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The Trade Union Woman by Alice Henry
page 50 of 349 (14%)
voted for Miss Hannafin in the stand she had taken.

It was upon her initiative, likewise, at the convention in the
following year, that the committee was formed to collect statistics
of women's work, and in the year after (1886), it was again Miss
Hannafin, the indefatigable, backed by the splendid force of sixteen
women delegates, who succeeded in having Mrs. Barry appointed general
investigator.

One of the most active and devoted women in the Knights of Labor was
Mrs. George Rodgers, then and still of Chicago. For a good many years
she had been in a quiet way educating and organizing among the girls
in her own neighborhood, and had organized a working-women's union
there. For seven years she attended the state assembly of the Knights
of Labor, and was judge of the district court of the organization.
But it is by her attendance as one of the sixteen women at the 1886
National Convention, which was held in Richmond, Virginia, that she is
best remembered. She registered as "housekeeper" and a housekeeper
she must indeed have been, with all her outside interests a busy
housemother. There accompanied her to the gathering her baby of two
weeks old, the youngest of her twelve children. To this youthful trade
unionist, a little girl, the convention voted the highest numbered
badge (800), and also presented her with a valuable watch and chain,
for use in future years.

One cannot help suspecting that such an unusual representation of
women must have been the reward of some special effort, for it was
never repeated. Subsequent conventions saw but two or three seated to
plead women's cause. At the 1890 convention, the occasion on which
Mrs. Barry sent in her letter of resignation, there was but one woman
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