the ORT were relocated from Vinton, Iowa, to Peoria, Illinois, in September 1895. In 1899, the ORT relocated again to St. Louis, Missouri, and became a member of the American Federation of Labor. By 1901, the ORT comprised 30 system divisions with 10,000 members, double the number of members in 1895. H. B. Perham replaced W. V. Powell as Grand Chief in 1901. Women Operators and the ORT The ORT accepted women telegraphers as members from the beginning. The Railroad Telegrapher devoted a column to the issues and concerns of women operators, who played an active role in recruiting new members and participating in the activities of local districts. Hattie Todd Pickard joined the ORT when she began operating for the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway in 1890; after she and her husband moved to Rawlins, Wyoming, in 1892, she began working for the Union Pacific and was elected Assistant Chief of Overland Division No. 196 of the ORT. Katherine B. Davidson, a telegrapher in Cambridge, Ohio, was elected District Representative of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway System, ORT District 33, in 1905. Ola Delight Smith joined the ORT in Gainesville, Georgia, in 1906, and began a long career as a labor organizer and journalist. Impact of Hours of Service Act of 1907 Long working hours were a major issue among railroad telegraphers. Railroad operators were the "air traffic controllers" of the railroads; long hours and the resulting fatigue could result in errors in judgment and serious accidents. In 1907, a bill was introduced in Congress to limit the maximum number of hours that railroad employees had to work in a twenty-four-hour period, known as the La Follette Hours of Service Act, after its chief sponsor, Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin. While this bill did not specifically address railroad telegraphers, a similar bill had been introduced and passed in the House of Representatives to limit the working hours of railroad telegraphers to no more than nine hours in a 24-hour period. This bill was offered as an amendment to the La Follette bill in the Senate; however, members of the committee to which it was referred bowed to pressure from the railroads and attempted to increase the maximum number of working hours allowed in a single day to twelve hours, a move which enraged ORT members. They immediately began using the telegraph to bombard their congressional