The opening of the vast treasures of the West, and the marvellous development of that section, had effect upon the direction of feminine thought and effort in various channels. Though the leaps of that part of our country into prominence had made of such places as Chicago and St. Louis, as well as lesser but still important cities of the West, a potent influence in the development of material interests long before the century had entered upon its ninth decade, until that time they had won but little power as social influences. They were fast taking their places as powers in this direction also, however, and before long Chicago at least came to be recognized as a stalwart rival to New York, the acknowledged leader of the East in things social. Then, because of the lusty strength incidental to the vigorous youth of the junior members of our commonwealth, Western ideas and influences began to be felt in the East and to modify the conditions that existed in Eastern society.
The simplicity [freedom] of which the German woman complained is in truth one of the finest, as of the most characteristic, traits of our social system in its regulation of intercourse between the sexes, and it was well that the East, which was beginning to pay too much attention to the ultraconservative ideas of the Old World in this respect, should find a counter influence within the borders of its own land. Even more important, however, was the hearty acceptance by the West--far broader than that of the East--of the theory of woman's place in affairs; though the woman worker had been accepted and even honored in the East, it was not until the West had made her a matter of course that she was universally regarded as entirely within the proper sphere of femininity. Up to that time she had been looked upon as the creature of circumstances, to disappear when the conditions of her existence were altered, rather than as an established fact; but the last decade of the century swept away such remaining cobwebs of tradition and for all time made the woman worker a recognized fact as well as factor in the totality of our social system.
As the century drew to its close, increasingly prominent and determined became the position of the woman worker. Her sphere of action became rapidly enlarged; she grew to be a power as well as an influence. She was no longer of necessity the subordinate worker; often she claimed and obtained a place at the head of affairs, even if as yet these were rarely "of great pith and moment." The woman worker rapidly developed into the woman of business. She began to rival the men in enterprise, even although she rarely contended with them in their traditional fields. Yet even this latter rule was not universal in application; the nineteenth century had not yielded its latest breath before it had seen the appearance of women as commercial travellers, as agents of various descriptions, and in many departments contending with the men for supremacy in fields that had hitherto been considered necessarily confined to cultivation by the sterner sex.