and the expenses of a woman investigator should be borne by
the order. The report was adopted and the memorable Woman's Department
of the Knights of Labor was created. Memorable for the purpose and
the plan that underlay its foundation, it was also memorable for the
character and achievements of the brilliant, able and devoted woman
who was chosen as general investigator.

Mrs. Leonora Barry was a young widow with three children. She had
tried to earn a living for them in a hosiery mill at Amsterdam, New
York. For herself her endeavor to work as a mill hand was singularly
unfortunate, for during her first week she earned but sixty-five
cents. But if she did not during that week master any of the processes
concerned in the making of machine-made stockings, she learned a good
deal more than this, a good deal more than she set out to learn. She
learned of the insults young girls were obliged to submit to on pain
of losing their jobs, and a righteous wrath grew within her at the
knowledge. During this hard time also she heard first of the Knights
of Labor, and having heard of them, she promptly joined. As she was
classified at the 1886 convention as a "machine hand," it is probable
that she had by this time taken up her original trade.

For four years Mrs. Barry did fine work. She combined in a remarkable
degree qualities rarely found in the same individual. She followed in
no one's tracks, but planned out her own methods, and carried out a
campaign in which she fulfilled the duties of investigator, organizer
and public lecturer. This at a time when the means of traveling were
far more primitive than they are today; and not in one state alone,
for she covered almost all the Eastern half of the country. We know
that she went as far west as Leadville, Colorado, because of the
touching little story that is told of her visit there. In that town
she had founded the Martha Washington Assembly of the Knights of
Labor, and when she left she was given a small parcel with the request
that she would not open it until she reached home. But, as she tells
it herself,

My woman's curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the
package, and found therein a purse which had been carried for
fifteen years by Brother Horgan, who was with us last year,
and inside of that a little souvenir in the shape of five
twenty-dollar gold pieces. You say that I was the instrument
through whose means the Martha Washington Assemb