In the countries of Europe where the evolution of industry has run its full painful course from the beginning, the middle class workers are losing ground. Their numbers have relatively decreased, and as a class they are protesting loudly through their organizations against conditions that make the old ideal of the family well nigh impossible. Many of the single men emigrate to countries offering greater opportunities to working men, thus leaving the young women to win for themselves a footing in the industrial life outside the home. Neither men nor women wish to lose their social status by virtue of failure in the economic struggle, and so they meet the problem separately and on different continents. Those countries not yet fully exploited profit by the courage and individualism of the north European immigrant. The high price of labor in consequence of its scarcity made possible a plane of living beyond the dreams of the home folks, and with this higher standard of consumption has gone invariably a degree of culture, self improvement, and self confidence which stood them in good stead at a later day. When the community became thickly settled and the old industrial problems arose women did not show the same inclination to go to the factory, or to lower their plane of consumption to meet the decreased income of the family, but sought the professions as avenues for industrial employment. They did not lose social caste and there was a real economic gain. The United States census report of 1900 says “women as a class are engaging more generally in those occupations which are supposed to represent a higher grade in the social scale.” Undoubtedly the next census report will make this still more apparent.[51] The women of the United States have greater educational opportunities than the women of any other country, and when these opportunities are taken advantage of, they show a like inclination with men to desert those employments which call for the least skill, and pay the smallest wage. They assert an independence characteristic of the better classes, and assume they have a right to a social status a little higher than their income permits. This is especially true of the married women. If they enjoy an option between remaining at home or entering the industrial field, they tend to be more independent as to hours of labor, and the wages they will accept. Free, in a large measure, from pressing economic necessity, they are in a better position to dictate terms than the unmarried women or the men of their class.