The older women in the community came, therefore, to feel that there were many problems of vital interest and importance for the immigrant woman upon which action would never be taken in the lodge meeting, in which there was a mixed membership. They believed, too, that the meetings of the local lodge might become a real source of help to the newly arrived immigrant women. The women's lodge was therefore formed, and to the first meetings came women who still wore the handkerchiefs over their heads. Some of the more prosperous members protested that they did not want such women as these in the lodge, but the leaders insisted that their purpose in organizing women's lodges had been to reach through them just such women. The leaders felt that women who knew little of American life and customs would gradually acquire that knowledge by coming into the lodge. A lodge of this kind under the leadership of progressive women of the older immigration has become a center in which are discussed many of the questions the women have to face for the first time. The plan in the Polish National Alliance is to have lodges so organized that women from Russian Poland may be in one, those from Galicia in another, or to organize lodges on the basis of the neighborhood association in the United States. It is hoped that by such a plan as this the more backward women may be drawn into some of the social activities of the Polish community. Although English has not been the language of the meetings, women have been encouraged to learn English as soon as possible after their arrival. The older women urge the younger women to acquire the language. They have learned the importance of a knowledge of the language to the mother of boys and girls who are growing up in surroundings of which the mother knows little, and where custom and convention are so different from those to which she was accustomed. With the multiplication of women's lodges came the demand on the part of the women for representation in the national organization. As a result, the Women's Auxiliary has been given an official place, and women have been elected to the national board of directors. Polish women have felt that the welfare of the group as a whole is largely dependent upon the fitness of the women to meet the new situation. They have recognized the fact that, because of the national attitude toward women, Polish women of the class represented by the bulk of the immigration are very backward. They have therefore sought to inaugurate a campaign for the education of women on a national scale.