A committee was appointed with Mrs. Valesh as chairman and Miss Van
Etten as secretary. They brought in a report that the convention
create the office of national organizer, the organizer to be a woman
at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year and expenses, to be
appointed the following January, and that the constitution be so
amended that the woman organizer have a seat on the Executive Board.
The latter suggestion was not acted upon. But Miss Mary E. Kenney of
the Bindery Women (now Mrs. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan) was appointed
organizer, and held the position for five months. She attended the
1892 convention as a fully accredited delegate. Naturally she could
produce no very marked results in that brief period, and the remark
is made that her work was of necessity of a pioneer and missionary
character rather than one of immediate results--a self-evident
commentary. Later women were organizers for brief periods, one being
Miss Anna Fitzgerald, of the National Women's Label League.

As years passed on, and the American Federation of Labor grew by the
affiliation of almost all the national trade unions, it became the one
acknowledged central national body. Along with the men, such women
as were in the organizations came in, too. But it was only as a rare
exception that we heard of women delegates, and no woman has ever yet
had a seat upon the Executive Board, although women delegates have
been appointed upon both special and standing committees.

The responsibility for this must be shared by all. It is partly an
outgrowth of the backward state of the women themselves. They are at
a disadvantage in their lack of training, their lower wages and their
unconsciousness of the benefits of organization; also owing to the
fact that such a large number of women are engaged in the unskilled
trades that are hardest to organize. On the other hand, neither the