Page:Theresa Serber Malkiel - Woman of Yesterday and To-day.djvu/10

 an's low wages in the popularization of these means of communication.

Women were entering the various branches of human activity in ever greater numbers, Wherever the iron bands were adjusted to do the work of human hands women were taken in place of men, thus bringing upon themselves the resentment of the workingmen. The latter put numerous obstacles in the way of the women workers, frequently refusing point blank to work at their side.

But the incoming tide could not be stopped. A little over three decades, after the first exodus, there were fully 200,000 women in the labor market. True, their hardships were as great, or even greater than ever. Ill treated and underpaid, the women of the forties seemed to lack the spirit of the working women of an earlier period. This, perhaps, because the element of the women workers had changed considerably. From being purely American it shifted to a mixture of foreign women from western Europe, women possessing a lower standard of living, smaller requirements. By accepting a mere pittance for their work they drove the American women out of the cotton mills and sewing trades, compelled them to continue the struggle upward, to seek more complicated and better paid occupations.

Robbed of their activity in the home, unable to find suitable work outside of it, the American girls of better situated families turned their attention to mind culture. They flocked to the newly opened free schools, attended the young ladies' seminaries, took private instruction and taught others in turn.

In 1821 woman's desire for culture became so evi-