Women labor union members; Women labor union members -- United States
It is then the lack of permanence, of continuity in spirit and in
concerted action, produced by all these causes, working together, and
the difficulties in the way of remedying this lack of permanence,
which this young organization, the National Women's Trade Union League
of America, has fully and fairly recognized, and which, with a courage
matched to its high purpose, it is facing and trying to conquer.
The Women's Trade Union League, while essentially a part of the labor
movement, has yet its own definite rôle to play, and at this point it
is well to note the response made by organized labor in supporting the
League's efforts. It works under the endorsement of both the American
Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, and
has received in its undertakings the practical support, besides,
of many of the most influential of the international unions, in
occupations as different as those of the shoe-workers, the carpenters
and the miners. The rank and file of the local organizations, in city
after city, have given the same hearty and unqualified approval to the
League's pioneering work, in bringing the unorganized women and girls
into the unions, and in carrying on a constant educative work among
those already organized. As an instance of this openly expressed
approval, take the cordial coöperation which the Chicago League has
ever received from the Chicago Federation of Labor and its allied
locals. But, owing to the complexity of women's lives, the varied
and inconsistent demands that are made upon their energies, the
organization of the League has to be somewhat different from that of
any body which labor men would have formed for themselves.
Locally the relationship varies. In St. Louis the League has never
been represented in the central body by its own delegates, but by
members representing primarily their own organizations, such as
Bindery Women and Boot and Shoe Workers. In Boston, New York and
Chicago each League is represented by its own delegates. In Kansas
City, Missouri, again, not only are the delegates of the League seated
in the central body, but every union of men in it pays a per capita
tax into the funds of the Kansas City Women's Trade Union League.
The National League receives a certain amount of financial support
from the American Federation of Labor, and from a number of the
international unions, several of the latter being affiliated with the
League. State federations, city central bodies, and local unions in
different parts of the country give similar coöperation and money
support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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