Many meetings and street
demonstrations were held in Troy, and much bitter feeling existed
between the strikers and the non-union help brought in. The strike at
length collapsed; the firms continued to introduce more machinery,
and the girls had to submit. Mr. Bliss concludes: "The Troy union
was broken up and since then has had little more than a nominal
existence."
During the nineties there were a number of efforts made to organize
working-women in Chicago. Some unions were organized at Hull House,
where Mrs. Alzina P. Stevens and Mrs. Florence Kelley were then
residents. Mrs. George Rodgers (K. of L.), Mrs. Robert Howe, Dr.
Fannie Dickenson, Mrs. Corinne Brown, Mrs. T.J. Morgan, Mrs. Frank
J. Pearson, Mrs. Fannie Kavanagh and Miss Lizzie Ford were active
workers. Miss Mary E. Kenney (Mrs. O'Sullivan), afterwards the first
woman organizer under the American Federation of Labor, was
another. She was successful in reaching the girls in her own trade
(book-binding), besides those in the garment trades and in the shoe
factories, also in bringing the need for collective bargaining
strongly before social and settlement workers.
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