who had not been to the
metropolis and enjoyed its advantages."[2]

[Footnote 2: Abbot, _Women in Industry_.]

By 1850 the situation had altered. With the opening of the west,
opportunities for women of gumption and spirit increased. The
industrial depression of 1848-49 lowered wages, and little by little
the former type of operative left the mill, her place being filled
largely by Irish immigrants.

The Civil War saw a great change in the world of working women.
Thousands of men were taken from industry into war, and overnight
great new fields of opportunity were opened to women. The more
educated were needed as nurses, for teaching positions, and for
various grades of clerical work deserted by men. After the close of
the war farmers became more prosperous and their daughters were not
forced to work for the wherewithal to acquire advantages. Add to all
this the depression caused in the cotton industry due to the war--and
the result of these new conditions was that when the mills reopened it
was with cheap immigrant labor. What then could have been considered
high wages were offered in an attempt to induce the more efficient
American women operatives back to the mills, but the cost of living
had jumped far higher even than high wages. The mills held no further
attractions. Even the Irish deserted, their places being filled with
immigrants of a lower type.

Since the Civil War look at us--8,075,772 women in industry, as
against 2,647,157 in 1880. Almost a fourth of the entire female
population over ten years of age are at work, as against about
one-seventh in 1880. The next census figures will show a still larger
proportion. Those thousands of women the World War threw into
industry, who never had worked before, did not all get out of industry
after the war. Take just the railroads, for example. In April, 1918,
there were 65,816 women employed in railroad work; in October, 1918,
101,785; and in April, 1919, 86,519. In the 1910 census, of all the
kinds of jobs in our country filled by men, only twelve were not also
filled by women--and the next census will show a reduction there:
firemen (either in manufacturing or railroads), brakemen, conductors,
plumbers, common laborers (under transportation), locomotive
engineers, motormen, policemen, soldiers, sailors, and marines. The
interesting point is that in only one division of work are women
decreasing in proportion to men--and that was women's work at the
beginnin