They have met with their fellow-workers in union
meetings, where, if a girl aspires to lead her sisters or brothers,
she has to show both readiness of wit and good-humored patience in
differing from the others.
These women are growing too, as all must grow who live on life's
firing line, and shrink not from meeting the very hardest problems of
today. The working-woman, in her daily struggle comes up against every
one of them, and not one can be evaded.
Industrial legislation, judicial decisions, the right to organize, the
power to vote, are to the awakened working-woman not just academic
questions, but something that affects her wages, her hours. They may
mean enough to eat, time to rest, and beyond these home happiness and
social freedom.
In two directions especially can the growing importance of the women's
trade-union movement be observed: on the one hand in the incessant
appeals, coming from all over the continent, to the National League,
for advice and assistance in organizing women into the local unions
of their trade; on the other in the degree in which it is gradually
coming to be recognized by public men, by politicians, by business
men, as well as by students and thinkers, that it is to organized
women they must turn, whenever they want an authoritative expression
as to the working-women's needs and desires.
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