ganizers among all classes of workers. As quickly as a group
in any trade seems ready for organizing the League helps them. It
raises funds to assist women in their trade struggles. It acts as
arbitrator between employer and wage earners in case of shop disputes.

The Women's Tracle Union League reaches not only women in factory
trades, but it has succeeded in organizing women who until lately
believed themselves to be a grade above this social level. One hundred
and fifty dressmakers in New York City belong to a union. Seventy
stenographers have organized in the same city. The Teachers' Federation
of Chicago is a labor union, and although it was formed before the
Women's Trade Union League came into existence, it is now affiliated.
The women telegraphers all over the United States are well organized.

The businesslike, resourceful, and fearless policy of the League was
brilliantly demonstrated during the famous strike of the shirt-waist
makers in New York and Philadelphia in the winter of 1910. The story of
this strike will bear retelling.

On the evening of November 22, 1909, there was a great mass meeting of
workers held at Cooper Union in New York. Samuel Gompers, President of
the American Federation of Labor, presided, and the stage was well
filled with members of the Women's Trade Union League. The meeting had
been called by the League in conjunction with Shirt-Waist Makers' Union,
Local 25, to consider the grievances of shirt-waist makers in general,
and especially of the shirt-waist makers in the Triangle factory, who
had been, for more than two months, on strike.

The story of the strike, the causes that led up to it, and the bitter
injustice which followed it were rehearsed in a dozen speeches. It was
shown that for four to five dollars a week the girl shirt-waist makers
worked from eight in the morning until half-past five in the evening
two days in the week; from eight in the morning until nine at night
four days in the week; and from eight in the morning until noon one day
in the week--Sunday.

The shirt-waist makers in the Triangle factory, in hope of bettering
their conditions, had formed a union, and had informed their employers
of their action. The employers promptly locked them out of the shop, and
the girls declared a strike.

The strike was more than two months old when the Cooper Union meeting
was held, and the employers showed no signs of giving in. It was agreed
that a general strike of shir