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CONVENTION CALL

The National Women's Trade Union League of America calls its members, affiliated leagues and committees, and all affiliated trade unions, state and central labor bodies, to send delegates to its deferred eighth biennial convention, to be held at Waukegan, Illinois, June 5 to 10, 1922.

The Convention to which this call summons you is of the utmost importance. We are facing a time of crisis. Not only is the purpose of the trade union misrepresented and consequently under attack, but standards of industry, won through long years of struggle, are likewise menaced. This and the compelling problem of unemployment present a great challenge.

We know the importance of the standardization of industry, for standards in industry mean a higher standard of life for the individual, the community and the nation.

To achieve this higher standard of life has been the purpose of the NATIONAL WOMEN'S TRADE UNION LEAGUE since its inception. We have worked to this end through the interpretation of the industrial problem, through the organization of women workers, through education in leadership, and through protective legislation.

Among women we are the group primarily responsible for a fuller measure of life for the women workers of our country. Have we the vision, the wisdom and the valor to accept this responsibility?

Committees of delegates will be appointed to consider the following subjects:

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Representation: Section 3, Article 7, of the Constitution: "Before the seating of delegates, the annual dues of Local Leagues must be paid in full to and including March prior to the convention, and the income tax also must be paid in full to and including February prior to the Convention in order that delegates may be entitled to vote.

The membership of the Convention shall consist of the following:

The three officers and the other eight members of the Executive Board, with one vote each.

Each local League shall be entitled to send one delegate for every 25 members or fraction thereof, up to 500 members, and after that, one for every 50.

Each Committee of the National League shall be entitled to send, two delegates with one vote each.

Each Affiliated International Union, Trade Union Local, Central Labor Body, and State Federation of Labor shall be entitled to send one delegate with one vote.

Every other Affiliated Organization shall be entitled to send one delegate with one vote.

In order to encourage interest in forming local Leagues, Members at Large shall be given voice, but with no vote.

Margaret Dreier Robins, President

(Mrs. Raymond Robins)

Elisabeth Christman

Secretary-Treasurer

PROCEEDINGS

of the Eighth Biennial Convention

(DEFERRED FROM 1921)

National Women's Trade Union League of America

MONDAY MORNING SESSION

The Eighth Biennial Convention of the National Women's Trade Union League of America was called to order in the Assembly Hall of the Bowen Country Club, Waukegan, Illinois, June 5, at ten o'clock a. m., Miss Agnes Nestor, President of the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago, presiding.

In welcoming the delegates Miss Nestor said, in part:

In the name of the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago, I am very glad to greet you and to welcome you to this, the Eighth Biennial Convention. When we invited you in Philadelphia to come to Chicago we did not invite you to come to Waukegan, but in making plans for the entertainment of the delegates we believed that the Bowen Country Club would be an ideal place for meetings and for living for a week, so we have arranged for you to be out here, and while we are meeting in the city of Waukegan you have joint hostessesChicago still feels that she is the hostess, the same as if you were meeting in that city.

This morning we are carried back to 1909, when Chicago entertained the convention. At that time we were very small and it was our first large convention. It was the beginning of plans for greater activities in the Women's Trade Union League, and from that time on we believe most of the organizations have made very great progress. Some of the biggest happenings in women's organizations have been since that time.

I hope it won't be so long until you are meeting in this part of the country again, but we do hope that at the time of the next meeting we shall again be able to look back and feel that much has been accomplished that means a better day for the women workers of our land.

At this convention we are going to work and plan to help bring these things about. We are coming here at a great

expense and sacrifice to a great many Leagues and organizations to make possible this meeting. This is a time when it is not easy to attend conventions, and because times have been difficult we must make greater plans to accomplish things, and in so planning perhaps make impossible living through such difficult times again.

It is good to welcome you here, it is good to feel that we are entertaining such a large and representative convention, because it is very representative of the trades, it is very representative of cities we have representatives from as far west as Seattle, from as far east as Boston and New York, and as far south as Alabama-for the first time we are having a delegate from the south,-so that we feel that this convention is perhaps more representative than any we have ever had. It shows we are stretching out to other parts of the country as we should. We hope that during the next two years we will have dotted the whole land with Leagues, so that we may have points in every State from whence we can have our activities directed. Then when we have such an organization as we aim to have and will work to have we will have even a larger convention, and I am sure that at another time when we come here the Bowen Country Club cannot hold the delegates.

I said that we have joint cities hostesses to this convention, because we are meeting in Waukegan and the Central Labor Body in Waukegan has been most co-operative; they have appreciated our coming out here and they have been very proud of the fact that we selected this place to meet. We have the President and Secretary of the Waukegan Central Body sitting on the platform today, and Mr. Stanley has invited one of the city's representatives to extend a welcome to the delegates this morning. I am going

to call on Mr. Stanley to present his fellow citizen of Waukegan to greet you.

Mr. Orville Stanley, President of the Waukegan Central Labor Union, made a brief address of welcome and introduced Mr. E. V. Orvis, representing the City of Waukegan.

Mr. Orvis, after welcoming the delegates, referred to Mr. Stanley's splendid record as a trade unionist and said that due to his efforts and his manner of dealing with people, the local labor movement had the respect and sympathy of the entire community.

The speaker then referred to the prominent part which women have recently taken in all lines of human endeavor-in politics and in this connection

said: "The Standard of the American woman has been developed, not by man, but by her demand on the American people to be allowed to stand in the position in which she is entitled to standequal to man. Her fearlessness in stepping out to the front, side by side with the man, whether it be in the harvest field or in the accounting room entitles her to the same wages; she is entitled to the same respect; she asks no favor and she needs none."

Following the address of Mr. Orvis, Miss Florence Lucas sang "America, the Beautiful."

Miss Nestor introduced Mrs. Raymond Robins, the President of the League.

ADDRESS OF MRS. RAYMOND ROBINS

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-WORKERS:

Welcome to Chicago, welcome to Waukegan! How I wish I might bring to you some of the boundless beauty of the prairie with its far, wide reaches of land and sky, with its wild rose on summer mornings and its green and purple sheen at eventide. But that message of beauty-of the prairie, of Lake Michigan, of the great sand dunes, will be brought to you by Carl Sandburg when he comes with his poetry and music on Wednesday night.

I am very glad that we are gathered here on one of the great bluffs of Lake Michigan where the Illini-so the legend runs-held their council meetings, and where the story of La Salle, of Joliet, and the Marquette brings us nearer to the romance, the struggle and the adventure of those earlier days. It is not long since that men came from overseas to meet the mystery and unlock the secrets of this great wilderness. Going into bivouac, building their flickering fires by night and forth in the morning to new hardships and some forgotten sacrifice. They fulfilled their mission. They dared to suffer to bring to men new possessions, a new world, new hope, new aspirations. Always, always, America has kindled the imagination, has brought the vision of a new world, has re-kindled hope, has held out great expectations. Their task the conquest of the wilderness-our task to redeem its promise.

Friends it is three years since we met in Philadelphia. They have been difficult years-years of disillusionment, years of weariness and reaction after the war. And yet you will find a record of fine work achieved in the reports of our Secretaries, our Fellow-workers, Emma Steghagen and Elisabeth Christman. It is your secretaries who bear the brunt and burden of the day and it is through their never failing devotion and work that the League has held its own so valiantly.

Since our Philadelphia Convention there have been held two International Congresses of Working Women. The first in Washington in November, 1919, and the second in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1921. Will you pause with me for a moment and recall the fact that at the first Convention of our League held in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907, we were but seven delegates, and yet twelve years later the trade union women of the world answered the call of the National Women's Trade Union League to meet in Washington for the First International Congress of Working Women

ever held in the world, as far as we know history. How did it happen? Friends, just through folks. Other organizations may often do their work best through expert service, but our work can only be done through folks-through men and women sharing our common life. They are the only tools with which we can work successfully. Heart must speak to heart, and as we reach out unto others we grow in strength, we grow in grace. There is danger in exclusiveness, even in holiness. You will remember the story of the Saint of old who wanted to serve his God and went to live in the tower of the great Cathedral, there to be uninterrupted in his service. Then early one morning he heard his name called and looking around said, "Where art thou Lord, where art thou." And the answer rang clear above the noise of the market place "Come down, come down, I am here among my people." Fellowship is the keynote of our service. Who can forget that first Congress in Washington-who of us who were there? Who can forget the joy of finding fellow-workers in the women of those nineteen countries-those working women who had crossed the sea in the hope that together we might write another Magna Charta for the freedom of the world. Hopes ran high in those dayslike a tidal wave, for Peace had come, at least so we thought, and all the working women of the world stood pledged to bring reconciliation to the peoples of the earth. Then we met in Geneva in 1921, and every thought was merged in the passionate desire to find ways and means to bring bread and peace to the world. And today as we meet here bread and peace, bread and peace is the cry of broken peoples.

The years just passed have cut deep into the heart of life. The world has been shaken to its foundation and much that seemed permanent and lasting has given way under the shock of the great war. Wherever we turn, to whatever country overseas, we find seething unrest, uprisings and revolutions. Russia, India, China, the Near East-peasants and working folks, men and women, struggling with hopes, passions, dreams, hold fast to the flaming words of liberty, justice, democracy to illumine the darkness of their night. It is an extraordinary hour in the world's history. It is as if the war had released man's instinct to explore-Life, God, Eternity. On all sides there are questions-a testing and challenging-nations, peoples, civilizations, religion, science, government—all, all is being questioned. And these questions are not asked just to ask questions. These questions are asked by countless thousands wanting an anWhat has brought the world to this pass of suffering, of hideous needless suffering? Who has brought us to this pass? Is force the way out? Is the sword to be final answer—is it? In this hour of the world when darkness again is upon the face of the deep, can we find the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters? Through the ages a shining dream has haunted the race-the dream that the soul of man has wings with power to go whither he will; that to the spirit has been given dominion over life. In words, in images, men have tried to express the consciousness of power within. "Life," Plato tells us, "is determined by the road of our longing and the quality of our soul." The road of our longing is peace-can the quality of our soul answer? The spiritual powers within the heart of man must be released.

swer.

There is another question which touches us intimately. The Labor Movement is not escaping the universal challenge. What is the Labor Movement? What is its purpose-whence is its authority? Who are we? Are we a small group of privileged folk, seeking and fighting for special privileges at the cost of the many? Is it true that we are out to benefit

ourselves at the cost of others? In this time of storm and stress where do we belong? Friends, we know that we belong with all who suffer and are oppressed. We know that we belong with all who struggle towards liberty and justice. Do they stumble in their path towards freedom? We too, have stumbled, but we know that the great central fact in our lives is that we are a part of the great world-wide struggle towards a finer, fuller life for all that we are a part of the age long struggle of the human race towards a redeemed world order. If this be true then labor's kinship. is as broad and wide as life. We are kin with those who are suffering in Russia, with those who are suffering in India and China, we are kin with those who are suffering in that storm-tossed land of Europe. We are kin with our own folks at home, with the political prisoners who dared obey their conscience in the whirlwind of the war, with the mine workers in West Virginia, with the steel workers in Pennsylvania, with the old men and women in our midst to whom the fulfillment of life has been denied, who are suffering poverty in old age, in spite of hard, honest work through the long years. Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it! Labor's kinship is as broad and wide as life. With no surrender of our spiritual individuality and integrity, we know that only through fellowship can we divine the spiritual qualities of others, be those others persons, or nations.

or races.

And what of those children of our America-those one million-and more children to whom we deny schooling and upon whose work in factory, mine, mill and cannery the richest nation in the world depends, with the gold of the world hoarded in our chests! These children--are they not our kin? How can we sit idly by while the Supreme Court declares our effort to protect them through the Federal Law unconstitutional? They are our kin, Gentlemen of the Supreme Court-if this law be unconstitutional tell us how to frame a law to take the children out of the factory and put them into the school. As my little Jewish friend, Solly, of the East Side in New York said to me years ago when pleading for the right to go to school: "You know a boy might some day, be a great poet, or a great thinker, or a great inventor, or he might just grow and be a man that would be something too." By denying to any child a fair chance in life, a fair chance to grow, how can we estimate the incalculable loss to the child, the community, the nation? How many boys and girls who, might find expression of beauty and strength in art or music, who might give expression through intellectual mastery in science or engineering or poetry go under for want of a fair chance. As women, as mothers let us pledge to the children of America their full heritage.

And, friends, we are kin with all those young girls who are so eagerly questioning and so passionately turning from the setting of the yesterdays-trying to find their chance in life and knowing not where to find it hungering and thirsting-can we bring them the water of life? These eager young hearts-can we bring to them the silverhooded morning and the song of the thrush at dusk? Can we show them that they are summoned to a great adventure; can we send them forth on the quest― "Something hidden, Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges, Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!" Can we find with them the hidden treasures of fellowship and understanding? Can we show them the way?

In the final analysis the greatest value of the trade union movement lies in the fact that it calls forth personality. It does this primarily by

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