Carpets and rugs.-The growth from 1870 to 1910 in the number of women operatives and laborers engaged in the production of carpets, rugs, and other floor coverings, at the same time that they increased in general relative to the total, occurred in a rapidly expanding industry. The greater demand for these products represented one aspect of the rising standard of living, made possible by technical improvements in carpet production and the complete replacement of hand by machine weaving in the United States.11

From 1910 to 1920 there was a sharp drop in the number and percentage of women in this work. Since then the trends among women have fluctuated.

Dyeing and finishing textiles.-As a factory industry, textile finishing dates from colonial days, for even at that period "every community boasted three mills,-one for lumber, another for flour and a third for finishing wool cloth."42 However, much of the dyeing of home-produced cloth was done in the household by women, and it is of interest to note that indigo was introduced See Clark, Victor S., op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 438-442.

42 Keir, Malcolm. Manufacturing industries in America. New York, N. Y., Ronald Press Co., 1920, p. 38.

as a crop by a woman, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, manager of her father's South Carolina plantation.43

As textiles became factory products, the formerly limited colors and patterns became diversified, and dyeing, printing, bleaching, and other finishing operations constituted a wellestablished industry by 1870. Women constituted about oneseventh of the operatives and laborers at that date, and though their proportion fluctuated for a time, after 1910 it showed a small but steady decline. From 1870 to 1940 less than 6,000 women were added to the ranks of the workers.

General trends.—In the early years of the Nation's development, clothing the family members was an important activity of the women and girls of the family. Today, with nearly threequarters of a million women operatives and laborers, it is still an important function for women, though no longer performed almost entirely in the home. Inroads into the making of homeproduced and custom-made clothing were already considerable by 1870. The use of the sewing machine, invented in 1846, and the development of standard sizes for uniforms during the Civil War made possible great expansion in factory production of clothing. From an industry limited in scope before 1830 to the needs of sailors in port, the men's clothing industry grew to such size that by 1870 "the mass of the male population of the United States was clad in ready-made clothing."45 In the women's

44

43 Beard, Mary R., Editor. America through women's eyes. New York, N. Y., Macmillan Co., 1933, pp. 33-41.

44 Hickman, Mildred M. The clothing industry in Cleveland. Cleveland, Ohio, Board of Education, 1929, pp. 2-5.

45 Clark, Victor S., op. cit., Vol. II, p. 431; for a historical discussion of the clothing industry see Abbott, op. cit., Ch. X, The clothing industry, pp. 215-245; Report on condition of woman and child wage-earners in the United States, op. cit., Vol. 2, Men's ready-made clothing, pp. 483-512; [U. S.] Department of Commerce and Labor. Bureau of the Census. [12th census of the United States: 1900.] Vol. IX, Manufactures. Part III, Special reports on selected industries, pp. 296-302. Washington, [U. S.] Government Printing Office, 1902; Willett, Mabel Hurd. The employment of women in the clothing trade. New York, N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1902. 206 pp.

clothing industry, the garments of the "mantuamakers" of colonial days1 may be considered predecessors of cloaks, which were the one such product generally manufactured in 1870. By 1900, however, the ready-made women's clothing industry extended to the manufacture of suits, lingerie, and shirtwaists.

Women operatives and laborers in apparel factories, together with dressmakers and tailoresses, constituted the largest single group of women in manufacturing in 1940, and their numbers were more than triple those in 1870. The 1870 and 1880 figures include milliners. If an allowance were made for them, the figures would change somewhat, though the general longtime trends would not be radically affected. The number of women operatives and laborers in apparel and accessories, together with tailoresses, dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory), grew from 1870 through 1910, though at a declining rate. The drop in numbers from 1910 to 1930 was almost retrieved in 1940.

1 Includes apparel and accessories, operatives and laborers; tailoresses; dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory). 2 Figure adjusted to exclude estimated number of women milliners: 1870, 20,708; 1880, 36,075.

Changes relative to population and labor force growth.-The numbers in the population for each woman clothing worker were at lower levels from 1890 to 1910 than before or afterwards. This was the period in which there were still many dressmakers, while at the same time factory-made clothing was rapidly expanding into new markets. Earlier a great deal of clothing, primarily women's and children's, still was made by the unpaid labor of women in the home. Later, custom-made clothing gave way to the almost universal use of ready-made apparel, produced under

40 Instances of women as proprietors of important mantuamaking and tailoring establishments, employing assistants and apprentices, are given in Spruill, Julia Cherry. Women's life and work in the southern colonies. Chapel Hill, N. C., University of North Carolina Press, 1938, pp. 284-286.

more efficient methods and also with the labor of relatively more men. Comparisons of hand and machine labor in the men's clothing industry before 1900 showed tremendous gains in output when hand work was supplanted by machines, particularly in the cheaper grade of product. Hand methods required anywhere from 2 to more than 10 times as long as machine methods."

Throughout the past 50 or 60 years the proportion of all women workers who were clothing workers declined.

1 Includes apparel and accessories, operatives and laborers; tailoresses; dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory).

2 Figure adjusted to exclude estimated number of women milliners: 1870, 20,708; 1880, 36,075.

Changes relative to men.-The proportions of women relative to all clothing workers have always been high. The splitting up of what was formerly the work of the dressmaker, the tailoress, and the seamstress and the assigning of cutting, pressing, basting, and other jobs to male workers have tended to decrease the proportions of women. The plentiful supply both of inexperienced and of highly skilled male garment workers, available as a result of the various waves of immigration, has further contributed to this trend. On the other hand, many of the operations are better performed by women in this industry in which the deftness and skill needed to place and manipulate the garment is even more important than actual stitching operations.48 Trends since 1870 have been as follows:

47 Commissioner of Labor. Thirteenth annual report, 1898, op. cit., Hand and machine labor, Vol. I, pp. 197-204.

48 In the cotton garment industry studies show that from 67 to 85 percent of the total time taken by workers to make the garment is spent in handling and manipulating. U. S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Productivity of labor in cotton garment industry. Bulletin 662. Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1939, p. 36.

1 Includes apparel and accessories, operatives and laborers; tailoresses; dressmakers and seamstresses (not in factory).

2 Figure adjusted to exclude estimated number of milliners: 1870, total, 20,908, women, 20,708; 1880, total, 36,330, women, 36,075.

Shifts in particular occupations.-The widespread adoption after the Civil War of ready-made clothing for men and the subsequent use by women of ready-made clothing on an everincreasing scale have had significant effects on the work done by women in the "needle trades." Women more or less competent to produce a custom-made garment from the first cut to the final button, making clothing with much hand work and outside of factory walls, constituted nearly 7 in every 10 women clothing workers in 1910, but only about 1 in 5 in 1940. The continuous shift to the factory product and the resulting decline of the hand trades, as specialized factory operations were substituted for skilled work, appear from the following data:

Apparel workers. Trends in the general clothing group, which includes both hand trades and factory operations, obscure changes within the various branches of the field. Separate data for each branch, available from 1910 to 1940, show that the number of women operatives and laborers in apparel and accessories has increased in each decade and at a successively greater rate. The change from 1930 to 1940 is exaggerated, however, because of the numbers of women public emergency workers who were assigned to sewing projects, and who returned it as their usual occupation, having had no other work experience. To this situation also is due probably the considerable increase from 1930