A few words should be said here of another strike among
laundry-workers, this time almost entirely women, which although as
bravely contested, ended in complete failure. This was the strike of
the starchers in the Troy, New York, shirt and collar trade. In the
Federal Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage Earners, Mr.
W.P.D. Bliss gives a brief account of it. In 1905 the starchers
had their wages cut, and at the same time some heavy machinery was
introduced. The starchers went out, and organized a union, which over
one thousand women joined. They kept up the struggle from June, 1905,
throughout a whole summer, autumn and winter till March, 1906. It was
up till that time, probably the largest women's strike that had
ever taken place in this country and was conducted with uncommon
persistence and steadiness of purpose. They were backed by the
international union, and appointing a committee visited various
cities, and obtained, it is said, about twenty-five thousand dollars
in this way for the support of their members. Many meetings and street
demonstrations were held in Troy, and much bitter feeling existed
between the strikers and the non-union help brought in. The strike at
length collapsed; the firms continued to introduce more machinery,
and the girls had to submit. Mr. Bliss concludes: "The Troy union
was broken up and since then has had little more than a nominal
existence."

During the nineties there were a number of efforts made to organize
working-women in Chicago. Some unions were organized at Hull House,
where Mrs. Alzina P. Stevens and Mrs. Florence Kelley were then
residents. Mrs. George Rodgers (K. of L.), Mrs. Robert Howe, Dr.
Fannie Dickenson, Mrs. Corinne Brown, Mrs. T.J. Morgan, Mrs. Frank