It was the very
largeness of their program which proved in the end a source of
weakness, while latterly the activities of the organization
became clogged by the burden of a membership with no intelligent
understanding of the platform and aims.
But although the absence of adequate restrictions on admission to
membership, and the ease of affiliation, not to speak of other
reasons, had led to the acceptance of numbers of those who were only
nominally interested in trade unionism, it had also permitted the
entry of a band of women, not all qualified as wage-workers, but
in faith and deed devoted trade unionists, and keenly alive to the
necessity of bringing the wage-earning woman into the labor movement.
The energies of this group were evidently sadly missed during the
early years of the American Federation of Labor.
The present national organization came into existence in 1881, under
the style and title of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions of
the United States and Canada. It reorganized at the convention of
1886, and adopted the present name, the American Federation of Labor.
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