The best employers yielded at once, but several refused to adopt the terms proposed. In October 840 men handed in their notices for a 10 per cent increase of wages and a fifty-four-hour week. Twelve firms conceded these terms at once, leaving 600 men still on strike against thirty-three firms. As a result many women-workers were asked to do men's work, and it seemed not unlikely that the men might be thus defeated. The National Federation of Women Workers decided to call out the women to demand a 10s. minimum, and at the same time support the men in their demands. All the women called out received strike benefit. There was, however, another body of women and girls, whose work stopped automatically because of the strike, and these were not entitled to any strike pay. A public appeal was therefore issued by the _Daily Citizen_ and also by the Women's Trade Union League, and the response evoked was sufficient to tide the workers over the crisis. The struggle ended with complete victory for the workers, and as an indirect but most important result, the trade was scheduled for inclusion in the Revisional Order under the Trade Boards Act. In the North also the last two or three years have witnessed increased activity in the organisation of underpaid trades. In the flax industry the strike of a few general labourers employed in a certain mill resulted in the locking out of 650 women flax-workers. Although the preparing and spinning of flax is a skilled industry, the highest wage paid in the mill to spinners was 11s. including bonus, reelers occasionally rising to 13s., and the common earnings of the other workers were from 7s. 6d. to 9s. Several small strikes had taken place, but the women being unorganised and without funds were repeatedly compelled to return to work on the old terms. By the efforts of the Women's Trade Union Council of Manchester a Union was now formed, and a demand made for an increase of 2s. all round. With the help of public sympathy and financial support the women were able to stand out, and after a lock-out of nearly three weeks a settlement was arrived at under which the women got an increase of 1s. all round and the bonus was rearranged more favourably for the workers. The whole of the women involved in this dispute joined the Union. A dispute in another flax mill was much more prolonged, and lasted for over sixteen weeks. It was eventually arranged by the intervention of the Board of Trade, and some concessions were obtained by the workers. In both these disputes the men and women stood together. There is perhaps no feature so hopeful in this "new unionism" of women, as the fact that women are beginning to refuse to be used as the instruments for undercutting rates and injuring the position of men.