Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/499

Rh of destitution and misery among seamstresses. Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' expressed the public feeling. Needlewomen's Aid Associations were started, but wholly failed to lessen the evil. . . . The appearance of the sewing-machine changed all this. Shirts were made more rapidly and more cheaply than before, but the workwomen were better paid and did not work so many hours. The hours of labor fell, indeed, from eighteen hours a day to eleven or twelve."

The demand for hand-labor increased, because, while the machine did the heavy mechanical part of the work, the cutting out and preparation of the materials rendered necessary more "hands," and a superior aptitude and intelligence. The workers also became to a large extent the owners of the machines worked by them at home; and as the slavery and degradation of the needle became almost abolished, crowds of young women were attached to machine-working by the short hours and the high wages. It is this diversion of female labor which lies at the root of the scarcity of domestic servants, and the extraordinary rise in the wages given to such servants.

Improvements in the machine enabled it to be applied to boots, shoes, harness, and most articles made of leather. In November, 1857, a machine of this kind was introduced at Northampton, and immediately led to organized opposition by the Crispins of that centre of the shoe-trade. This opposition was more or less successful until February, 1859, when the manufacturers of Northampton and Stafford formed themselves into a league, and announced that they were prepared to compel the use of the machines in spite of the opposition of the men. A strike ensued. The men were defeated; and the machines very rapidly revolutionized the whole industry of boot and shoe making. Mr. Plummer says: "With the termination of the strike the operatives became eager to possess machines of their own, and in a short time there were few of the better class of workmen who were not proprietors of one machine or more. These were worked by the female members of their own families, or by women engaged for the purpose." The machines put an end to the more dangerous and unhealthy process of the work. Employers fitted up commodious factories supplied with machines, and hence has arisen the present factory system in the boot and shoe trade, a system as beneficial to the male and female workers as to the capitalists. It is estimated that now at least one-half of the Northampton employers have risen by means of machine-industry from the position of workmen.

Cheapness, rapidity of production, and excellence, led to a vastly increased demand for boots and shoes. Wages were raised; the work was easier; and the buildings in which it was carried on were vastly improved. In Leicester, in 1820, there were 150 operative shoemakers; in 1851 there were 1,375; in 1861, the machine having appeared, there were 2,315; and in 1871 there were 5,703, or nearly four times as many as at the ante-machine date of 1851,