s therefore ask you to aid women in
overcoming these difficulties, by assisting to place them,
politically at least, on a level with those whom you designate as
"their more powerful competitors."

One of the greatest hindrances in the path of self-dependent
women is the opposition shown by members of many trades and
professions to women who attempt to engage in them. The medical
and academical authorities of the University of Edinburgh have
successfully crushed the attempt of a small band of female
students to qualify themselves for the medical profession, and
the same spirit of "trades unionism" is rife in the industrial
community. A few months ago the printers of Manchester, learning
that a few girls were practicing type-setting, and endeavoring to
earn a little money thereby, instantly passed a rule ordaining a
strike in the shop of any master printer who should allow type
set up by women to be sent to his machines to be worked. At the
present time, in a manufacturing district in Yorkshire where
there are "broad" and "narrow" looms, at the former of which much
more money can be earned, the men refuse to allow women to work
at the broad looms, though they are quite able to manage them,
because the work is considered too remunerative for women. At
Nottingham there is a particular machine at which very high wages
can be earned, at which women now work, and the men, in order to
drive them out of such profitable employment, have insisted on
the masters taking no more women on, but as those at present
employed leave, supplying their places by men. A master
manufacturer reports: "We have machines which women can manage
quite as well or better than men, yet are they not permitted by a
selfish combination of the strong against the weak." These are
only samples of the cases that are constantly occurring of
successful attempts to drive women out of remunerative
occupations. Your memorialists submit that women would be more
able to resist such attempts if they had the protection of the
suffrage; and that men would be less likely to be thus aggressive
and oppressive if they had learned to regard women as their
political equals.

Besides the restrictions on the industrial liberties of women
effected by combinations of men, there are existing and p