Union for the state of New York.

But most of the organization work among women was still local in
character. The New England girl was now practically out of the
business, driven out by the still more hardly pushed immigrant. With
her departure were lost to the trades she had practiced the remnants
of the experience and the education several generations of workers had
acquired in trade unionism and trade-union policy and methods.

Still, at intervals and under sore disadvantages the poor newcomers
did some fighting on their own account. Although they were immigrants
they were of flesh and blood like their predecessors, and they
naturally rebelled against the ever-increasing amount of work that
was demanded of them. The two looms, formerly complained of, had now
increased to six and seven. The piece of cloth that used to be thirty
yards long was now forty-two yards, though the price per piece
remained the same. But strike after strike was lost. A notable
exception was the strike of the Fall River weavers in 1875. It was led
by the women weavers, who refused to accept a ten per cent. cut in
wages to which the men of the organization (for they were organized)
had agreed. The women went out in strike in the bitter month of
January, taking the men with them. The leaders selected three mills,
and struck against those, keeping the rest of their members at work,
in order to have sufficient funds for their purposes. Even so, 3,500
looms and 156,000 spindles were thrown idle, and 3,125 strikers were
out. The strike lasted more than two months and was successful.

Progress must have seemed at the time, may even seem to us looking
back, to be tantalizingly slow, but far oftener than in earlier days
do the annals of trade unionism report, "The strikers won." Another