ther
trades open to women "who were like oppressed." The New York Herald
reported "about 700 females generally of the most interesting age and
appearance" in attendance. The president of the meeting unfolded a
pitiable condition of affairs. She mentioned several employers by name
who paid only from ten to eighteen cents a day, and she stated that,
after acquiring skill in some of the trades and by working twelve to
fourteen hours a day, a woman might earn twenty-five cents a day! "How
is it possible," she exclaimed, "that at such an income we can support
ourselves decently and honestly?"

So we come to the fifties, when the rapid rise in the cost of living due
to the influx of gold from the newly discovered California mines created
new economic conditions. By 1853, the cost of living had risen so high
that the length of the working day was quite forgotten because of the
utter inadequacy of the wage to meet the new altitude of prices. Hotels
issued statements that they were compelled to raise their rates for
board from a dollar and a half to two dollars a day. Newspapers raised
their advertising rates. Drinks went up from six cents to ten and
twelve and a half cents. In Baltimore, the men in the Baltimore and
Ohio Railway shops struck. They were followed by all the conductors,
brakemen, and locomotive engineers. Machinists employed in other shops
soon joined them, and the city's industries were virtually paralyzed. In
New York nearly every industry was stopped by strikes. In Philadelphia,
Boston, Pittsburgh, in cities large and small, the striking workmen made
their demands known.

By this time thoughtful laborers had learned the futility of programmes
that attempted to reform society. They had watched the birth and death
of many experiments. They had participated in short-lived cooperative
stores and shops; they had listened to Owen's alluring words and had
seen his World Convention meet and adjourn; had witnessed national
reform associations, leagues, and industrial congresses issue their
high-pitched resolutions; and had united on legislative candidates. And
yet the old world wagged on in the old way. Wages and hours and working
conditions could be changed, they had learned, only by coercion. This
coercion could be applied, in general reforms, only by society, by
stress of public opinion. But in concrete cases, in their own personal
environment, the coercion had to be first applied by themselves. They
had learned th