It was the daily, almost hourly, tutelage which the Russian men insisted on the American girls’ accepting, rather than the prolongation of the strike beyond the time they had expected, that sent the American girls back as “scabs.” There were several signs that the two or three weeks’ experience as strikers was having its effect on them, and that with proper care this difficult group of workers might have been organized. For instance, “scab” had become an opprobrious term to them during their short strike period, and on returning to work they accepted the epithet from their fellow workers with great reluctance and even protestation. Their sense of superiority also had received a severe shock; they could never again be quite so confident that they did not in the nature of things belong to the labor group. If the shirtwaist trade in New York had been dominated by any other nationality than the Russian, it is possible that other methods of organizing the trade would have been adopted rather than the general strike. The Russian workers who fill New York factories are ever ready to rebel against suggestion of oppression and are of all people the most responsive to an idea to which is attached an ideal. The union officers understood this and it was because they understood the Russian element in the trade that they answered, “Wait and see,” when their friends urged caution before calling a general strike in an unorganized trade. They knew their people and others did not. The feature of the strike which was as noteworthy as the response of thirty thousand unorganized workers, was the unyielding and uncompromising temper of the strikers. This was due not to the influence of nationality, but to the dominant sex. The same temper displayed in the shirtwaist strike is found in other strikes of women, until we have now a trade-union truism, that “women make the best strikers.” Women’s economic position furnishes two reasons for their being the best strikers; one is their less permanent attitude toward their trade, and the other their lighter financial burdens. While these economic factors help to make women good strikers, the genius for sacrifice and the ability to sustain, over prolonged periods, response to emotional appeals are also important causes. Working women have been less ready than men to make the initial sacrifice that trade-union membership calls for, but when they reach the point of striking they give themselves as fully and as instinctively to the cause as they give themselves in their personal relationships. It is important, therefore, in following the action of the shirtwaist makers, to remember that eighty per cent were women, and women without trade-union experience.