employers, not so much for support, as to better their conditions of living, without the publicity consequent upon working for manufacturers. This in itself made it impossible for the exchanges (as was claimed by their supporters) to have “_helped women in general to have hushed the ‘Song of the Shirt.’_”[177] To the women of the proletariat, the exchanges were not only unknown mediums by reason of their situation in fashionable thoroughfares, but forbidden factors because of their attendant risks and expenses. The number of sewing women helped in them to increased earnings was too insignificant to warrant any hope that the co-operative principles underlying their business methods would ever spread far enough to leave any impress upon prevailing modes of work in the business world. Like all other remedies, instituted by wealthy philanthropists to assist the working-women, they were palliatives for the ills of a few, not curatives for the sufferings of the many. Much more satisfactory than anything which had been accomplished in the name of philanthropy or charity for working-women were the labor organizations founded by the proletariat and sustained by their own energy and contributions. About 1870, associations of working-people (including women) were inaugurated for the purpose of gaining better social conditions. These were more attractive and beneficial to the laboring class because they lacked that element of restitution of a modicum of withheld wages which tainted all that wealth did for the alleviation of the condition of wage-earning women,[178] and, moreover, was built upon the sounder philosophy of an endeavor to organize into bodies capable of striving collectively for their own deliverance, that class of women whom the industrial schools, women’s exchanges, etc., could not reach. The most important of these bodies was the Knights of Labor. Organized openly in 1881 at the Detroit Convention, but more secretly some years before, this body welcomed women into its ranks on the ground of seeking “to gather into one fold all branches of honorable toil, without regard to nationality, sex, creed, or color.” Trade assemblies, composed entirely of working-women, were formed, and the members were taught the beautiful principles on which the order was founded. In amalgamating with knights, women assumed the duties of the new chivalry. Engaging as equals in the undertaking, helping with time and money to carry out the new mission, they sought by Agitation, Education, and Organization to lighten the burden of toil, and to elevate the moral and social condition of mankind. In 1883, one local assembly, composed entirely of women, counted fifteen hundred members. These must all have given adherence to that order’s doctrine of “Equal pay for equal work,” and “woman’s equitable consideration with man in the Nation’s government.” Mrs. Leonora Barry, who had been a factory worker for some years in Central New York, became the chief officer of a