Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/54

 still failed to see the identity of interests between themselves and the women workers, organized workingmen in their unions and by means of their press never failed to give help and encouragement to their sisters in the hour of need.

The earliest protective organization of women reported was that of the New York tailoresses in 1825. That women should organize at all caused the usual, unfavorable newspaper comment, and one paper expressed the general surprise in its editorial exclamation: "What next?" Little more was heard from the New York needlewomen for the next few years. But in 1831 a surprisingly large number, 1,600 of them, struck against the starvation wages that had driven them to the limit of human endurance. We have seen that the needlewomen were subjected to most deplorable conditions from the very beginning, owing to the terrible overcrowding of their trade. It is not surprising, therefore, that they should be among the first to recognize the value of organization. They accomplished little by their first strike. There were too many unorganized women waiting to take the strikers' places. But their struggle differed in one respect from the other flare-ups and walk-outs of that period, inasmuch as they succeeded in arousing some public sympathy in their behalf. It was that same kind of public sympathy to which Upton Sinclair referred in commenting upon the great success of his "Jungle," when he said: "I had meant to strike the public's heart, but instead I struck its stomach." The public sympathy with the starving needlewomen of 1831 mainly sprang from an awakening recognition of the dangers of sweatshop manufacture, for already it had been shown that garments produced under foul and filthy conditions, in quarters not fit for human habitation, were likely to carry disease and death into the homes of the well-to-do.

One of the most interesting organizations of this period was that of the shoe binders of Lynn, formed in 1833. It offers one of the first examples of a trade union consisting entirely of women and organized and conducted by the