_The Women's Trade Union League._--The Society now known as the Women's Trade Union League was founded mainly by the efforts of a remarkable woman named Emma Smith, afterwards Mrs. Paterson (1848-1886). She was the daughter of a schoolmaster and became the wife of a cabinet-maker. Her life from the age of eighteen was devoted to endeavours on behalf of the working class and especially of women. Being a woman of natural ability and remarkable concentration of purpose, she succeeded in starting pioneer work of a difficult and unusual kind. She was secretary for five years to the Workmen's Club and Institute Union, and afterwards secretary to the Women's Suffrage Association. She was the first woman admitted to the Trade Union Congress, and attended its meetings from 1875 until 1886, with the exception only of one year, in which her husband's last illness prevented her attendance. Although the name of the League has been altered, and its policy considerably widened and in some measure modified, it is pleasant to note that it still keeps up a continuity of tradition with Mrs. Paterson's Protective and Provident League. Her portrait, as foundress, hangs upon the office wall, and the annual Reports are numbered continuously from the start in 1875. Sick benefit was the main feature of the propaganda initiated by the League in its early years. The first society formed was for women employed in the printing trade. The need of a provident fund had been badly felt by these women during a trade depression three years previously, and there was no provision for the admission of women as members of the men's societies, even if women's wages had been (as they were not) sufficient to pay the necessary subscription to the men's society. Mr. King, Secretary of the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, however, promised to support and assist the efforts to organise women in this trade. The appeal for a separate organisation of women met with a ready response. Some hundreds of women employed in folding, sewing, and other branches of the bookbinding trade, attended the first meeting, held in August 1875; a provisional committee was formed, and in October the society was formally established with a subscription of 2d. per week, and an entrance fee of 1s. Its history, however, was uneventful. It refused to join with men in making demands upon the employers, and its representatives at Trade Union Congresses and elsewhere were imbued with Mrs. Paterson's prejudice against the Factory Act, and resisted legal restrictions upon labour. Employers have been known to urge the formation of "a good women's Union," on the ground that the fair-minded employer was detrimentally affected by the "gross inequalities of price" that existed. The backwardness and narrow views of the Women's Union were resented by the men, and in the time of the eight hours agitation, 1891-1894, would not take part, and there was considerable ill-feeling between the two sections. This society