Thus was she led
far away from academic fields, first into suffrage work, and later
into the National Women's Trade Union League. Until her health gave
way, about a year before her death, she acted as official lecturer for
the League. Through her unique gifts as a speaker, and her beautiful
personality, she interpreted the cause of the working-woman to many
thousands of hearers. She was also departmental editor of _Life and
Labor_, the League's magazine.
Great have been the vicissitudes of the labor movement among men, but
for many years now, the tendency towards national cohesion has been
growing. This tendency has been greatly strengthened by the rapid
development, and at the same time, the cheapening of the means of
transport and communication between distant regions of the country.
In the advantages arising from this general growth of the labor
movement, both in its local activities and on its national side, women
workers have indeed shared. This is true, both on account of the
direct benefits accruing to them through joining mixed organizations,
or being aided by men to form separate organizations of their own,
and also through the vast assistance rendered by organized labor in
obtaining protective legislation for the most utterly helpless and
exploited toilers, for example, the child-labor laws which state after
state has placed upon the statute book, sanitary regulations, and laws
for the safeguarding of machinery dangerous to workers.
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