ever, in the further carrying out of her plans for a
thorough, and for that day, nation-wide investigation, she turned her
attention mainly to education and organizing, establishing new local
unions, helping those already in existence, and trying everywhere
to strengthen the spirit of the workers in striving to procure for
themselves improved standards.

In her second year of work Mrs. Barry had the assistance of a most
able headquarters secretary, Mary O'Reilly, a cotton mill hand from
Providence, Rhode Island. During eleven months there were no fewer
than three hundred and thirty-seven applications for the presence
of the organizer. Out of these Mrs. Barry filled two hundred and
thirteen, traveling to nearly a hundred cities and towns, and
delivering one hundred public addresses. She was in great demand as a
speaker before women's organizations outside the labor movement, for
it was just about that time that women more fortunately placed were
beginning to be generally aroused to a shamefaced sense of their
responsibility for the hard lot of their poorer sisters. Thus she
spoke before the aristocratic Century Club of Philadelphia, and
attended the session of the International Women's Congress held in
Washington, D.C., in March and April, 1887.

The wages of but two dollars and fifty cents or three dollars for a
week of eighty-four hours; the intolerable sufferings of the women and
child wage-earners recorded in her reports make heart-rending reading
today, especially when we realize how great in amount and how
continuous has been the suffering in all the intervening years.
So much publicity, however, and the undaunted spirit and unbroken
determination of a certain number of the workers have assuredly had
their effect, and some improvements there have been.

Speeding up is, in all probability, worse today than ever. It is
difficult to compare wages without making a close investigation in
different localities and in many trades, and testing, by a comparison
with the cost of living, the real and not merely the money value of
wages, but there is a general agreement among authorities that
wages on the whole have not kept pace with the workers' necessary
expenditures. But in one respect the worker today is much better off.
At the time we are speaking of, the facts of the wrong conditions,
the low wages, the long hours, and the many irritating tyrannies the
workers had to bear, only rarely reached the public ear. Let us th