Page:Olive Malmberg Johnson - Woman and the Socialist Movement (1908).djvu/40

 38 ity and human rights." Most industries in which women work in great numbers have been entirely ignored by the organizers of the A. F. of L. That is quite consistent with its nature. The A. F. of L. is a graft organization as well as a craft organization. The leaders look for high dues and high initiation fees in order to keep them in high salaries and fat sinecures, and as women's wages are, as a rule, very low, it is a poor field for extortion. Competition, too, is great in women's branches, as the work is generally much simplified, and there would be but poor hope of creating a job monopoly. As a rule, therefore, the women have remained practically unorganized. They have made no efforts themselves and the A. F. of L. unions have made no efforts towards it.

The Shoe Workers, Textile and Laundry employees, however, have large mixed organizations. In them, however, have gone on the grossest fakirdom and hugest extortions. Their efforts have been mostly discouraging and all of their strikes have been defeated. The last Fall River textile strike can almost be said to have been disastrous, so much suffering and misery did ensue during it and from it, among these workers.

There have of course never been any efforts to equalize the wages of men and women in these trades, much less to bring women's wages up to what is considered "a fair wage," in the average organized craft. Women workers, whether organized or unorganized, have remained very poorly paid throughout. If craft unionism has failed to better materially the workers' condition even in the most favored craft, and if where wages ave been advanced it has been only by means of high dues and initiation fees that have kept other workers from the field of competition, how could it be expected that it could do anything for the trades where men, women and children ere pitted against each other in factories where the most improved and perfected machinery has simplified the labor process and made competition keen?

The action of women in the trade union movement has mostly boiled down to auxiliaries and Label Leagues. As these have for their purpose to help union labor by special