For four years she (Elizabeth Jane Cochran) was one of the many women unable to find steady and decent-paying employment.
Then in January 1885 she read an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch called "What Girls Are Good For." The article was written by Erasmus Wilson, Pittsburgh's most popular columnist, and he claimed in his article that any woman who had a job was "a monstrosity" and that women belonged in the home doing domestic tasks and raising children.
Elizabeth was so enraged by the article that she fired off an anonymous letter of protest to George Madden, managing editor of the Dispatch, describing the plight of the many young women who had to work to survive in industrial Pittsburgh.
That article changed her life forever!