nt trades and
callings. That the fundamental interests of the wage-earner and the
farmer were identical, was not so much stated as taken for granted.
In defining eligibility for membership there were certain significant
exceptions made; the following, being considered as pursuing
distinctly antisocial occupations, were pointedly excluded: dealers
in intoxicants, lawyers, bankers, stock-brokers and professional
gamblers.

Women were first formally admitted to the order in September, 1881. It
is said that Mrs. Terence V. Powderly, wife of the then Grand Master
Workman, was the first to join. It is not known that any figures
exist showing the number of women who at any one time belonged to the
Knights of Labor, but Dr. Andrews estimates the number, about the year
1886, when the order was most influential, at about 50,000. Among this
50,000 were a great variety of trades, but shoe-workers must have
predominated, and many of these had received their training in trade
unionism among the Daughters of St. Crispin.

The Knights evidently took the view that the woman's industrial
problem must to a certain extent be handled apart from that of the
men, and more important still, that it must be handled as a whole.
This broad treatment of the subject was shown when at the convention
of 1885 it was voted, on the motion of Miss Mary Hannafin, a
saleswoman of Philadelphia, that a committee to collect statistics on
women's work be appointed. This committee consisted of Miss Hannafin
and Miss Mary Stirling, also of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Lizzie H.
Shute, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who were the only women delegates
to the Convention.

At the next convention, held in 1886 in Richmond, Virginia, there were
sixteen women delegates, out of a total of six hundred. Mr. Terence
V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman, appointed the sixteen women as
a committee to receive and consider the report of this previously
appointed special committee of three. The result of their
deliberations was sufficiently remarkable. They set an example to
their sex in taking the free and independent stand they did. For they
announced that they had "formed a permanent organization, the object
of which will be to investigate the abuses to which our sex is
subjected by unscrupulous employers, to agitate the principle which
our order teaches of equal pay for equal work and abolition of child
labor." They also recommended that the expenses of this new woman's
department