Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/360

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ing shoe uppers was used in Lynn. The machine was a "Singer patent," and a woman operator was employed to run it.^^ When its superiority to the old method of closing and binding uppers by hand had been demonstrated, the machine soon came into very general use. The amount of work which a binder could do in a given period of time was, of course, vastly increased, and other changes necessarily followed. In Lynn stitching shops were started in various parts of the city. Steam-power was shortly substituted for foot-power in the running of the machines, and it became inevitable that the work should be transferred from the home to the factory.

Just before the introduction of the machine an increase not only in the number but in the proportion of women employees in the industry had been noted. This is indicated in the table given below, which shows the number of women employed in the manufacture of shoes in the state of Massachusetts and in the city of Lynn at the beginning and at the end of the decade.

CiXY OF Lynn

State of Massachusetts

i84S*

issst

i84S*

iSsot

Men

2,719 3.209 (54%)

4545

6,476 (59%)

27,199 18,678 (40%)

29.252 22,310 (43%)

Women

Total

5.928

11,021

45.877

51.562

♦Data for 184s from Massachusetts Tables of Industry. t From Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, XXXIII, 126. t From Census Data for 1850.

No very great weight can be attached to conclusions drawn from this table, since the data are probably none of them very accurate. It is, nevertheless, interesting that the proportion of women employed in the industry increased from 54 to 59 per cent, for the city of Lynn, and from 40 to 43 per cent, for the state as a whole. This slightly greater increase in the propor- tion of women can perhaps be explained as the result of the in- troduction of the leather-rolling machine in 1845. With this machine, it was said that "a man could do in a minute what would require half an hour's hard work with a lap-stone and

"Johnson, op. cit., p. i6.