§ 8. What Trade Unionism can do for them.--A question which naturally rises now is, how far combination in the form of Trade Unionism can assist to raise the industrial condition of these women. The practical power wielded by male Unions we saw was twofold. Firstly, by restricting the supply of labour in their respective trades they raised its market price, i.e. wages. Secondly, they could extract better conditions from employers, by obliging the latter to deal with them as a single large body instead of dealing with them as a number of individuals. How far can women-workers effect these same ends by these same means? Trade Unionism, so far as women are concerned, is yet in its infancy. In 1874, Mrs. Paterson established a society, now named the Women's Trades Union Provident League, to try and establish combination among women in their several trades. The first Union was that of women engaged in book- binding, formed in September 1874. Since then a considerable number of Unions have been formed among match-makers, dressmakers, milliners, mantle-makers, upholstresses, rope-makers, confectioners, box-makers, shirt-makers, umbrella-makers, brush-makers and others. Many of these have been formed to remedy some pressing grievance, or to secure some definite advance of wage, and in certain cases of skilled factory work where the women have maintained a steady front, as among the match- makers and the confectioners, considerable concessions have been won from employers. But the small scale and tentative character of most of these organizations do not yet afford any adequate test of what Unionism can achieve. The workers in a few factories here and there have formed a Union of, at the most, a few hundred workers. No large women's trade has yet been organized with anything approaching the size and completeness of the stronger men's Unions. Women Trade Unionists numbered 120,178 in 1901, and of these no less than 89.9 per cent were textile workers, whose Unions are mostly organized by and associated with male Unions.