We first used every
endeavor to get women into the union, but no one would join, therefore
we passed the resolution that if they would not work with us we would
work against them; but I think we have taught them a lesson that will
serve them another time." This unhappy spirit Cincinnati maintained
for several years. The men were but building up future difficulties
for themselves, as is evident from the fact that in Cincinnati itself
there were by 1880 several hundred women cigar-makers, and not one of
them in a union.

As the Civil War had so profoundly affected the sewing trades, so
it was war, although not upon this continent, that added to the
difficulties of American cigar-makers. In the Austro-Prussian War,
the invading army entered Bohemia and destroyed the Bohemian cigar
factories. The workers, who, as far as we know, were mostly women, and
skilled women at that, emigrated in thousands to the United States,
and landing in New York either took up their trade there or went
further afield to other Eastern cities. This happened just about the
time that the processes of cigar-making were being subdivided and
specialized, so presently a very complicated situation resulted.
Finding the control of their trade slipping away from them, the
skilled men workers in the New York factories went out on strike, and
many of the Bohemian women, being also skilled, followed them, and so
it came about that it was American girls upon whom the manufacturers
had to depend as strike-breakers. Their reliance was justified. With
the aid of these girls, as well as that of men strike-breakers, the
employers gained the day.

To what extent even the more intelligent trade-union leaders felt true
comradeship for their women co-workers it is difficult to say. The
underlying thought may often have been that safety for the man lay in
his insisting upon just and even favorable conditions for women.
Even under conditions of nominal equality the woman was so often
handicapped by her physique, by the difficulty she experienced in
obtaining thorough training, and by the additional claims of her home,
that the men must have felt they were likely to keep their hold on the
best positions anyhow, and perhaps all the more readily with the union
exacting identical standards of accomplishment from all workers, while
at the same time claiming for all identical standards of wages.

There is certainly something of this idea in the plan outlined
by President