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 Strasser of the International Cigar-makers, and he represented the advance guard of his generation, in his annual report in the year 1879. "We cannot drive the females out of the trade but we can restrict this daily quota of labor through factory laws. No girl under eighteen should be employed more than eight hours per day; all overwork should be prohibited; while married women should be kept out of factories at least six weeks before and six weeks after confinement."