The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of the brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other trades concerned in house building.

What the specific causes of these strikes were I do not remember.

Strikes had become so common at that period that people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds.

In one department of industry or another, they had been nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873.

In fact it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of laborers pursue their avocation steadily for more than a few months at a time.
The reader who observes the dates alluded to will of course recognize in these disturbances of industry the first and incoherent phase of the great movement which ended in the establishment of the modern industrial system with all its social consequences.