Besides each individual girl has had a little bit of education in what
cooeperation means, and what collective bargaining can do. The League
itself is a reminder, too, that all working-girls have many interests
in common, whatever their trade.
But besides aiding in the forming of new locals, the Women's Trade
Union League can be a force strengthening the unions already
established. Each of the leagues has an organization committee, whose
meetings are attended by delegates from the different women's trades.
These begin mostly as experience meetings, but end generally in either
massing the effort of all on one particular union's struggle, or
in planning legislative action by which all women workers can be
benefited.
In New York and Boston, Chicago and St. Louis and Kansas City the
local leagues have in every case had a marked effect upon industrial
legislation for women. They have been prime movers in the campaigns
for better fire protection in the factories in both New York and
Chicago, and for the limitation of hours of working-women in the
states of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Missouri, and for
minimum-wage legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois.
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