as it is to us today, to meet the industrial needs and to satisfy the
undoubted rights of the working folk of the twentieth century.


1860-1880

The organization of labor upon a national basis really began during
this period. During the ten years from 1863 to 1873 there existed more
than thirty national trade unions. Of these only two, the printers and
the cigar-makers, admitted women to their membership. But in addition
the women shoemakers had their own national union, the Daughters of
St. Crispin. Women's unions of all sorts were represented in the
National Labor Union.

From this body women's local unions received every possible
encouragement. As far as I can understand, the National Labor Union
carried on little active work between conventions, but at these
gatherings it stood for equal pay for equal work, although, as it
appears to us, inconsistently and short-sightedly the delegates
refused to incorporate into their resolutions the demand for the
ballot as a needful weapon in the hands of women in their strivings
after industrial equality. The need for industrial equality had
been forced upon the apprehension of men unionists after they had
themselves suffered for long years from the undercutting competition
of women. That women needed to be strong politically in order that
they might be strong industrially was a step beyond these good
brothers.

There were also two state labor unions, composed solely of women, the
Massachusetts Working-Women's League, and the Working-Women's Labor