what is called a man's
trade of the highly organized class. The tragic alternative that is
too often offered to women, just as it is offered to any race or class
placed at an economic disadvantage, of being kept outside a skilled
trade, through the short-sighted policy of the workers in possession,
or of entering it by some back door, whether as mere undersellers or
as actual strike-breakers, is illustrated in all its phases in the
printing trade.

As early as 1856 the Boston Typographical Union seriously considered
discharging any member found working with female compositors. This
feeling, though not always so bluntly expressed, lasted for many
years. It was not singular, therefore, that under these circumstances,
employers took advantage of such a situation, and whenever it suited
them, employed women. These were not even non-unionists, seeing that
as women they were by the men of their own trade judged ineligible for
admission to the union. It is believed that women were thus the means
of the printers losing many strikes. In 1864 the proprietor of one of
the Chicago daily papers boasted that he "placed materials in remote
rooms in the city and there secretly instructed girls to set type, and
kept them there till they were sufficiently proficient to enter the
office, and thus enabled the employer to take a 'snap judgment' on his
journeymen."

After this a wiser policy was adopted by the typographical unions. The
keener-sighted among their members began not only to adopt a softer
tone towards their hardly pressed sisters in toil, but made it clear
that what they were really objecting to was the low wage for which
women worked.

The first sign of the great change of heart was the action of the
"Big Six," of New York, which undertook all the initial expenses
of starting a women's union. On October 12, 1868, the Women's
Typographical Union No. 1 was orga