If the trade union be the only audible voice of the worker in any trade, the association of women’s unions known as the National Women’s Trade Union League is the expression of the women’s side of the whole trade-union movement of the United States. It has taken up the special work of organization among women undistracted by the much larger mass of general field work that falls to men. The idea of the league originated with William English Walling, who got the suggestion from observation of the working of the British Women’s Trade Union League. Their plan was adapted to suit American conditions. The American league is a federation of women’s trade unions, which admits also organizations such as clubs and societies declaring themselves in sympathy with the cause of labor. It has also a large individual membership composed of trade unionists (men and women) and of other sympathizers. In this broad basis of membership lies its strength. It links into bonds of active practical endeavor after better conditions persons in every class of society, while any tendency to slip into unreal or unpractical methods is checked by the provision that on all boards whether national or local a majority of the members must always be trade-unionist women. The league platform demands: 1. Organization of all workers into trade unions. 2. Equal pay for equal work. 3. An eight-hour day. 4. A minimum wage scale. 5. Full citizenship for women. 6. All principles involved in the economic program of the American Federation of Labor. In both its national and its local organizations the league spends much of its energy in the adjustment of labor difficulties among women workers, in giving active assistance in time of strikes and in presenting actual industrial conditions through lectures and literature to universities, churches, clubs and trade unions. It presses home the increasing dangers of industrial overstrain on the health of women, the necessity for collective bargaining, wise labor legislation and full citizenship for women. Through its membership, representing many thousands of working women, the league is able to obtain for the use of social workers, investigators and students actual first-hand information regarding the dangers of wrong industrial conditions. The reasons why such an organization must be more elastic than a body like the American Federation of Labor, is because of the very different relation in which women stand to organized industry. The connection of the great bulk of women with their trade is not permanent. Seven years is the average duration of women’s wage-earning life. The average woman unionist is a mere girl. An organization of men, in which mature men are the leaders and in which the rank and file join for life, has a solidity and permanence which unaided groups of young girls, groups with membership necessarily fluctuating, can never achieve.