The rapidly increasing misery among such exhausted women workers aroused public attention and led to the formation of a number of woman's organizations with the purpose to investigate abuses among such women workers, to teach them the value of trade unions, to agitate equal pay for equal work, to shorten the number of working hours, and to abolish child labor and prison work. The first national women's trade union, formed in the United States, was that of the "Daughters of St. Crispin." It held its first convention on July 28, 1869, at Lynn, Massachusetts. The delegates represented not only the local lodges of that state, but also lodges of Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.
With the organization of the "Knights of Labor" in 1869, and the "American Federation of Labor" the position of woman in the American labor movement became more firmly established, as both federations made it one of their principal objects "to secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." They also appointed special committees to investigate the conditions of working women, and to organize them for concerted action.
Other potent factors arising in this line were the "National Consumers' League" and the "Women's Trade Union League." The founding of the first federation was due to efforts to better the conditions of women in department stores. In 1890 a group of saleswomen of New York City pointed to the fact that girls in fashionable department stores were receiving wages too low to allow them a decent living. They also complained that these girls were forced to stand from ten to fourteen hours a day, and that sanitary conditions in the cloak and lunch rooms were such as to endanger health and life. While the plan of these saleswomen, to unite all women clerks of the city into a labor union, failed, their complaints, however, attracted the attention of a number of influential ladies interested in philanthropic efforts. They investigated the charges against the department stores, and what they discovered made them resolve that conditions demanded radical changes. In May, 1890, they called a mass meeting of prominent women and proposed a constructive plan for raising the standard in shop conditions, not by blacklisting any firm guilty of bad conduct, but by whitelisting those firms which treated their employees humanely.
"We can make and publish," so the presiding lady said, "a list of all the shops where employees receive fair treatment, and we can agree to patronize only those shops. By acting openly, and publishing our White List we shall be able to create an immense public opinion in favor of just employers."
In other words, it was by the spirit of praise rather than con-
170
