The first Women's Unions were started in the early 'seventies of the last century, by middle-class women who were also in the forefront of the battle for the Suffrage. The authorities dissolved the societies. Women-workers did not long maintain the alliance with the "Women's Rights" Party. An independent organisation was formed, which greatly exceeded the previous efforts in numbers and significance. The immediate impulse to the formation of this Union was given by the proposal of the Government to put a duty on sewing-thread, which would have been a great burden on the needle-women who had to provide the thread. Three societies were formed, the first being the "Verein zur Vertretung der Interessen der Arbeiterinnen," which was followed by the "Nordverein der Berliner Arbeiterinnen" and the "Fachverein der Mäntelnäherinnen," both of which were founded and controlled by working women. Investigations of the wages and conditions of working women were undertaken by these societies, in consequence of which a debate in the Reichstag took place, followed by an official enquiry into the wages of the women-workers in the manufacture of underclothing and ready-made garments, which only confirmed the conclusion already reached by private enquiry. The Truck Act was made more stringent, in response to the working women's movement, but as a secondary result all the societies were dissolved and the leaders prosecuted. The authorities were taking fright at the increase in the Socialist vote and in the membership of Trade Unions; and the Reichstag, under the tutelage of Bismarck, in 1878 passed the notorious Anti-Socialist Law, under which not only Socialist societies but even Trade Unions were harassed and suppressed. During the twelve years in which the law was in force, however, propaganda work was still carried on with heroic courage and perseverance, and the solidarity and class-consciousness of the workers, both men and women, was developed and strengthened by their natural indignation against the persecution suffered.