Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/367

 WOMEN IN INDUSTRY: BOOTS AND SHOES 353

by men as they always had been^^ and at that time for wages of three or four dollars a day.

It would seem, therefore, that in this early period immedi- ately following the establishment of the machine system, both men and women were doing much the same work as they had done before. The method of working had been radically changed, but this had not altered the line of delimitation which had of old been drawn between the work of the shoemaker and the shoebinder. Women were making uppers, stitching and binding by machine, and men were "bottoming," putting on soles by machine. If either had encroached upon a field belonging to the other, the results were not visible at this time.

Attention should be called here, perhaps, to the fact that although the industry had become so generally a factory indus- try by 1870, the old hand processes had not altogether disap- peared. In 1875, the State Census of Massachusetts still re- ported *"* 1,518 women in the boot and shoe manufacture employed in their own homes, and although fifteen hundred is quite insignificant compared with the twenty-two thousand women who were employed in this manner in 1850 just before the introduction of the sewing-machine, it indicates that the hand industry had not altogether died out. There remained, even after the introduction of machinery, a considerable trade in hand-made goods, women's "buskins" and slippers, and ankle- ties for children. A manufacturer who produced such goods reported in 1872 that the work was done by both men and women. The women did the binding with leather, and the rest of the work was done by men, who were usually small farmers, and who worked at shoemaking only part of the time. He found it impossible to estimate the earnings of either shoemak-

this time heels came back into fashion, and journeymen were employed to "heel" shoes and "heeling" became a special process. See Johnson, Lynn^ p. 340.
 * There had been no heels on ladies' shoes from about 1830 to 1855, hut after

reported from Lynn, 225 from Haverhill, loi from Marblehead, and smaller numbers for other towns.
 * ^ Massachusetts Census (1875), II, 825. Of these 1,518 women, 575 were