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 358 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

industry today in which the subdivision of labor is more minute, or in which the substitution of machine for hand labor has been more complete.

In the first part of this article certain points of contrast were noted between the "boot and shoe" industry and the cotton manufacture, and it may be well to summarize these briefly: shoemaking had always been men's work historically, while the making of cloth had in large part been done by women; in the first half of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution was taking place in the cotton industry, while boots and shoes con- tinued to be made by the old hand processes; of the two indus- tries, the cotton mills during this period offered greater induce- ments to women, while "boots and shoes" with heavy skilled work demanding a regular apprenticeship, and offering high wages and independent conditions of employment, was more attractive to men. The cotton mills, therefore, continued through the first half of the nineteenth century to be a women's indus- try; shoemaking remained a men's trade, although a system of division of labor had made it possible to employ large numbers of women for one of the intermediate processes.

In conclusion, a further point of contrast between the two industries may be noted. Since 1850 one of the most striking changes that has occurred in the cotton industry has been the increase in the proportion of men employed in the mills. The number of men operatives has increased so rapidly that they now outnumber the women, and the last census has called atten- tion to the fact that men are displacing women in the cotton manufacture. Moreover, the men, who have been driving the women out of the mills are few of them Americans. In round numbers 28,000 of the 39,000 men employed as cotton opera- tives in Massachusetts during the taking of the most recent census were foreign-born, and nearly 9,000 more were {the native-bom sons of foreign-bom parents.^^ The foreign ele- ment among the women operatives is quite as large. In brief, then, the tendency during the last half-century has been toward

"These data are from the Twelfth Census: Occupations. The census of manufactures does not give statistics relating to nationality.