The first step to be taken was to place before the public in clear and simple form the heterogeneous mass of grievances complained of. The Women's Trade Union League invited about a dozen of the girls to tell their story over a simple little breakfast. Within a week the story told to a handful was printed and distributed broadcast, prefaced, as it was, by an admirable introduction by the late Miss Katharine Coman, of Wellesley College, who happened to be in Chicago, and who was acting as chairman of the grievance committee. The Citizens' Committee, headed by Professor George Mead, followed with a statement, admitting the grievances and justifying the strike. From then on the story lived on the front page of all the newspapers, and speakers to address unions, meetings of strikers, women's clubs and churches were in constant demand. Here again, the suffragist and the socialist women showed where their sympathies lay and of what mettle they were made. Visiting speakers, such as Miss Margaret Bondfield and Mrs. Philip Snowden, took their turn also. The socialist women of Chicago issued a special strike edition of the _Daily Socialist_. With the help of the striking girls as "newsies" they gathered in the city on one Saturday the handsome sum of $3,345. Another group of very poor Poles sent in regularly about two hundred dollars per week, sometimes the bulk of it in nickels and dimes. A sewing gathering composed of old ladies in one of the suburbs sewed industriously for weeks on quilts and coverings for the strikers. Some small children in a Wisconsin village were to have had a goose for their Christmas dinner, but hearing of little children who might have no dinner, sent the price of the bird, one dollar and sixty-five cents, into the strikers' treasury. At first strike pay was handed out every Friday from out of the funds of the United Garment Workers. But on Friday, November 11, the number of applicants for strike pay was far beyond what it was possible to handle in the cramped office quarters. Through some misunderstanding, which has to this day never been explained, the crowd, many thousands of men, women and children, were denied admittance to the large wheat pit of the Open Board of Trade, which, it was understood, had been reserved for their use. It was a heart-rending sight, as from early morning till late afternoon they waited in the halls and corridors and outside in the streets. At first in dumb patience and afterwards in bewilderment, but all along with unexampled gentleness and quietness.