weakness, while latterly the activities of the organization
became clogged by the burden of a membership with no intelligent
understanding of the platform and aims.

But although the absence of adequate restrictions on admission to
membership, and the ease of affiliation, not to speak of other
reasons, had led to the acceptance of numbers of those who were only
nominally interested in trade unionism, it had also permitted the
entry of a band of women, not all qualified as wage-workers, but
in faith and deed devoted trade unionists, and keenly alive to the
necessity of bringing the wage-earning woman into the labor movement.
The energies of this group were evidently sadly missed during the
early years of the American Federation of Labor.

The present national organization came into existence in 1881, under
the style and title of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions of
the United States and Canada. It reorganized at the convention of
1886, and adopted the present name, the American Federation of Labor.
It was built up by trade-union members of the skilled trades, and to
them trade qualifications and trade autonomy were essential articles
of faith. This was a much more solid groundwork upon which to raise a
labor movement. But at first it worked none too well for the women,
although as the national organizations with women members joined the
Federation the women were necessarily taken in, too. Likewise they
shared in some, at least, of the benefits and advantages accruing from
the linking together of the organized workers in one strong body. But
the unions of which the new organization was composed in these early
days were principally unions in what were exclusively men's trades,
such as the building and iron trades, mining and so on. In the trades,
again, in which women were engaged, they were not in any great numbers