Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-03-30
PROTECTIVE LEAGUES
For Working Women Only-Their
Power Make Good Citizens.
Designed to Teach What is Needed. That
They May Free Themselves from Bond
age, Ignorance and Helplessness.
Copyrighted. 1900


In corner of that bit of old London known as
Bloomsbury, where once there were gardens and
growing trees, there is low and dingy ramb-
ling structure, Clarke's buildings by name. 1t
is hard to find, even when one has come to know
IT fairly we'll, for it seems to be lurking behind
walls, and making for itself all sorts of turns
and twists in which the pilgrim may lose the
way, and come out at some other point. Once
inside it is hardly less perplexing, the only
plain and straightforward thing about it being
the clear-eyed and energetic woman who answers
all questions with promptness born of long
practice. Here In this labyrinth is the
Woman's provident and protective league,
modelled after the Women's protective union of
New York. but on far smaller scale, since till
very recently it has been matter of sore diff
Guilty to persuade working women to combine at
all for mutual benefit and protection. For ff-
teen years it has labored steadily to bring this
trades have been formed, the bookbinders
leading. Only the most intelligent have
taken any part till now, when, owing pg
the great strike of the dock laborers, a class
never before affected, have shown a disposition
to combine IN the same way. They represent
the lowest order of workers, toiling in under
paid industries of every order, and competing
fiercely for the work on which they starving.
Trades unions among the better order of workers
have already demonstrated their power to
educate, and have shown that they not only inn
prove the material condition of their members,
but gradually develop many OF the qualities that
make good citizens.
Knowing from experience that well-organized
trades unions and good wages are quite as adj
vantageous to employers as employed, the
officers of the league have worked eagerly to
bring about some possibility of such Organiza-
ton for these women, as well as to help them in
making provision against sickness and want of
work, out of funds subscribed by themselves.
Short as the time has been been the result has
meeting, called. in October, and presided
over by the bishop of Bedford, had but
SINAI! percentage of the poorest
sho wed that they had gained faith in the friends
who urged them to action. Poverty, WEAKNESS
lions in the way, but the entering wedge is in
place and the possibilities in combination begin
ming to be plain even to these minds so little
capable of rational thought. 1t is the first step
toward better knowledge and the becoming
skilled instead of unskilled workers, and as
such every working woman on this side of the
sea will give 1t Godspeed.
One large union has been formed embracing
both men and women who work in the confec-
tionery and preserving trades. The East Lon
don tailoresseS' UNION has received large access
sion, and weekly meetings for women have been
started, all designed to teach them what is
needed, and how they may, If helped by those
who understand, deliver themselves from the
bondage of ignorance and practical helplessness,
in which most of them were born and have lived,
with no thought till now of any better order.
HELEN CAMPBELL, New York.
o. The department OF ScleuGlnC OF
Women's Christian temperance union rests on
the principle that whatever the state would have
appear in citizenship it must first put into the
public schools. No state votes prohibition until
majority of its citizens are total abstainers.
The only portions of our country that have not
adopted compulsory temperance education are,
the South, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
North Carolina, South Carolina, George, Mis-
sissippi and Texas. The billion dollars
vested in the liquor traffic lies in wait for the
boys. We must protect them by teaching them
the nature of their foe. After a most intense
battle of the books, we have now as good va
riety of accurate textbooks for all grades OF
schools on scientific temperance as on geogra-
ply. Where the law is not well enforced the
fault is usually not in the teachers, but In
the school trustees or the board of education.
MRS. MARY n. HUNT, Boston.
The social purity department of the Women's
Christian temperance nnion works for preven-
ton, reformation and legislation. Thirty-one
states are. now organized. Mothers meetings,
for educational purposes, are held everywhere.
Thousands of pamphlets have been published
and distributed. Reading lodging
houses, missionaries and reformatory industrial
homes are being opened in every state. Lectures
delivered by our most talented women,
many confning themselves to this topic. The
f'age of consent has been raised, and efforts to
license shame thwarted in all parts of the coun-
try. Frequenting dens of infamy is receiving
heavier punishment in many places, and to meet
Wisconsin has made the procuring of inmates
DR. KATE c. BUsHNELLs, Evanston, III.
The new method of petitioning = The old
method of petitioning by miscellaneous sigma
lures, obtained hastily at the door and
on the street. is not only slower,
but more likely to result Tin mis-
takes than sthe new method. by deliberate
zens meetings, labor lodges and church as
semblies These endorsements of organizations
also show, by the name OF the ganlzation just
what sort of people are fsvoring the movement
w. i. CRAFTS, New York.