Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/355

 WOMEN IN INDUSTRY: BOOTS AND SHOES 341

Further information regarding the extent to which women were employed in the manufacture of shoes is found in the col- lection of data in the Documents Relative to the Manufactures of the United States^^ which were gathered in 1832 by the sec- retary of the treasury. The industry at this time was largely confined to the towns of eastern Massachusetts, and some inter- esting statements of the number of men and women working at the trade and the wages they were receiving are given for these shoemaking centers. While it must be recognized that these statistics are for the most part very crude estimates, the enumeration of some of them may be useful as a means of giv- ing a more concrete idea of the extent to which women were engaged in this work.

At Haverhill, one of the oldest shoe-manufacturing towns in the state, 586 men, 130 boys, and 265 women were employed; most of the women earned 20 cents a day and the men 70; at Salem there were 300 men at five shillings and sixpence a day, and 250 women at two shillings a day; at Maiden, 275 men at one dollar; 200 women at 25 cents, and 25 boys at 50 cents; at Randolph, 470 men at 80 cents, 300 women at 40 cents, and 200 boys at the same wages as the women; at Newbury and New- buryport, 155 men were getting from seventy to eighty- four cents a day, and 120 women from fifteen to twenty-five cents ;^^ at Marblehead, where more than 130 women were reported em- ployed, many of them earned only eight or nine cents a day, though the majority got as much as twelve.

More than sixteen hundred women and girls were em- ployed in Lynn, and their wages ranged from twelve cents to fifty cents a day, although very few were employed either at

^* Executive Documents, Twenty-second Congress, ist Sess., Vols. I, II.

" Similar reports came from a large number of other towns ; thus at Stoneham 200 men were employed at 75 cents, 120 women at 33 cents, and 50 boys at the latter wage; at South Reading 350 men at 75 cents, 100 women at 25 cen^s, and SO boys at 30 cents; at Stoughton, 150 men at 83 cents, and 100 women at 40 cents; at Abington, 300 men at 75 cents, 150 women at 25 cents, and 200 boys at 33 cents; at Weymouth, 300 men at one dollar, 100 at 50 cents, and 50 bo5rs at the same wage; at Reading, 238 men at 65 cents, 150 women at 25 cents, and 73 boys at the same wage.