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[[preprinted]] 
TELEPHONE, MONROE 825
[[image - elliptical logo of the Chicago Allied Printing Trades Council]]236 

1437 WEST OHIO STREET 
CHICAGO
[[/preprinted]]

^[[Gretchen]]

[[typewritten]]  
                              January 10, 1914.

Dearest Dad:-

I really am going on strike one of these next days.  There is nothing but meetings and more meetings all the time.  However, some of them are rather interesting and I am sure I will be interested in what the Executive Committee and the Committee on Unemployment of the Federation of Labor were able to accomplish yesterday.  I told you did I not that the Federation voted last Sunday to take care of every union man and woman out of employment during this industrial depression.  Well, yesterday we set to to see what we could get done for the vast number of non-union people unemployed.  The committee appeared before the County Board, the Sanitary Drainage Board and the City Finance Committee to try to persuade these very important bodies to take some action in this matter.
We first met in the rooms of the President of the County Board, Mr. A. A. McCormick, I being the only woman on the Committee.  Our plan was to establish commissary stores where food and so forth might be brought at cost.  Mr. McCormick was very encouraging but all the others of his commission thought it impossible to get any money.
I told them I thought that ridiculous.  If we suddenly had a flood or some great catastrophe we would find a way to handle it and that the only reason we were not handling this unemployment situation was because we were not awake to the seriousness of the situation.  This seemed to move the gentlemen a little and so they suggested that we appear before the City Finance Committee which at that moment was meeting in another room in the building.  Mayor Harrison was present in the committee room - a very impressive huge room - making the mayor look very small and yellow.
Our Committee presented its plans and Mr. Fitzpatrick made a stunning and stirring speech.  When the Finance Committee felt that this undertaking could not be attempted without the expenditure of a very large sum of money, Mr. Fitzpatrick told them how the Federation and the League had handled the garment makers' strike and fed thousands every day on a very small capital.