The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-30
WOMEN'S TRADE UNIONS
Effectiveness Shown by the Shirt Waist Girls Strfke-What They Do and Stand for - Part Played by WOmen's Trade
 Union League
 ALICE HENRY

| T
 Editor of woman's Department Union Labor Advocate. | Conclusive Service the Survey Press Bureau.) You have all heard of the Strike of the Forty thousand, when the shirt
 waist girls in New York and Phila- delphia, left their machines in the depth of winter and stayed out till the employers accepted their terms. Why did they strike, when it was so hard for them? That was what the employers asked too, when driven to distraction by silent machines and thrilled orders. The answer of one little Jewish girl was to the point.
 How can you live" said her former employer eff you wont come back to work?" She said slowly.in her queer, formal English:
 ~I lived not much on forty-nine cents a day"
 Would not you strike too, if you had forty-nine cents day, if you were | fined a day's pay for being five min utes late; if you were charged for a worn-out presser-foot; if you had to pay for power to run your employer's s machine?
 These were the conditions which the words of one girl "I am tired of talk ing, let us do< something changed from an ordinary petty dispute to a struggle of national importance.
 This girl is typical of the finest ma terial of the strikers. She is a her teens who had in her own coun- try good schooling. She herself did not strike because of personal hard ship. but because many of her sister workers were paid so porly and treat ed so badly.
 It was at this stage that the New York Women's Trade Union League was of such service. It more than any other body brought this story be- fore the public and linked together so- cialists. suffragists. lawyers, clergy men and society women, to raise mon- ey to keep this enormous body of workers from starvation, to enroll the girls in the Shirt-waistmakers' Union to rent halls in which they could meet, to provide speakers in English, Yid- dish and Italian, and to aid 4n draw ing up agreements as fast as em- ployers were willing to make terms.
 Thus organized and thus expressed the restless dissatisfaction of the girls was focused on certain simple clear demands and these in the end were gained.
 A 52 hour week.
 A limit to night work.
 Increased pay and contract with each shop drawn up by the union.
 The strike of the Forty thousand is a mirror of conditions common in the life of working girls. The part talk en by the Women's Trade Union Lea que is typical of that which the or- ganization Is beginning to play in the lives of our young girl workers.
 It is but six years since, the league began it's work in Boston. The na- tional headquarters are in Chicago and the president is Mrs. Raymond Robins. She is fired with a religious enthusiasm for the welfare of the young working girl. Melinda Scott as business agent was now appealed to. She went straight to the super intendent, and told him she would call Shop" within fifteen minutes if this foreman was not made to pub licly apologize. The employer was telephoned for. He came in his mo- tor and within the fifteen minutes the foreman was asked for an explanation he could not give. Very weI,' said the employer pointing to Miss Scott, you do as she says and apologize"
 The foreman did what was asked, and the same day received his walk ing papers.
 Could church or priest have preach ed a more forceful sermon on moral ity?