That some of America's industrial and social problems will be affected radically by the results of the European war goes without saying; how, and in what degree, it is impossible to foretell. Meanwhile our work is here, and we have to pursue it. Whatever will strengthen the labor movement, or the woman movement, goes to strengthen the world forces of peace. Let us hold fast to that. And conversely, whatever economic or ethical changes will help to insure a permanent basis for world peace will grant to both the labor movement and the woman movement enlarged opportunity to come into their own. ALICE HENRY, Chicago, July, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EARLY TRADE UNIONS AMONG WOMEN II. WOMEN IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR III. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ORGANIZATION IV. THE WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE V. THE HUGE STRIKES VI. THE IMMIGRANT WOMAN AND ORGANIZATION. VII. THE WOMAN ORGANIZER VIII. THE TRADE UNION IN OTHER FIELDS IX. WOMEN AND THE VOCATIONS X. WOMAN AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING XI. THE WORKING WOMAN AND MARRIAGE XII. THE WORKING WOMAN AND THE VOTE XIII. TRADE-UNION IDEALS AND POLICIES APPENDIX I AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT EMPLOYÉS INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN AND CHICAGO FEDERATION OF LABOR APPENDIX II. THE HART, SCHAFFNER AND MARX LABOR AGREEMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Factory or a Home? In a Basement Sweatshop Girl Gas Blowers A Bindery Interior of One of the Largest and Best Equipped Waist and Cloak Factories in New York City A Contrast INTRODUCTION It was a revolutionary change in our ways of thinking when the idea of development, social as well as physical, really took hold of mankind. But our minds are curiously stiff and slow to move, and we still mostly think of development as a process that has taken place, and that is going to take place--in the future. And that change is the very stuff of which life consists (not that change is taking place at this moment, but that this moment is change), that means another revolution in the world of thought, and it gives to life a fresh meaning. No one has, as it appears to me, placed such emphasis upon this as has Henri Bergson. It is not that he emphasizes the mere fact of the evolution of society and of all human relations. That, he, and we, may well take for granted. It has surely been amply demonstrated and illustrated by writers as widely separated in their interpretation of social evolution as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx. But with the further thought in mind that, alike in the lowliest physical organism or in the most complex social organism, life itself is change, we view every problem of life from another angle. To see life steadily and see it whole is one stage. Bergson bids us see life on the move, ever changing, growing, evolving, a creation new every moment.