Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/357

 WOMEN IN INDUSTRY: BOOTS AND SHOES 343

mills, some women were employed at highly skilled work, so that a capable ambitious girl could make very good wages indeed. In general, it would not be far wrong to say that what were regarded as "high" earnings for shoebinders corresponded roughly with the "low" earnings of women in the cotton mills. The class of women who worked in the two industries seems to have been, on the whole, pretty carefully differentiated, although they were all alike Americans of "good New England stock." Young, ambitious, unmarried women who could leave home preferred the cotton mills which offered to those who were industrious, skilled work, steady employment, and high wages. Married women and widows on the other hand naturally pre- ferred work which could be done in their own homes and could be neglected when household cares were pressing. Other women who could not "be spared" at home, or those who still cherished a social prejudice against "factory hands," also preferred home work to mill work.

Social conditions in the towns and villages in which the mak- ing of boots and shoes had become an important industry were, on the whole, very favorable during this period. The trade had centered in eastern Massachusetts, where, in the "shoe villages," most of the workmen owned their own homes, and had quite a little adjoining land for vegetable gardens and fruit. There were said to be three times as many freeholders among the operatives in the boot and shoe industry as among the em- ployees in the cotton, wool, or iron manufacture.^® How far this statement is trustworthy, it is not possible to say, but it is certainly true that so far as the textile industries are concerned, they employed a larger proportion of women and offered much better opportunities to women than did the manufacture of boots and shoes. The latter was much more a men's industry, demanding skilled men employees, and offering practically no skilled work for women. It was only natural, therefore, that the largest proportion of freeholders

" Proceedings of the Convention of the Manufacturers, Dealers, and Opera- tives in the Shoe and Leather Trade in the State of Massachusetts (Boston, 1842), p. 30.