It is only when they are fortunate enough to get into a better class of work, and when they chance upon some well-organized establishment and are drawn into the union as a matter of course that we find Polish girls in unions at all.  Intellectually they are not in the running with the Russian Jewess and the peasant surroundings of their childhood have offered them few advantages.  One evening, for instance, there were initiated into a glove-workers’ local seventeen new Polish members.  Of these two only were able to read and write English, and of the remainder not more than half were able to read and write Polish.  As to what is to be the later standing and the ultimate contribution of the Polish girl, I cannot hazard a guess.  I only know that she possesses fine qualities which we are not utilizing and which we may be obliterating by the cruel treatment so many thousands of Polish girls are receiving at our hands.

I cannot see any prospect of organizing them in any reasonable numbers at present.  The one thing we can do to alleviate their hard lot is to secure legislation—­legislation for shorter hours and for the minimum wage.

Their suspiciousness is perhaps the chief barrier in the way of social elevation of the Poles.  That Poles can be organized is shown by the remarkable success of the Polish National Alliance and kindred societies.  Their capacity for cooeperation is seen in their establishment of their own cooeperative stores.

VII

THE WOMAN ORGANIZER

The problems that face the woman organizer are many and complex.  They are the harder to handle, inasmuch as there is very little assistance to be had from any body of tradition on the subject among women workers.  The movement for organization among women is still so inchoate.  The woman organizer turns to the more experienced men leaders, and finds that often, even with the best will in the world, they cannot help her.  The difficulties she meets with are, in detail, so different from theirs that she has to work out her own solutions for herself.

It is indeed a blind alley in which she has so often to move.  The workers are young and ignorant, therefore, by all odds, they require the protection of both legislation and organization.  Again, the workers are young and ignorant, and therefore they have not learnt the necessity for such protection.  Their wages are in most cases low, too low for decent self-support.  But just because their wages are so inadequate for bare needs it is in many cases all the more difficult to induce them to deduct from such scanty pay the fifty cents a month which is the smallest sum upon which any organization can pay its way and produce tangible benefits for its members.