Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/354

 340 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

or binding, and their position was very different from that of the men who had learned all the processes. The women carried on a single, narrowly defined part of the work, for which little or no skill was required, and for which they were never appren- ticed; the men knew the whole trade and had been rigidly held down to a long period of training.

Since the women did their work in their own homes, much of it was done only at times when they were not engaged in household duties. Any statements, therefore, of the total num- ber of women employed in the industry must have included a large number who did not give full time to the work; but such early statistics of the number of women shoebinders and stitch- ers as are available are of interest, even if they are only estimates. In 1829, the city of Lynn contained 62 factories, which were said to employ 1,500 "mechanics" and about the same number of women. The latter, said a local historian, "are engaged in binding and trimming, and by their industry and economy con- tribute to the support and respectability of their families. "^^

The factories of Lynn, however, gave a great deal of work out to the women of the neighboring towns and and villages as well as to those within the city. In the fishing villages of the coast where shoemaking was a winter occupation for fishermen, their wives and daughters found employment at shoebinding through a great part of the year. The village of Marblehead in 1831 reported 51 men, 134 women, and a considerable number of boys engaged in the boot and shoe industry. Lucy Larcom in an early poem, "Hannah at the Window, Binding Shoes," describes one of these shoebinders forever watching for the return of the lover who has been lost at sea : Poor lone Hannah Sitting at the window, binding shoes;

Faded, wrinkled, Sitting stitching in a mournful muse.

Spring and winter. Night and morning, Hannah's at the window, binding shoes. "Alonzo Lewis, History of Lynn (Boston, 1829).