I

WELCOME

N OPENING this conference on the American Woman, Her Changing Role as Worker, Homemaker, Citizen, I need hardly dwell on the warmth of our welcome to you all. The President of the United States and the Secretary of Labor by their very presence here make that abundantly clear.

To their greeting, however, I want to add my own personal welcome and that of the whole of the Women's Bureau staff, which looks to women like yourselves for inspiration in carrying forward its work and in sticking to the job when the going gets rough.

It was this interest and indeed the repeated requests of some of you that inspired this meeting in the first place. From your response to the plans that grew out of this stimulus I take it for granted that you are still of the same opinion as last summer when the officers of about a dozen women's organizations with headquarters here in Washington first discussed with me the general plan.

Now, at the beginning of 1948, the plan has become this great gathering. It is the moment for us to pause, to review, to reappraise our plans and prospects in a situation that we jointly agreed is important.

You will be interested to know who has come to this conference, whom you together represent, where you come from. In your kits is a detailed list of persons in attendance and their affiliations. But I think it would help if I should summarize for you the composition of the group. There are among you people from 25 States, from the District of Columbia, and several foreign countries. Women's and civic organizations are represented by 102 of you, and labor unions by 36. Women's labor law administrators number 19, management representatives, 9. There are also 10 working members of the press and radio, and in addition about 45 individuals whose major activities are in the field with which this conference will deal.

We of the Women's Bureau staff know from long experience that it is you and the organizations that you represent who give real import to the basic data which the Bureau collects about women's employment, working conditions, and earnings, their opportunities for training and advancement, and the laws affecting their civil and political status. Such information takes on its value as it is interpreted in action by civic groups, by employers, by the great variety of organizations represented here who are able to make it mean some real advance for their own members and for other women.

administer women's labor laws in maintaining and improving the legal standards governing women's employment, and the fine work of the trade union women who have pioneered in seeking understanding and support for the millions of workers less well equipped to cope with their economic problems. We are grateful, too, to have here representatives of education, of the press and radio, who in addition to their individual contributions in their own fields keep driving the rest of us to more and more thought and effort and laborious output.

To all of you I say, you are more than welcome. You are thrice welcome. And now, I am proud and happy to turn over the formal opening of this conference on the American Woman in 1948 to the Secretary of Labor.

FRIEDA S. MILLER, Director, Women's Bureau.