It was upon her initiative, likewise, at the convention in the following year, that the committee was formed to collect statistics of women’s work, and in the year after (1886), it was again Miss Hannafin, the indefatigable, backed by the splendid force of sixteen women delegates, who succeeded in having Mrs. Barry appointed general investigator.

One of the most active and devoted women in the Knights of Labor was Mrs. George Rodgers, then and still of Chicago.  For a good many years she had been in a quiet way educating and organizing among the girls in her own neighborhood, and had organized a working-women’s union there.  For seven years she attended the state assembly of the Knights of Labor, and was judge of the district court of the organization.  But it is by her attendance as one of the sixteen women at the 1886 National Convention, which was held in Richmond, Virginia, that she is best remembered.  She registered as “housekeeper” and a housekeeper she must indeed have been, with all her outside interests a busy housemother.  There accompanied her to the gathering her baby of two weeks old, the youngest of her twelve children.  To this youthful trade unionist, a little girl, the convention voted the highest numbered badge (800), and also presented her with a valuable watch and chain, for use in future years.

One cannot help suspecting that such an unusual representation of women must have been the reward of some special effort, for it was never repeated.  Subsequent conventions saw but two or three seated to plead women’s cause.  At the 1890 convention, the occasion on which Mrs. Barry sent in her letter of resignation, there was but one woman delegate.  She was the remarkable Alzina P. Stevens, originally a mill hand, but at this time a journalist of Toledo, Ohio.  The men offered the now vacant post of general investigator to her, but she declined.  However, between this period and her too early death, Mrs. Stevens was yet to do notable work for the labor movement.

During the years that the Knights of Labor were active, the women members were not only to be found in the mixed assemblies, but between 1881 and 1886 there are recorded the chartering of no fewer than one hundred and ninety local assemblies composed entirely of women.  Even distant centers like Memphis, Little Rock and San Francisco were drawn upon, as well as the manufacturing towns in Ontario, Canada.  Besides those formed of workers in separate trades, such as shoe-workers, mill operatives, and garment-workers, there were locals, like the federal labor unions of today, in which those engaged in various occupations would unite together.  Some of the women’s locals existed for a good many years, but a large proportion are recorded as having lapsed or suspended after one or two years.  Apart from the usual difficulties in holding women’s organizations together, there is no doubt that many locals, both of men and of women, were organized far too hastily, without the members having the least understanding of the first principles of trade unionism, or indeed of any side of the industrial question.