thousand dollars from their treasury towards the assistance of the
striking ironmolders of Troy, and later on five hundred dollars to
help the striking bricklayers of New York. They had in course of time
succeeded in raising their own wages from the very low average of
two dollars and three dollars per week to a scale ranging from eight
dollars to fourteen dollars for different classes of work, although
their hours appear to have been very long, from twelve to fourteen
hours per day. But the laundresses wanted still more pay, and in May,
1869, they went on strike to the number of four hundred, but after a
desperate struggle, in which they were supported by the sympathy of
the townspeople, they were beaten, and their splendid union put out of
existence.

Miss Kate Mullaney, their leader, was so highly thought of that in
1868 she had been made national organizer of women for the National
Labor Union, the first appointment of the kind of which there is any
record. She tried to save what she could out of the wreck of the
union by forming the Coöperative Linen, Collar and Cuff Factory, and
obtained for it the patronage of the great department store of A.T.
Stewart, in Broadway.

The experiences of the women printers have been typical of the
difficulties which women have had to face in what is called a man's
trade of the highly organized class. The tragic alternative that is
too often offered to women, just as it is offered to any race or class
placed at an economic disadvantage, of being kept outside a skilled
trade, through the short-sighted policy of the workers in possession,
or of entering it by some back door, whether as mere undersellers or
as actual strike-breakers, is illustrated in all its phases in the
printing trade.