cult for them to obtain it than for men. They require to be much
more mobile and active in their move toward the labor market, yet are
disabled by timidity, by physical weakness, and by their liability to
insult or outrage arising from the fact of sex. Men who would secure a
place tramp from town to town, from street to street, or shop to shop,
persisting through all rebuffs, till their end is accomplished. They go
into suspicious and doubtful localities, encounter strangers, and sleep
among casual companions. In this fashion they relieve the pressure at
congested points, and keep the mass fluid.

For women, save in the slight degree included in the country girl's
journey to town or city where cotton or woollen mills offer an opening
for work, this course is impossible. Ignorant, fearful, poor, and
unprotected, the lions in her way are these very facts. Added to this
natural disqualification, comes another,--in the lack of sympathy for
her needs, and in the prejudice which hedges about all her movements. In
every trade she has sought to enter, men have barred the way. In a
speech made before the House of Commons in 1873, Henry Fawcett drew
attention to the persistent resistance of men to any admission of women
on the same terms with themselves. He said:--

"We cannot forget that some years ago certain trade-unionists in
the potteries imperatively insisted that a certain rest for the arm
which they found almost essential to their work should not be used
by women engaged in the same employment. Not long since, the London
tailors, when on a strike, having never admitted a woman to their
union, attempted to coerce women from availing themselves of the
remunerative employment which was offered them in consequence of
the strike. But this jealousy of woman's labor has not been
entirely confined to workmen. The same feeling has extended itself
through every class of society. Last autumn a large number of
post-office clerks objected to the employment of women in the
Post-Office."

Driven by want, they had pressed into agricultural labor as well, and
found equal opposition there also. Mr. Fawcett in the same speech calls
attention to the fact of the non-admission of women to the Agricultural
Laborers' Union, on the ground that "the agricultural laborers of the
country do not wish to recognize the labor of women."

There is more or less reason for such feeling. It aris