The American Economic Review. Her 1912 work Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi was considered by contemporaneous scholars to be her magnum opus, and "one of the most important fruits of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching." The book outlined the economic history of the American West. In this work, Coman describes the historical economic processes that led to the Far West coming under the control of settlers. She found that settlers were more economically successful than explorers, traders, trappers, and indigenous peoples because the settlers built permanent settlements, reproduced at a higher rate, and established networks of collaboration. Settlement movement activist Jane Addams, a close friend, urged Coman to research social insurance programs in Europe in order to establish similar programs in the United States. Coman studied social insurance in England, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, but poor health prevented her from continuing her research. Her manuscript, "Unemployment Insurance: A Summary of European Systems" was published after her death in 1915. Social activism Coman was passionate about social and economic issues, especially women's education, poverty, immigration, and labor. Throughout her life, she was active in social reform movements, especially the labor movement and the settlement movement. She served as the president of the electoral board and chair of the standing committee of the National College Settlements Association in 1900. Coman organized a group of immigrant women who worked in Boston sweatshops, naming the group an "Evening Club for Tailoresses," and attempted to found a tailor shop that could have been an alternative to sweatshops. She assisted in organizing the 1910 Chicago garment workers' strike, which involved 40,000 factory workers. Coman also worked with the Women's Trade Union League. Working with her economist and sociologist friend Emily Greene Balch and other women, Coman co-founded Denison House in 1892, a college women's settlement house located in Boston, serving as its first chair. Denison House provided a center for Boston's labor activists, and is thought to be the first settlement house on the East Coast. Personal life For 25 years, Coman lived in a "Boston marriage" with Wellesley professor and poet Katharine Lee Bates, the author of "America the Beautiful". Such partnerships were so common among Wellesley faculty that they were called "Wellesley marriages". Coman and Bates shared a house they named "the Scarab" with Bates' mother, Cornelia, and her sister, Jeannie. The