"
During these years a number of small unions were formed, some as far
west as Detroit and Chicago, but in almost every case the union later
became a cooeperative society. Some of them, we know, ceased to exist
after a few months. Of others the forming of the organization is
recorded in some labor paper, and after a while the name drops out,
and nothing more is heard of it.
Ten years later, in New York, there was formed a large, and for
several years very active association of umbrella-sewers. This
organization so impressed Mrs. Patterson, a visiting Englishwoman,
that when she returned home, she exerted herself to form unions among
working-women and encouraged others to do the same. It was through
her persistence that the British Women's Trade Union League came into
existence.
If the conditions in the sewing trades were at this period the very
worst that it is possible to imagine, so low that organization from
within was impossible, while as yet the public mind was unprepared to
accept the alternative of legislative interference with either hours
or wages, there were other trades wherein conditions were far more
satisfactory, and in which organization had made considerable
progress.
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