faction of seeing women typesetters form their own
union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany _Daily
Knickerbocker_, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country
by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards
standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] _The Revolution_
encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging
all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out
how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more
Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45
cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together
say _Equal Pay for Equal Work_."[228]

Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were
higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for
them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women,
giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a
trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went
on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and
appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to
contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a
training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that
hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready
and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we
will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned
by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor
unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young
women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage
they could get.

It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new
occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's
opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work
and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as
members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they
disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them,
that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men.
She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the
printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union;
and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the
lately formed Women's Typographical Un