"We can't have a union,"
said one, "but we must have something. Let us have a club, and we'll
call it the Maud Gonne Club." This is touching remembrance of the
Irish woman patriot.
Time passed on, and one evening during the winter of 1903 Miss Mary
McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, was talking at a
Union Label League meeting, and she brought out some facts from what
she knew of the condition of the women workers in the packing-houses,
showing what a menace to the whole of the working world was the
underpaid woman. This got into the papers, and Maggie Condon and her
sister read it, and felt that here was a woman who understood. And she
was in their own district, too.
So it came about that the Maud Gonne Club became slowly transformed
into a real union. This took quite a while. The girls interested used
to come over once a week to the Settlement, where Michael Donnelly
was their tutor and helper. Miss McDowell carefully absented herself,
feeling that she wanted the girls to manage their own affairs, until
it transpired that they wished her to be there, and thought it strange
that she should be so punctilious.
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