A wire feeder including a motor driving a set of feed rolls to force a welding wire from a spool through a welding torch to a welding operation. The wire feeder has an input lead to be connected to the output terminal of a remotely located power source having an on condition and an off condition where a welding current is directed to the output terminal only when the source is in the on condition. A weld starting trigger with a weld start position located adjacent the torch closes a switch when the trigger is shifted to the weld position, a circuit senses when the switch is closed, and a transmitter on the wire feeder transmits a start signal to the power source when the trigger switch is closed whereby the power source is shifted to its on condition when the trigger is in the weld position.