th more contempt than they
did the voting men, but they perceived the need of securing better labor
laws for themselves. The conviction that women of the wealthier classes
would stand by them in securing favorable laws, as they stood by the
strikers in the industrial struggle, was a strong lever to turn them
towards the suffrage ranks.

[Illustration: MRS. HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH]

The Women's Trade Union League building, used as strike headquarters in
all strikes involving women workers, is a veritable center of suffrage
sentiment in New York! One floor houses the offices of the Equality
League of Self Supporting Women, of which Harriot Stanton Blatch is
founder and president. This society, which is entirely made up of trade
and professional workers, claims an approximate membership of twenty-two
thousand. A number of unions belong to the League, and there is also a
very large individual membership.

In Chicago the suffrage movement and the labor movement is more closely
associated than in any other American city. In Chicago, it will be
remembered, the Teachers' Federation is a trade union and is allied to
the Central Labor Union. Teachers, almost everywhere denied equal pay
with men for equal work, are eager seekers for political power. When, as
in Chicago, they are associated with labor, they become convinced
suffragists.

Organized labor has always been friendly to woman suffrage, but in
Chicago not only the union women but the union men are actively friendly
towards the cause. The original moving spirit in the Chicago
organization was a remarkable young working girl, Josephine Casey. Miss
Casey sold tickets at one of the stations of the Chicago Elevated, and
she formed her first woman suffrage club among the women members of the
Union of Street and Elevated Railway Employees. Later she organized on a
larger scale the Women's Political Equality Union, with membership open
to men and women alike. The interest shown in the union by workingmen,
many of whom had never before given the matter a moment's thought, was,
from the first, extraordinary. During the first winter of the society's
existence, union after union called for Woman Suffrage speakers.
Addresses were made before fifty or more. Some of the more popular
speakers often made four addresses in an evening. Mrs. Raymond Robins,
president of the National Women's Trade Union League, and Miss Alice
Henry, secretary of the Chicago branch of the League, won many c