Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/14

8 No larger recognition has been given than to woman's right to earn her living. What a marvelous transformation here in the last half of the nineteenth century! When Harriet Martineau visited our country in 1840 she found only seven occupations open to women: Teaching, needlework, typesetting, working in factories, keeping boarders, binding books, and household service. The last report of the Commissioner of Labor names over three hundred ways in which women may earn an honest living. The economic development of the country brought larger industrial demands. The invention of machinery, the establishment of factories took the manufacture of cloth and clothing from the home. A man could not and can not provide for his family when he must buy so much that used to be home-made. Women were driven into wage-earning occupations, and society soon realized the need of higher education and better qualifications. Occupations have grown with the complexity of life, and women are demonstrating that they are able to do work of many kinds. In 1890 one woman in six was engaged in gainful occupations; nearly four millions of working women; now there are over five millions. The Rev. Lyman Abbott, in a recent number of The World's Work, points out some of the results of this industrial growth: "Better wages to self-supporting women; enlarged opportunities for productive industry; consequent industrial independence for unmarried women; a resultant release from the odious compulsion which drove women into marriage as the only means of livelihood open to them."

Economic dependence is the basis of all slavery. To-day in any large city scores of women are enjoying the health and independence that come from labor and the approval of public opinion.

The growing complexity of life during the last seventy years, the growing demands from women in the working