Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/371

 WOMEN IN INDUSTRY: BOOTS AND SHOES 357

"men's work" and "women's work." The line is less distinct, possibly, but it is still drawn in much the same place.

Attention should be called to the fact that the factory records given above are very greatly simplified. The displacement of hand methods by machinery has resulted in the most elaborate division of processes within the six large groups which are indi- cated in the table. This can best be illustrated by giving as a concrete example an account of the way in which the work in the stitching-room, which corresponds to "binding and sewing" done by women in the earlier period, is subdivided today. There are now forty-eight different occupations carried on in this room, and while an enumeration of them may be tedious, nothing short of this can indicate how minute this division of labor has become. The last census volume dealing with Employees and Wages gives the following list of the various classes of operatives em- ployed in the stitching-rooms :^" Skivers, cementers, pasters, folders (these all employed in the work of preparation), upper stitchers, eyelet row stitchers, seam rubbers, seam pounders, gore stitchers, gusset stitchers, lining stitchers, lining makers, liners, closers on, in-seamers, vamp liners, facing stitchers, headers, top stitchers, carders, button-hole machine operators, button hole finishers, button sewers, punchers (of holes for eyelets), gang punch operators, eyeleters, fastener setters, hookers, markers (of vamp tips), top markers, tip stitchers, tippers, tip pasters, perforators, tip fixers, vamp closers, vampers, barrers, stayers, heelstay stitchers, eyelet stay stitchers, fancy stitchers, foxing stitchers, tongue binders, tongue stitchers, strap makers, table workers, and table hands.

It should be emphasized that this list includes only the opera- tives in one single department, the stitching-room, and that the work which has been subdivided into these forty-eight processes was formerly a single process done by one woman in the days before the invention of the sewing-machine. The same census volume from which this list was taken gives for the whole indus- try 126 different classes of operatives. There is probably no

"Twelfth Census (1900), Special Report on Employees and Wages, by Davis R. Dewey, pp. 1198-1201.