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Henry, Alice, 1857-1943

"The Trade Union Woman"

In the summer, "from five
o'clock in the morning until sunset, being fourteen hours and a half,
with an intermission of half an hour for breakfast and an hour for
dinner, leaving thirteen hours of hard labor." Out of repeated and
vain protests and repeated strikes, perhaps not always in vain, were
developed the beginnings of the trade-union movement of Pennsylvania,
the men taking the lead. The women, even where admitted to membership
in the unions, seem to have taken little part in the ordinary work of
the union, as we only hear of them in times of stress and strike.
The women who worked in the cotton mills were massed together by the
conditions of their calling, in great groups, and a sense of community
of interest would thus, one would think, be more easily established.
Women engaged in various branches of sewing were, on the other hand,
in much smaller groups, but they were far more widely distributed.
One result of this was that meeting together and comparing notes was
always difficult and often impossible.


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