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^ STATEC^EeGE L1BE»..I

WOMEN’S
JOBS
Advance and
Growth

BULLETIN

THE

WOMENS BUREAU

•

NO.

232

Women’s
Jobs
Advance and
Growth

United States
Department of Labor
Maurice J. Tobin,

Secretary

Women’s Bureau
Frieda S. Miller,

Director

r ifjp!

United States
Government Printing Office
Washington : 1949

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents
U. S. Government Printing Office, fVashington, D. C.
Price 30 cents

Letter of Transmittal
United States Department of Labor,
Women's Bureau,
Washington, June 6,1949.

Sir: I have the honor to transmit to you the popularized version of
the Bureau's technical bulletin, issued last December, Women’s Occu
pations Through Seven Decades. This simpler, briefer account is in
tended to serve young women who are trying to decide what job they
want to do. It will serve counselors, high school classes studying the
U. S. economy, and agencies and organizations that habitually seek such
material from us and find it more serviceable in this than in technical
form.
This version was prepared by Sylva S. Beyer, editor, with the coopera
tion of Elisabeth D. Benham, assistant economist, of the Bureau’s staff.
Respectfully submitted.

Frieda S. Miller, Director.

Hon. Maurice J. Tobin,
Secretary of Labor.

Foreword

WITHIN THE NEXT FEW YEARS most of you, if you
have not already, will be choosing the job you want to do. For now it is
as customary for young women as for young men to work, at least until
the young women marry. Some work after marriage, until their children
are born. Some women, for various reasons, work even while they are
raising families, or after their children are grown. There are few women
in the United States who do not, at some time in their lives, hold a job.
If you had been living in 1836, you would, according to Harriet Martineau of England who came to visit us then, have had "before the open
ing of the factories . . . but three resources—teaching, needlework and
keeping boarding houses or hotels. Now,” she said, "there are the mills;
and women are employed in printing offices as compositors as well as
folders and stitchers.” She also spoke elsewhere of women in domestic
service and shoe binding. (Actually some other types of occupations
provided jobs for women then, but probably not for many.)
Today, instead of from Harriet Martineau’s brief list, you may choose
from among 442 types of jobs out of the 451 there are.
If you are interested in what happened in our country to bring this
about, what the jobs are, and which are chosen by the greatest number
of women, you will find the story here. It is taken, for the most part,
from the reports of the United States Census Bureau.1 These, like many
other books that seem incredibly dull, do, when one has caught on to
their way of saying things, tell dramatic facts about ourselves. WE are
the record. All the important events in our lives are or will be in it—our
birth, our schooling, where we live, our marriage, our children, our job.
The story told here had its beginnings, of course, in the early days of
this country. The year we take it up in some detail, however, is 1870,
shortly after the close of the Civil War. For that is the year the Bureau
of the Census first counted women separately from men in each of the
jobs they were doing. For the moment, the story ends in 1940, when the
last 10-year census was taken. It will be continued in the report of the
1950 count. What will you be in that report? a student? a secretary?
operating a machine in a factory? a housewife? a farmer? a saleswoman?
a telephone operator?
We hope this book, by telling you about jobs women have done and
are doing, may be of help to you in making your own choice.
' Actually, the story here is a shorter and simpler form of the story told by Janet Hooks
in her Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades, which you may have by writing the
Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. In writing her story. Miss Hooks grouped
workers somewhat differently than the Census Bureau does, in order that she might com
pare them with groups of workers of 70 years earlier. Her report had the full approval of
the Census Bureau.
IV

Contents

PAGE

Foreword......................................................................................

CHAPTER ONE

The Change in Women’s Jobs
The change in our economy that brought about a change in women's
jobs..................................................................................................
The change in customs and standards of living.................................
Changes in family living.................................................................
Changes in public attitudes toward women as paid workers ....
The effect of wars................................................................................
The effect of immigration.................................................................
Changes in education of women.......................................................
Population changes............................................................................

1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

CHAPTER TWO

The Advance of Women White Collar Workers
Office workers....................................................................................
12
Bookkeepers, accountants, and cashiers.................................................... 14
Telephone and telegraph operators-...................................................
15
Attendants in doctors’ and dentists’ offices....................................
17
Agents and collectors.........................................................................
18
Messengers and errand and office girls...............................................
19
Mail carriers................................
19
Workers in sales jobs.........................................................................
20
Hucksters and peddlers.....................................................................
21
Insurance agents and brokers..............................................................
22
Real estate agents ............................................................................
22
Newsboys...........................................................................................
22

CHAPTER THREE

Women Manual Workers
PAGE

Food workers....................................................................................
Canners and preservers.....................
Confectionery workers..................................................................
Meat packers....................................................................................
Baked foods workers.....................................................................
Dairy workers . . .......................................................
Grain mill and other food workers................................
Beverage workers................................................................................
Tobacco workers................................................................................
Textile workers .................................................................................
Cotton workers ............................................................................
Knit goods workers...................................................... ’...............
Wool and worsted workers..........................................................
Silk and rayon workers..................................................................
Carpet and rug makers..................................................................
Dyers and textile finishers..............................................................
Clothing workers..................
Apparel workers......................................................
Dressmakers....................................................................................
Tailoresses................................................................................... .
Hat makers.......................................................................................
Woodworkers....................................................................................
Paper makers.......................................................................................
Printing and publishing workers.....................
Chemical workers................................................................................
Rubber workers................................................................................
Footwear workers.............................................................................
Leather workers................................................................................
Glass workers.....................................................................
Pottery workers................................................................................
Structural clay workers...............................................
Metal trades workers.........................................................................
Electrical workers.............................................................................
Fruit and vegetable graders and packers............................................

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CHAPTER FOUR

Women Service Workers
Service workers in private and in public housekeeping..................
Laundry workers.............................................................
Beauticians, barbers, and manicurists...............................................
Practical nurses and midwives..........................................................

51
53
54
55

PAGE

Elevator operators............................................................................
Janitors and sextons................................................................. ... .
Amusement and recreation service workers.....................................
Boardinghouse and lodginghouse keepers........................................

56
57
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57

CHAPTER FIVE

Women Professional Workers
Teachers...............................................................................................
Trained nurses....................................................................................
Social, welfare, and religious workers ............................................
Musicians and music teachers..........................................................
Artists and art teachers.....................................................................
Entertainers........................................................................
Authors...............................................................................................
Librarians...............................................................................
Library assistants........................................................................
Editors and reporters..................................................
Women in the “learned professions” and related fields..................
Doctors...........................................................................................
Dentists...........................................................................................
Ministers...........................................................................................
Lawyers . ........................................................................................
Women in scientific and industrial professions.................................
Designers and draftsmen..................................................................
Laboratory technician's..................................................................
Chemists, assayers, and metallurgists..................
Technical engineers.........................................................................
Architects.......................................................................................
Veterinarians....................................................................................
Other professional workers..............................................................
Photographers..........................................................
Funeral directors and embalmers...................................................
Aviators...........................................................................................
chapter

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six

Businesswomen
Women in food businesses.................................................................
Women in restaurant and cafe businesses............................................
Businesswomen in specialties trades ...............................................
Businesswomen in general merchandise, apparel, shoe, and millinery
trades...............................................................................................
Businesswomen in industry..................................................................

74
74
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75
75

PAGE

Women in hotel businesses..............................................................
Women government officials and inspectors....................................
Women postmasters.............................................................................
Women druggists and pharmacists...................................................
Businesswomen in banking and finance............................................
Women officials in organizations.......................................................
Businesswomen in insurance..................

76
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CHAPTER SEVEN

Women Agricultural Workers.............................................

CHAPTER EIGHT

Women in Trades and Crafts
Foremen...............................................................................................
Decorators and window dressers.......................................................
Painters.............................................................
Paperhangers . .................................................................
Upholsterers.......................................................................................

83
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84

CHAPTER NINE

Women Protective Service Workers........................................

CHAPTER TEN

Remarks

CHAPTER ONE

The Change in Women’s Jobs

WE IN THE UNITED STATES use machines to produce
goods more than does any other country in the world. We buy and sell
more things than any other country. Our transportation system is the
greatest and most complex. And in buying and selling—both goods and
our services, or the work we do—we make use of money more than any
other country. We live under an industrial economy. We are the most
industrialized nation in the world.
THE CHANGE IN OUR ECONOMY THAT BROUGHT ABOUT
A CHANGE IN WOMEN’S JOBS
If we had been living when this country was very young, we would
have lived under an agricultural economy. Most of us would have been
living on farms and doing work connected with farming. Most of the
things we needed we and the men in our families would have grown
ourselves and made at home. Tools, wagons and plows, cloth and cloth
ing, shoes, furniture, and bedding were made at home. For some of the
things we needed we would have exchanged, not money, but our services
or things we had made and others needed. When we were about to be
married, our neighbors came to help us build our house; we did not pay
contractors, carpenters, bricklayers. We helped our neighbors bring in
and thresh their wheat, and they helped us with our crop. Our job, as
women of the family, was to cook for the many reapers and threshers.
We prepared all the food in the home, spun and wove cloth, made
clothing, cared for the sick and aged, trained the children. When
children were born, often a midwife, more often simply a neighbor
came to help. There were few doctors and no trained nurses. There were
few teachers; fewer of us would have been going to school.
This very young country had immense natural resources—rich soil,
valuable coal and iron beds, immense reaches of forest land, deep and
broad rivers that provided both easy transportation and power, fine
harbors in which ships could ride safely at anchor. More than anything,
this country had tremendous drive and inventive genius.
840888 0

50 -2

This drive and this genius, making use of these tremendous natural
resources, in less than a hundred years converted our agricultural
economy into the most fully developed industrial economy in the world.
It is in the process of that change that women have taken on such a great
variety of jobs.
One can speak of two major advances in our evolution from an
agricultural to an industrial economy, each of which provided new types
of jobs for women. First came the development of machines and the
building of factories, railroads, ships. From the point of view of jobs for
women, the sewing machine was one of the most important of the ma
chines. Clothing that had at first been made entirely at home, later in
part by dressmakers, mantua makers, tailors, and tailoresses, came to be
made almost entirely in factories, particularly after sewing machines
came to be power machines, driven by electricity.
The second advancement in job opportunities for women came with
the great expansion of commerce as rail and water ways webbed the
country, ships and harbors were built. It came with the development of
communications that followed the invention of the typewriter, tele
graph, telephone, and the expanding of our postal system. The type
writer, in particular, opened up a whole new field of white-collar jobs for
which women were said to be particularly well adapted.
The bustling activities engendered by commerce and communications
themselves brought about whole new series of other activities in their
train. People traveled; men left, in advance of their families, for jobs in
other towns. They needed hotels and restaurants in which to sleep and
eat away from home; they needed laundries to take care of their clothes.
Then the people living at home also found these institutions great con
veniences. Machines processed more and more of the foods that had been
prepared at home and made more and more of the clothing; wholesale
houses grew up to store and bring the food and clothing when needed
to the retail stores —to the corner butcher, baker, and grocer, clothing
stores, and hat shops—that sprang up in cities, towns, and villages.
"Sales techniques’’ developed: the merchants found better and better
ways of hawking their goods, of bringing them to the attention of peo
ple and of stimulating people to buy. Finally the merchants turned that
job over to experts, and the whole new field of modern advertising devel
oped which has as its sole purpose the creation of "consumer demand.”
All these developments opened up jobs for women.
Manufacturing and commerce could not be carried on effectively in
rural areas. Factory workers could not live too far from their jobs. The
factory itself had to be as close as possible to the receiving point for its
raw materials, to the near markets for its products, and to shipping
points for distant markets.' As manufacturing developed and commerce
1 Now that many cities have become overcrowded and congested, there is a movement
to build factories in country areas, made possible by the rapid train, truck, and plane trans
portation we now have.

y
grew, people tended more and more to leave the farm country to go
where the job opportunities were, to live close together, to build up
cities and towns where none had been before.
And living together in cities and towns in its turn created new types
of jobs. Streetcars, busses, ferries became necessary, and gas, light, and
water works—the great public utilities. More banks were needed. Thea
ters and other amusement places grew up. Newspapers and books be
came a daily necessity. All these brought about a variety of jobs, many
of which were filled by women.
Twice then the doors of industry were opened wide to welcome women
and little children in. First, when, although agriculture still occupied
most of the people, the system of making things in the home began to
give way to making them outside the home; then the infant factory pro
duction system had to find workers—many more workers—if it was to
grow up and realize itself. And again, toward the end of the nineteenth
century, when mass production was in full swing, then too, large-scale
business organizations and distribution systems were in vital need of a
new supply of workers, to carry on the interlocking activities of the great
business networks. And here too women and children were an important
source on which to draw for the needed help. As the whole economy of
the country was going through its often stirring and dramatic changes,
so was the economy of the individual family, particularly of the women
in the family.
In the pioneer period the women in the home—mothers, daughters,
and the kin who had no other home—produced goods and performed
services for the family group that were of important economic value.
Then spinning and weaving, preserving, baking, making cloth, cloth
ing, and bedding, laundering and many other personal services began
to be done commercially. Agencies outside the family came more and
more to take on much of the care of the old and the sick. Much of the
child training and many of the recreational activities which had been
carried on in the family circle came more and more to be carried on out
side the home.
All these shifts meant that the economic contribution of the women
in the household became smaller and smaller. It meant that the family
had increasing need for money income with which to pay for goods and
services. It meant that in many households several members, including
its women, had to work outside the home to help supply that money.
THE CHANGE IN CUSTOMS AND STANDARDS OF LIVING
The self-sufficiency of the pioneer family has disappeared. Today the
family, particularly in towns and cities, generally lives in a rented dwell
ing; buys its clothing, its baked goods, other prepared foods, household
furnishings and equipment; pays for much of its recreation. And not
only that, but the sparse furnishings of the pioneer cabins have been
replaced by countless modern day comforts and conveniences.
3

We became choosier in our tastes for the material things of daily life.
New industries and services put their products at the command, not only
of the few of us who are most well-to-do, but of the bulk of us who are
"the average citizen.’’ The living standards of the modern family are way
and above those of a hundred, or fifty years ago. This modern "standard
of living" is the very basis of the present industrial mass-production sys
tem. For wide and varied markets—people who will buy the products—
are essential to that system. (And the well-being of the family, in turn,
depends more and more on its money income.)
All these things have influenced the need of industry to employ
women, and of women to take jobs. It has become commonplace, when
jobs are not available in their home towns, for young women to go
where jobs are to be found, although they continue to do this less than
men.
Inventiveness and the mass-production system together turn out so
great a number and variety of material comforts that they can meet any
specific need in a variety of ways. Together with our system of advertis
ing, this has created still further needs, the need, for example, to have
wbat is in style, to do what is in fashion. The importance of styles and
fashions in all sorts of commodities has grown tremendously—com
modities ranging from dozens of types of hair curlers, through different
glasses for an infinite variety of drinks, to clothing and automobiles.
Style and fashion also have a great effect on job trends. Flourishing
new industries met the demand that arose when cosmetics were no
longer disapproved and beauticians’ services became a necessity. The
spread of the cigarette smoking habit provided employment for great
numbers of women. New job opportunities grew out of the everyday
use of silk, rayon, then nylon stockings.

CHANGES IN FAMILY LIVING
In pioneer days, a large family was far more common than nowadays.
Children, like a wife, were an economic asset to the farmer, usually an
economic necessity. A farm, particularly in the days before the tractors
and milking machines, took many hands to run it, many hands to feed
and clothe the workers.
In the early days of the industrial economy, a wife and sons and
daughters were still an economic asset, though a lesser one. For the chil
dren, often the wife, joined the father in the factories, in order that the
family might be able to pay for the necessities that had become less ex
pensive to buy than to produce at home.
Today the time of most children is spent at school. Relatively few con
tribute to the family income before they are grown. Today, in an era of
apartment house living, it is difficult even to provide space for a large
family.
4

In pioneer days, most girls married at what we consider a very early
age. How many stories of these days have we not read in which an un
married girl of 20 was considered an old maid? Nowadays the age at
which girls commonly marry in the United States is between 21 and 22.
Usually the girl’s husband is a little less than three years older than she
is. About 3 in 20 of the young couples have no children. The typical
mother has three children. The first is usually born a year after marriage,
the last when the mother is 28. When her youngest child is 18, the aver
age mother is 45. Her children are married and have left home, usually
when the mother is 50 or 53, and the family then consists again of only
husband and wife.
Many women in the United States work for a wage or salary even
while they have children who are under school age, particularly if there
are school-age children to help take care of the young ones while the
mother is away. More women work when all their children are of school
age and a still greater number when their children are over 18.2
With the changes in our customs and standards of living, with so
much that was formerly carried on within the family group now being
done by businesses and community agencies, much more of the time of
every member of the family is spent outside the immediate family circle,
in playgrounds, at school, at work, at clubs for young and for old, in
civic activities, at movies and theaters. The members of the family are
less dependent on one another and more dependent on the community.
CHANGES IN PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD
WOMEN AS PAID WORKERS
Changes in styles and fashion are rapid and frequent. Social changes
take place much more slowly. In spite of industry’s need for workers, in
spite of families' need for increased income, people did not readily ac
cept the idea that women should work outside the home. The idea that
"women’s place is in the home” and nowhere else is still met with here
and there. However, under the compulsion of an economy that is still
changing, that is increasingly a money economy, that idea is waning.
When social changes do take place, it is likely that the new develop
ment will be built on old foundations. When factories and businesses
began to take over many home activities, it seemed natural, and there
fore more acceptable, that women should continue, in the new surround
ings, with the work they had been doing for their own families. Under
both our agricultural and our industrial economy, producing cloth and
clothing, preparing food, caring for the sick, training children, have been
- There are (April 1948) 4 million mothers in paid employment, 3 million of whom are
living with their husbands, 1 million of whom are living apart or who are widowed or
divorced. The children of over 800,000 of these mothers are all under school age (under
6). Over three-fourths million have children of both school age (6-18 years) and of pre
school age.

women’s work. But they have been carried on, in the two periods, in
very different surroundings and by widely different methods.
Some public attitudes become crystalized and are then translated into
laws and government programs. Such laws and programs have created
many job opportunities for women. When laws made schooling com
pulsory, for example, more teachers were required. Public health pro
grams required more nurses. Welfare programs brought more oppor
tunities for social workers and for clerks and stenographers.
The attitude of some of the public and some employers, on the other
hand, that certain types of work are not appropriate for women has
limited women’s job opportunities. There are people, for instance, who
believe that even though women have the necessary qualifications, it is
more suitable for a man to work on a job which requires dealing with
the public, or one in which considerable traveling is necessary, or one
that calls for supervising groups of men workers. Prejudices are strong
est against married women workers, owing to survivals of the "women’s
place is in the home” idea and to failure to understand the economic
problems which face married women and their families.
Opportunities in some fields are limited by the standards set up by
those who are already working in the field, for example, in craftsmen’s
occupations like printing and carpentering. Many of these require a long
apprenticeship before a worker is regarded as a full-fledged craftsman
entitled to a craftsman’s pay. Established craftsmen, moreover, and some
employers limit the number who may become apprentices to some crafts.
Such restrictions limit the number of women who may find a job in these
fields.
Women are excluded from many jobs in manual work of all degrees
of skill because such jobs require greater physical strength than the aver
age woman has. On the other hand, inventions have lightened the
physical effort required on a number of these jobs, and women have be
come eligible and have been hired for them.
There is no physical barrier to the employment of women in the pro
fessional occupations. Here the long and expensive training that is
needed and the difficulty of becoming established have affected both
men and women. But the public attitude, and particularly the attitude
of men already in professional occupations, formerly barred women al
most completely and during recent years have tended to keep the num
ber of women small.
THE EFFECT OF WARS
There is one thing that will cause custom and the traditional way of
doing things to change fast, and that is war. Men are called up for mili
tary duty; industries that supply the armed forces and industries that fill
civilian needs are short of manpower; and women are called on to re
place men and to do jobs for which they had formerly been considered
6

inadequate or unsuited. When peace comes, there is always a tendency
to go back to prewar custom and tradition, but this never succeeds com
pletely. Inevitably the range of occupations in which women hold jobs
has been widened.
' The Civil War brought women into schoolrooms, to replace men as
teachers. It caused many women to take up nursing. It gathered groups
of women together in "sewing rooms” to make clothing and other arti
cles needed by men in the armies.
World War I added greatly to the variety of jobs women did in all
types of factories, particularly in metal and machinery and other plants
making war implements. It gave women a chance at more skilled work
than they had previously been allowed to do. Many dropped out of these
jobs after the end of the war, but some women continued to work in a
large number of them.
World War I showed up women’s special aptitude for assembly and
inspection operations. In industries which were then developing, like
the manufacture of electrical equipment and appliances, this aptitude
assured women a permanent place. From some new types of jobs, like
driving streetcars, they were dropped almost completely, but on other
jobs, like that of elevator operator, a great many were kept on.
World War II again increased the scope of women’s jobs. Necessity
overcame the reluctance of employers, and women for the first time re
placed men welders and riveters in sizable number; they worked in ship
yards, even on railroads. Particularly in aircraft plants did they prove
their worth. Here where, for example, some jobs had to be carried on in
a confined space in a plane’s interior, women’s smaller size worked to
advantage. It is still somewhat too soon to say what the long-time effects
of World War II on women’s employment will be, but it seems ever
more certain that women have a permanent place in the aircraft indus
try, in the armed forces, in the plastic industries, to mention only a few.

THE EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION
The English, Dutch, Swedish immigrations which resulted in the first
settlements in this country were only forerunners of great waves of im
migration that later poured into the United States from many countries:
Ireland, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Poland, Greece. Such immigra
tions affected occupational trends among women in several ways.
Over many years immigrant women provided a steady supply of re
cruits for household service occupations.
For the newly arrived woman immigrant who was handicapped by
not being able to speak our language, who had had no occupational
training or experience, household service for a long time offered the best
chances for a job. When, later, fewer immigrants were admitted to the
country, this source of household workers disappeared, in part for the
7

reason that as industry grew it had jobs for even the inexperienced
unable as yet to speak English.
At times the influx of foreign-born women turned native-born women
workers into new fields. In the early days of the cotton textile industry,
for example, workers in many of the New England mills were nativeborn girls, chiefly from farm families. Later great numbers of Irish and
French Canadians came into New England, and both their women and
their men went to work in the cotton mills. The native young girls at
the same time began to look for and find jobs as teachers, nurses, and
white-collar workers for whom there was a rising demand.
In the clothing industry, too, immigration brought about a shift to
the employment of growing proportions of men. The immigrations of
the 1880's brought groups of people who did not speak English and
who for that reason tended to crowd into occupations in which family
members and friends, who had come to the United States before them,
were already working. It became customary for employers or go-betweens
to make contracts with the family head or leader for the work of whole
family groups. Working conditions under this contract system were
very bad indeed. This and other factors resulted in relatively more men
and fewer women coming into the clothing industry after 1890, although
women always remained in the majority. After 1930 their proportions
rose again. The industry is now one of the most important for women.
CHANGES IN EDUCATION OF WOMEN
The changes in education are among the most important that have
taken place under our changing economy. In pioneer days, those who
received any education outside the home were relatively few, and those
who received a university education fewer still. Our compulsory educa
tion laws have done a great deal to help young women to obtain jobs in
a great variety of fields.
American women are becoming better educated each year. In 1940 the
number of women high school graduates was 11 times as great as in
1900, and the number of women with a university or college bachelor’s
degree was almost 10 times as great as in 1900. And this was not because
the number of women in the United States had increased 10 or 11 times.
For the number of women in the country in 1940 who were 14 to 24 years
old was only 12A times their number in 1900.
The number of girls who graduated from high school in the United
States has always been greater than the number of boys who graduated.
Not so in regard to universities and colleges, for these have always
graduated more men than women. However, though only 1 out of every
3 college or university graduates was a woman in 1900, 2 out of every 5
were women in 1940.
Higher education, of course, means greater opportunities for women
in the professions. But chances of going to a college or university came
8

to women slowly and were at first very few. Before 1830 there were
hardly any places at all where women could go for more than a high
school education. In the 1830’s people became conscious of and con
cerned about this and began to do something about it. Oberlin College,
which opened its doors in 1833, was coeducational from the beginning.
In that same decade a number of seminaries for women were also opened.
These were possibly not of full college rank, but they did provide a
better education for women than had been available before. One of these
schools was Wesleyan, at Macon, Ga.; another Mount Holyoke, in South
Hadley, Mass. Two were in New York State, in Troy and Elmira. Step
in advance though they were, they still were a long way from providing
women opportunities for education equal to the best then available to
their brothers.
It was not until' 1865 and the opening of Vassar, that a college with a
rich course of studies, adequately equipped and endowed, and with the
highest standards, comparable to those of the best colleges for men, was
available to women.
So successful was this venture that the pattern was followed in the
next 10 years and after by the founding of other similar colleges—Smith,
Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard.
Today there are many separate colleges for women, with standards
equal to the best provided for men. The universities of the country also
admit women to study, not only as undergraduates but in most of the
professional and graduate schools as well. Still it cannot be said that
there is equality of educational opportunity. Some law schools, some
medical schools, still exclude women. Others admit them under more
restricted terms than those men are admitted under. In the libraries of
a great university, according to the New York Times, women have only
limited privileges. In one to which they were admitted for the first time
during the war, they must sit behind pillars at one end of the room; to
another, they are admitted only on Saturday afternoons. And it was not
so long ago, that a young woman who wished to take a course in con
stitutional law, at a leading university which excluded women from its
law school, was told she might attend if in a corner of the room a
curtain could be rigged up for her to sit behind.
However, women have come far, and are going further. They are now
being admitted as students, and even a few as teachers, to some of the
universities that have been most hide-bound toward admitting them
heretofore.
POPULATION CHANGES
One other set of changes must be mentioned, those that take place in
the numbers of people in this country, in the numbers of those in various
age groups, in the numbers who attend school, are married, etc., because
these changes are also closely related to the employment of women.
840888 0

We have already spoken of the smaller size of families now than in
pioneer days. This fact is important in that it cuts down the number of
years the care of small children prevents women from taking jobs. Some
women of course have no choice but to take jobs, to provide or help
provide the necessities of life, whether or not small children at home
need them.
The number of women workers in 1940 was 13 million—just about
the same number as of all workers—both men and women—who were
working in 1870. Of course, the total of all women in the country was
three times as great in 1940 as in 1870, but the number of women who
were workers was seven times greater.
To some extent the increase in the number of women workers is due
to the fact that "the population is aging,’’ which is only saying that
fewer children die in infancy, more live to adulthood, and moreover, live
to a ripe old age. This is particularly true of women. In 1870 the median
age of women was 20 years (that is, half the women in the country were
younger than 20, half were older). In 1940 their median age was 29. This
of course means that there are more women, proportionately, of the ages
during which women work than there were in 1870. In 1940 it was more
common for women aged 20 to 24 to be in the labor force than for those
in any other age group. .
In the early days of our becoming an industrial economy, it was
common for even very young children to work, long hours, on heavy
and often hazardous jobs. There still are regions and particular industries
in which young children are not adequately protected by child labor and
education laws, but it is true that the great majority of children are safe
guarded. The proportion of not only children but of young people—all
those under 20—in the labor force has been steadily decreasing.

CHAPTER TWO

The Advance of
Women White Collar Workers

PROBABLY MOST GIRLS in high school who are think
ing about a job have a white-collar job in mind. Certainly the whitecollar workers were an important group in 1940, if only by virtue of their
sheer numbers—about 3V$ million. The only group who outnumbered
them were women in the service occupations, by about one-fourth
million. What started the white-collar workers off to such a flourishing
growth was the typewriter.
The first practical typewriter was put on the market in the 1870’s. It
was operated by women from the very first. Other types of office ma
chines were invented later, but these too were run largely by women.
These machines, and particularly the typewriter, in the operation of
which women showed so much adaptability and skill, began the custom
of at least one woman in practically every office. By 1940 about threefourths of the women white-collar workers were in offices.
For "white collar" does not mean only office work. "White collar” is
in fact a rather vague term. We mean by it here what the Census calls
"clerical, sales, and kindred workers.” We do not include, as is sometimes
done, professional and semiprofessional workers, for we talk about them
later.
The number of women white-collar workers in 1870 was a very mere
fraction of those in 1940—1/257; in round numbers, 13,500 as against
3 Vi million. (By 1949 there were nearly 6 million.)
If you had met 20 women white-collar workers in 1870, the chances
are that 14 would have been in saleswork; 3 would have been office
workers; 2, hucksters or peddlers; and 1, a telegraph operator. If you had
met 20 in 1940, however, the chances are that only 5 would have been
in sales work, 14 would have been office workers and 1, a telegraph,
telephone, radio, or wireless operator.
There were women mail carriers in both 1870 and 1940, and women
hucksters and peddlers in 1940, but so few compared to other women
white-collar workers that it is unlikely you would have met them in an
average group of 20.
11

OFFICE WORKERS
When someone mentions "office worker," you usually think: "Stenog
rapher, typist, or clerk, probably a woman.’’ That is not the image you
would have evoked in 1870. For in that year women stenographers,
typists, and secretaries; shipping and receiving clerks; and other clerical
and allied works—these three groups together added up to less than
1,000, whereas men in these three fields added up to nearly 29,000.
In 10 years the women’s numbers more than doubled. In another 10,
they multiplied 20 times—a tribute to the typewriter and to women's
skill in using it. By 1900 they had doubled again, and there was now a
fourth group of workers, the women who operated the adding and
billing machines and the like—machines that were now beginning to
come into their own.
In the next 10 years the number of women office workers more than
tripled. In the next, between 1910 and 1920, they did not quite triple,
but the greatest number of women ever in any 10-year period elected
office work—nearly 652,000. This was the period in which war brought
about a great expansion in all employment of women.

CLERK IN A PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT

FILE CLERKS

Since 1920 the rate of increase has slackened considerably. In 1940
there were less than four-fifths again as many women office workers as
in 1920. But when one is talking in millions, that is still a great number.
The over 1,860,000 women office workers (stenographers, typists, sec
retaries; office machine operators; shipping and receiving clerks; other
office clerks and allied workers) in 1940 meant that there was one of
these women workers for every 71 people in the country. (In 1870 there
was only one to every 42,800 people.) What this signifies is the still
growing importance of women in the vast network of business and
distributing activities.
In taking on office work, women did not replace men. They found
entirely new opportunities for themselves. As we said, they were the
typists from the beginning, and in general the first operators of other
office machines. From 3 in 100 of all of the office workers in 1870, women
came to be well over half in 1940. The way men and women lined up in
these jobs in 1940 was roughly this:

Of every 25 shipping and receiving clerks: 1 was a woman; 24
were men.
Of every 25 other office clerical and allied workers: 9 were women;
16 were men.
Of every 25 office machine operators: 21 were women; 4 were men.
Of every 25 stenographers, typists, and secretaries: 24 were women;
1 was a man.
13

irww:

OFFICE MACHINE OPERATORS

Which of the four fields of office work did most of the 1,860,000
women choose? Roughly—

59 out of every 100 chose to be a stenographer, typist, or secretary.
1 out of every 200 chose to be a shipping or receiving clerk.
38 out of every 100 chose other office clerical and allied work.
3 out of every 100 chose to be office machine operators.
Office worker jobs have attracted a great many women because such
jobs have been held to carry relatively high social status, partly because
they were felt to require more mental effort than, say, jobs at a machine
in a factory. However, the rapid increase in the use of office machines,
and the fact that more and more work done with them is being broken
down into specialized, repetitive jobs, is beginning to make it doubtful
that they require much mental agility.
And what of women office workers and marriage? It appears that the
tendency not to hire married women, and to dismiss those who do marry,
limits married women’s opportunities in office work. At any rate, women
office workers do not have as large a representation of married women as
do all women workers taken together. But, as among all women workers,
married women’s representation among office workers is growing.
BOOKKEEPERS, ACCOUNTANTS, AND CASHIERS
Bookkeepers, accountants, and cashiers were long among the elite of
the white-collar workers. Few among them were women in 1870—only
about 900. Men were 40 times as numerous. But after 1880 the propor
14

tion who were women increased fast, until by 1930 and 1940 a little bet
ter than half were women, but by then, women numbered close to half
a million.
What was responsible for this increase? The ever larger units into
which businesses were organized, the ever growing day-to-day financial
transactions and need for recording and analyzing them, the need for
accurate knowledge of costs and profits, the need to supply government
authorities with figures for income tax and other purposes. And these
made it necessary to introduce machines into general accounting. For,
the cost of doing by hand all the work required would have been pro
hibitive. Here, too, machines were among the factors which opened up a
field of considerable opportunity for women.
In 1870 there had been 1 woman bookkeeper, accountant, or cashier
to every 45,000 people in the country; by 1940 there was 1 to every'277.
TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH OPERATORS
Boys were the first telephone operators. The industry, developed in
the early 1870’s, was a completely new one, unrelated to any that had
been carried on in the home. There was no connection in the public
mind between the telephone operator’s work and any work women had
done before, to make it seem appropriate work for women.

ACCOUNTANT

i m '\

But the boys would "answer back" to the telephone service subscrib
ers. They were even known to hunt up a cranky customer after work and
fight it out.
After about 2 Vz years of this, girl operators were hired, with satisfac
tion to both subscribers and the company. Before long, girls had prac
tically supplanted the boy operators. By 1900 women were 80 percent
of the operators; by 1940,95 percent.
The common battery switchboard was introduced into the telephone
industry around 1900. It cut down considerably the time it took an oper
ator to put through individual calls. But more and more people had
telephones installed in their homes. Even more important, businesses
adopted the telephone to speed up their lively, expanding activities. So
that, in spite of the greater number of calls each operator could handle,
more operators had to be hired to take care of the work.
The high rates of increase in the number of telephone operators came
before 1920. From 1920 to 1930 the rate of increase slackened. The dial
system for local calls and other technological improvements were in
stalled, still further increasing the number of calls one girl could handle.
But more and more telephones were put into use, and the actual num
ber of operators continued to grow, if somewhat more slowly.

TELEPHONE OPERATORS-OVERSEAS SWITCHBOARD

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But during the depression of the 1930’s, following the 1929 stock
market crash, the number of telephone customers dropped off. To cut
down expenses, the telephone companies introduced still further labor
saving devices and employed fewer workers. Even in 1940, after business
conditions had improved, there were fewer telephone operators than
there had been in 1930.
The dial system is already in use, in a few cities, for long distance tele
phoning. It will be extended to other cities. And this will mean a still
further cut in the number of operators needed. However, an occupation
that offers jobs to nearly 200,000 women is an important one to consider.
The development of the telegraph dates back to the 1840’s. It, too,
opened up new fields for men and women. The opportunities for women
telegraph operators, however, were not nearly so great as for telephone
operators, and between 1930 and 1940 their numbers fell off at an even
greater rate than those of telephone operators.
The radio industry did not really get under way until the 1920’s, and
women have not been a sizable group among the radio operators.
Taking all operators together—telegraph, telephone, and radio—the
number of women among them grew from about 300 in 1870 to about
246,600 in 1930 and dropped to 205,600 in 1940. Whatever the 1950
census tells us of a rise or fall in their numbers since then, it is certain
that the number of jobs women hold in this field will continue to be
significant.
ATTENDANTS IN DOCTORS’ AND DENTISTS’ OFFICES
Nowadays the girl who is a doctor’s or dentist’s assistant does some
of the things he used to do for himself. She sterilizes and lays out the in
struments he is going to use, prepares the patient for examination or
treatment, prepares the materials and equipment the doctor calls for dur
ing the treatment, keeps the patient comfortable, and may help in the
laboratory work. These are the duties which make her job different from
that of other types of office assistants. But like the other assistants,
she also keeps the records and books, handles the telephone, makes
appointments.
We do not know how many girls were doctors’ or dentists’ attendants
before 1910, for that was the first year the census made a count of them
separate from girls in somewhat similar kinds of work. That year the
census counted 5,000. By 1920 there were twice as many, and by 1930
twice as many again.
Between 1930 and 1940 the number of attendants did not increase at
nearly so fast a rate—only by a little over one-fifth. This may have been
because, during the depression years, doctors and dentists were less able
to afford the services of an assistant. It is also true, though, that those
attendants who were nurses may that year have been counted by the
census with trained nurses rather than with the other attendants.
840688 0 - 50 -4

In any case, it is likely that the tendency of doctors to specialize more
and more, and their consequent need to keep more elaborate records,
means more assistants will be hired in a period when doctors and dentists
can afford them. Many doctors and dentists, who had had no assistant
before the war, became used to assistants’ service in the Army or Navy,
and were not inclined to do without it on returning to civilian life.
Because of the great shortage of doctors, too, many have hired assistants
in order to be free themselves to take care of as many patients as possible.
The attendant’s job is one that is related to the stenographer’s, typist’s,
and secretary’s job, to which women were found to be particularly
adapted, and it is related also to the job of caring for the sick in the
home, which has always been a woman’s job. So it is not strange that in
1910 you would have found that 4 out of 5 attendants were girls or
women, and that, in 1940, 19 out of 20 were—almost 30/100 women in
all in 1940.
AGENTS AND COLLECTORS
Seventeen women agents, collectors, or credit "men” were counted by
the census in 1870. In 1940 it counted almost 23,500, but by then the
group included agents, credit men, purchasing agents and buyers, county
agents and farm demonstrators, and bill and account collectors. For as
new types of jobs develop, the people in them must be counted in some
group, at least until there are enough of them so that the Census feels
the time has come to set up a separate classification for them, as it did in
1910 for doctors’ and dentists' office attendants.
County agent and farm demonstrator jobs, for instance, developed
fairly recently, after farming and home economics came to be regarded
as practical sciences and to be taught in universities. The job of the
agents and demonstrators, who are frequently graduates of farm and
home economics courses, is to see that information and instruction on
improved methods of farming and running a farm home get to the
people in rural areas. The agents give practical demonstrations of equip
ment and tools or of new, improved ways of doing things. They talk
these things over with the farmer and his wife. Sometimes they get
groups of farmers and farm women together, to talk to them, or to get
them to discuss a problem together. They often organize clubs for young
people, to get them started in the right direction on farm, farm home,
and community work.
A considerable number of these county agent and demonstrator jobs
are held by women—29 out of every 100 in 1930, and 43 out of every 100
in 1940. Here again the work is related to the work women did in pioneer
days in or around the home.
But these county agents and demonstrators are only a small portion
of the agents, credit men, purchasing agents and buyers, bill and account
collectors. Taking all these workers together—only 8 in 100 were women
in 1930; in 1940, 11 in 100.
18

MESSENGERS AND ERRAND AND OFFICE GIRLS
Workers called "messengers and errand and office boys and girls" never
included many girls—only 46 in 1870; and only 8,500, the largest num
ber ever counted, in 1920. By 1940, 5,000 fewer were counted, in part,
perhaps, because girls less than 14 years old were not included. (The
census up to that time had been counting all workers 10 years of age or
over, but that year began to count only those 14 years old or over.) At
any rate, only 1 out of every 25 messengers and errand and office "boys"
was a girl in 1940.
The number of girls among telegraph messengers was especially
small—less than 1 in 50 in 1940. Some States do not permit girls under
21 to work delivering telegrams or personal messages. The undesirability
of the work for young girls has without doubt limited the number who
are now in it.
MAIL CARRIERS
Only 1 in every 100 mail carriers in 1940 was a woman. Altogether
we had 1,500 women mail carriers then. In 1870, when the postal system
of course was an infant compared to the giant it is now, only 5 women
were mail carriers. It is likely that most women mail carriers are work
ing in rural districts, where there are not nearly so many kinds of jobs to
choose among as in towns and cities. Also, the rural mail carrier’s job
has an advantage over the city mail carrier’s: mail is delivered by car,
instead of on foot in a heavy pouch slung over the back.

MESSENGERS

•■ISSS

WORKERS IN SALES JOBS
The age we are living in is called many things, among them "The
Distribution Age.” It is called that because of the tremendous number
of businesses, kinds of jobs, and people involved in getting goods from
the point where they are grown or made into the hands of the people
who eat or use them. Nearly 3 million people were needed for the job in
1940, to work as salesmen and saleswomen, buyers, sales agents, can
vassers, garage and filling station attendants, clerks in stores. Seventy
years earlier, fewer than a quarter of a million (of whom 9,000 were
women) had handled it. In the 70 years between 1870 and 1940 women
grew in number to over 850,000. From 1 for every 4,411 persons in the
United States in 1870 women in selling jobs came by 1940 to be 1 for
every 154 persons.
New and varied ways of distributing goods began to develop shortly
after the Civil War. Department stores came into being, mail order
houses, dry goods and grocery chain stores. All provided various kinds
of selling jobs for women. The most flourishing period—the one in
which the greatest number of women took up the work—was 1920 to
1930. The depression years that followed slowed them up.

SALESGIRLS

1 . •, '

Out of all the various types of selling jobs they might have chosen, 9
out of 10 women who had such jobs in 1940 had picked the saleswoman
or the store clerk job. Only about 5 out of 10 men in selling jobs made
this choice, preferring other kinds of selling jobs.
Before 1900 the producers had sold their products to wholesalers and
jobbers, ''middlemen,” who in turn sold the products to the stores in
which people bought the food and goods. After 1900 still another way
of distributing goods developed, and new sales "techniques.” The pro
ducers hired their own traveling salesmen and sales agents, to sell the
products directly to the stores or "outlets.” The men did very well for
themselves in these selling jobs; only 1 in 50 of the jobs was held by a
woman.
Some sales techniques may be fairly new, but not the demonstrators’.
They were using their’s in 1870, explaining the usefulness and value of
the product to possible buyers and showing how to operate it. And this
field belonged primarily to women. From not quite 3 in 5 in 1870 they
came to be over 4 in 5 of all demonstrators in 1940. In numbers they
grew from about 500 to 8,700.
Taking all the people in all the selling jobs together—salesmen, sales
women, buyers, sales agents, canvassers, garage and filling station
attendants, clerks in stores—

4 in
8 in
15 in
21 in
25 in
30 in
27 in
29 in

100 were women in 1870
100 were women in 1880
100 were women in 1890
100 were women in 1900
100 were women in 1910
100 were women in 1920
100 were women in 1930
100 were women in 1940
Older women—women of 45 or more—fare well in the store clerks’,
saleswomen’s, and demonstrators’ jobs, better than, for instance, in office
white-collar jobs. Married women fare even better—about two-fifths of
the women store clerks, saleswomen, and demonstrators in 1940 were
married.

HUCKSTERS AND PEDDLERS
In pioneer days it was mainly the hucksters and peddlers who dis
tributed goods. We see and hear them less and less (except the Good
Humor man, of course). They are no longer very significant to our
economy. But there were still almost 57,000 of them—men and women—
in 1940, about the same number there had been in 1880. About 2,500 of
them were women in 1940 (as in 1880) and about 1,500 were in 1870.
Women were always only about 3 or 4 of every 100 hucksters and
peddlers.
21

INSURANCE AGENTS AND BROKERS
Selling insurance has provided a fairly small but a growing number
of jobs for women. As our population has increased, naturally the op
portunities for selling life insurance has. Another factor that has led
more and more men and women to insure their lives is the insecurity of
their dependents under a money economy. The farm homes that in
earlier days always could make room for another relative, particularly
one who could help out with the work, have become fewer and fewer.
A man or woman’s survivors are now dependent on a money income.
Life insurance is a type of saving and to a large number of people has;
become more attractive than some other kinds of saving.
But it is only one type of insurance, although it has taken various
forms and has been put to various uses. Also growing fields are auto
mobile, fire, health, and accident insurance.
Women have definitely proved their ability to sell insurance. Decade
by decade since 1910 the proportion they are of all insurance agents has
been growing. It would seem that they would do particularly well if
they specialized in selling to business and professional women, say to
teachers, and to other women who are earning their own living.
Maturity is an advantage in the work, and older women therefore find
opportunities good in this field. The median age of women insurance
agents was 44 V2 years in 1940 (half were under, half over 44'A years old).
The first year the Census counted insurance agents as workers distinct
from other groups was 1910, and that year it found fewer than 2,500
women. In 1940 it found over 13,000.
REAL ESTATE AGENTS
In selling and managing real estate women have done even better than
in selling insurance, for there were 43,000 in the field in 1940, as agents,
or managers, or building superintendents—14 times as many as in 1910.
Enterprising women of maturity and judgment seem to be particularly
likely to succeed, for the median age of women selling real estate in 1940
was 49.
Women, what is more, are becoming a larger proportion of all workers
in the field. Only 2 in 100 in 1910, they came, 10 years later, to be 6 in
100; 13 in 100 after 10 years more; and finally 20 in 100 in 1940.
NEWSBOYS
Before 1940 there were never as many as 500 girls working as news
boys, and in 1940 only 1,600—a little over 1 in 50 of all newsboys. The
fact that the work, like that of telegraph messengers, is not considered
desirable for girls, has probably kept their numbers low.

CHAPTER THREE

Women Manual Workers

THE MANUAL WORKERS are the people we depend
on to bake our bread, to can, preserve, and pack our fruits and vegetables,
meats and fish, to make our candy and cigarettes, to weave and dye the
cloth we wear or use in our homes, to sew our clothes, draperies, linens,
to make the paper we use for writing and printing, for wrapping and
boxes, to make our books, magazines, and newspapers, our sh'oes,
leather, glass, pottery, chemicals, electrical machinery and appliances,
clocks, watches, jewelry, our automobiles and railway cars—the millionand-one things that are necessities, the thousand-and-one that are
luxuries. Almost 2 million of these people, who are indispensable to our
daily and hourly living, were women in 1940. They helped build planes
and ships and guns during the war, as well as civilian goods that had
been made by men who had gone to war. (In 1947, the latest date for
which we have figures for women in factories, they were estimated to be
over 3 million.)
These manual workers use all degrees of skill, they have all degrees
of responsibility. The jobs of many call for only a few simple motions
repeated endlessly. Other jobs, like those of the riveter and welder, the
engine lathe operator, the precision inspector who makes use of very fine
measuring tools, the operator of a screw, milling, or grinding machineall jobs in which women distinguished themselves during the war and
in which women still work—these require great skill. The model maker
uses ingenuity and initiative in the materials and methods she chooses
in constructing a model. The watchmaker must undergo an apprentice
ship and take an examination before she can qualify. The variety of
skilled and semiskilled manual jobs is endless. They cannot all be listed.
So skilled are some of the manual jobs, and so mechanical are some
of the white-collar jobs becoming, that the once popular idea that office
jobs take brains and factory jobs take none no longer holds water.
In 1870 three-fourths of the women manual workers had jobs as
tailors, dressmakers, and seamstresses outside of factories; making clothes
and accessories in factories; or working in cotton mills. By 1940 only less
than half were in those jobs. The rest were working on all the many
23

other types of manufacturing jobs, and some on construction work,
others as chauffeurs and taxi drivers, some on subways, streetcars, and
railroads, a few helping maintain telephone and telegraph lines, even a
few in lumbering. One of the most interesting developments was that
though only 1 in 50 of the women manual workers had worked in the
"durable goods industries” in 1870—the industries that turn out iron,
steel, and other metal products, finished lumber and furniture, and glass,
clay, pottery, and stone products—by 1940, 1 in 10 of the women were
here (and in 1947, 1 in 4).
FOOD WORKERS
Cooking, baking, and preserving were major activities in every house
hold in the 1870’s. Most of the food on family tables the country over
appeared there as the result of unpaid work—the work of men who
grew it, the work of women who prepared it. But both men and women
also prepared food in factories for pay. A few made cheese, a few candy,
some refined sugar, some others packed meat. Most, however, were
millers and bakers. For the millers and bakers had had a head startin the local grist mills of pre-Revolutionary days, in merchant flour mills,
and in bakeries that made hardtack for ships’ crews. (The shells of grist
mills built by George Washington still stand in the vicinity of the
Capital.)
During the 1870’s the roller process and other improvements were
adopted in flour mills, and in the seventies and eighties people also
learned how to refrigerate, preserve, and can meat. These new methods
of preparing and keeping food gave a tremendous push to commercial
food production. At the same time more and more people were leaving
the country for the cities. As they did, the need for factory-produced
foods grew. And the fact that such foods were to be had made it easier
for women to take up paid work outside the home.
The result of all this was that the number of women workers in food
production grew from 2,500 in 1870 to over 150,000 in 1940 (and to
over 250,000 in 1947).
Women were continuing customary household activities when they
followed food preparation into the factories. In 1870 only 3 in 100 of the
workers were women, but by 1940 (and 1947), 24 in 100. Clearly, how
ever, men are taking a greater part in preparing food these days than
they did before the work moved from the kitchen into the factory.
Meeting an average group of 25 women food workers in 1940, you
would have found that, roughly, 6 worked in fruit, vegetable, and sea
food canneries, 6 in candy factories, 6 in bakeries, 4 in meat packing
houses, 2 in grain mills and other food factories, 1 in a dairy.
Canners and Preservers

The food industries tend to be seasonal, that is, are not apt to supply
work the whole year round. This is particularly true of canning and
24

&*m
*
■Hi
CANNERS—MAKING TOMATO JUICE

preserving fruits, vegetables, and sea food. They can be handled only
when they are in season, and only near where they grow. Women who
come into the factories in the canning season are mainly women living
nearby.
Preserving fish and oysters was the industry’s main activity before the
Civil War. It was not then a very large industry. But by 1870 some of
the fish packing houses had made efforts to keep going the better part
of the year—packing fish in the winter and preserving fruits and vege
tables in the summer. The industry was helped to grow by machinery
for getting the fish, fruits, and vegetables ready, by using better ways of
handling them during cooking and preserving, and by machinery for
sealing the cans.
After 1900 came more changes that affected women’s work. The sani
tary, sterilized can was introduced. Machines were invented for vining
and shelling peas, for husking, cutting, and silking corn, and for grading
fruit and vegetables for size. The conveyor-belt system was adopted.
These changes meant that 5 women, say, could get out 1,000 cans of
840888

peas or corn, peaches or plums, when befoTe it had taken 10. But so great
did the industry grow that more, not fewer, women had to be hired.
Where 5,500 women had been needed in 1910, 37,500 were needed in
1940. Quick freezing, a fairly new process that has put almost garden
fresh fruits and vegetables on our tables, has given even greater impetus
to the industry.
Confectionery Workers

Making candy and confections is also a seasonal industry. It employs
many women the year round but the greatest number in the fall, before
the big Christmas demand for candy. Women are particularly good at
many of the candy-making jobs, some of which take great skill.
There is the hand dipper, for instance, employed only on expensive,
hand-dipped chocolates, who must be quick, deft, and knowledgeable.
She works with the candy centers and a small vat of melted chocolate or
other icing material. Sometimes she herself prepares the chocolate. She
must regulate its temperature, by a switch or valve attached to the vat,
to keep the chocolate at the exactly right degree of fluidity. She drops
the candy center into the vat of chocolate and then — the really tricky
part of her work—with her fingers lifts it swiftly out of the chocolate.

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deftly twists or twirls it to give it a smooth, uniform coating, and strokes
on it a decorative, identifying mark that tells what the center is made
of. She may put a nut, cherry, or other garnish on top. Sometimes she
uses a fork to lift the candy center out of the melted chocolate and to
finish the surface, but then she is called a "fork dipper.”
The hand decorator—sometimes called "ornamentor,” or simply,
"decorator”—also has a job requiring a certain amount of skill. Girls
who have decorated cakes at home may know the equipment she uses—
a bag, with a small nozzle, from which she squeezes the decorating ma
terial. On her deftness and art in moving the bag depends her success in
decorating the candy—and, in part, its price.
The corder, who is also called "hand decorator,” "streaker,” "stringer,”
or "stroker,” finishes the tops of candies that have already been coated
in an enrobing machine. She takes a small amount of melted chocolate
or other coating material between her fingers and, as the candies emerge
from the enrober on a conveyor belt, strokes a mark on them, usually a
diagonal or curved line, so that the candies can be identified and will
look as though they had been hand-dipped.
Other skilled jobs in the candy industry, as well as less skilled ones,
provide work for many women. The Census counted a little over 20,000
in the industry in 1910, and about 35,000 in 1940. It found that women
were about three-fifths of all the workers in 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940.
(In 1947, they still were.)
Meat Packers

Not many women have worked at slaughtering and dressing meat—
once the chief activity of the meat products industry. Jobs for women
came in fairly recent times with the development of meat byproducts
and specialties. They worked for the most part in the processing depart
ments, where they did such jobs as trim meat, tie sausages, weigh and
pack meat products, package lard. Particularly as higher standards of
purity were adopted for meat products, and consumers began to feel safe
in using them, jobs for women increased—from about 4,000 in 1910 to
24,000 in 1940. From 3 in 50 of all the workers, women came in those
30 years to be 9 in 50. (By 1947 they were 10 in 50.)
Baked Foods Workers

Bread, except that for ships’ crews and travelers, all used to be made
at home by women. Now it is almost all made commercially, chiefly by
men, who also make most of the cakes and pies. The work is heavy and
much of it is done at night. Women's share in this work is apt to be on
the lighter jobs of finishing, packing, and wrapping.
Many women work with cookies, biscuits, and crackers. These were
made at first by hand, but after 1840 by machinery. The first great boost
27

to the industry came through the demand for hardtack during the Civil
War. Then, about 1900, a number of factories were merged into one. It
made greater use of machinery, turned out a greater variety of cookies,
crackers, and biscuits, and began to put them up in packages. Later
companies followed suit.
Packing, wrapping, and labeling opened up new jobs for women. In
1910 about 7,000 women manual workers had jobs in the bakery in
dustry; in 1940, three times as many. But their proportion to all manual
workers—men and women—in baked products did not change much,
for, 8 in 20 in 1910, they had increased only to 9 in 20 of these workers
by 1940.
Dairy Workers

During the last half of the 1800’s creameries, condenseries, and cheese
factories began to take over the dairy farmer’s job of processing milk
and cream and of converting them into butter, cheese, condensed milk,
and, still later, into ice cream. These new types of dairies had jobs for
about 600 women in 1910, for about 6,500 in 1940—not a great number
but a fast increasing one. These women were about 1 in 25 of all the
workers in 1910 and about 3 in 25 in 1940.
Grain Mill and Other Food Workers

The food these workers produce include flour and sugar, cereals and
breakfast foods, baking powder, macaroni, and the like. In 1910, 6,250
of the workers were women; in 1940,14,600. Among every 100 workers—
men and women —13 were women in 1910, 16 were women in 1940.
BEVERAGE WORKERS
The most spectacular thing that happened to women beverage workers
was the Prohibition Act. Not a great many women had worked in the
field—only 19 in 1870, and only 2,300 more by 1910.
Prohibition went into effect in January 1920, the year the next census
was taken, and the number of women workers dropped to 900. By 1930,
the number had gone up again, but by less than 70.
In 1933 the Prohibition Act was repealed, and the soft drink had come
into great favor. By 1940, the number of women needed in the beverage
industry had increased almost 8 times, to not quite 7,600. Still not a great
number, but from one in a thousand of all the workers, women had come
to be 11 in 100.
TOBACCO WORKERS
The discriminating smoker in 1910 had to have an "all-hand-made,
long-filler cigar.” Today a machine-made cigar gives him the same con
tentment. Cigarettes, hand rolled until 1880, now are the product of
28

completely automatic machines. (The machines themselves of course
must be tended.)
Tobacco’s shift to machinery, which at first deprived large numbers
of workers of their jobs, helped eventually to bring about the hiring of
many more women tobacco workers. For one thing, women were con
sidered able to handle the machines. For another, men’s unions resisted
the coming in of machinery, and women who were not organized were
hired instead.
The 4,300 women who were tobacco workers in 1870 were one-tenth
of all tobacco workers then. By 1920 they had almost reached the 99,000
mark and were a good bit over half the workers. Men’s growing prefer
ence for cigarettes as well as the fact that women became cigarette
smokers helped the tobacco industry grow. But machinery also con
tinued to improve, and with it the individual worker’s output. After
1920 the number of women in the industry fell to 61,000 by 1940, but
they were now more than three-fifths of all the workers (as they were
in 1947).

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TEXTILE WORKERS
The typewriter opened the doors of offices to women. Spinning ma
chinery and the power loom threw wide the doors of cotton mills. They
welcomed, not only women, but little children in. The general public,
and particularly the employers, approved, for the women and children
would be kept from idleness; their work would add to the wealth of the
country.
By 1870 over 104,000 women and girls had entered textile mills; by
1940, nearly half a million (by 1947, well over half a million). They had
fanned out from the cotton and woolen mills into silk and rayon mills,
knit good factories, factories that dye and finish textiles, factories that
make carpets and rugs and still other factories that make textile products
such as lace, oilcloth, rope, and twine. Women were consistently between
4 and 5 out of every 10 of all textile manual workers.
30

Cotton Workers

Spinning wheels beside the fireplace, long our symbol of home, were
relegated to the attic when ring spinners in factories became the tools
by which the carded fibers were spun into thread, ultimately to be woven
into cloth. The spinning wheel had been run by women; so were the
bulk of the ring spinners in the first cotton mills. After the 1840's men
began to replace women as spinners, although ring spinning still gives
employment to great many women.
Weaving, on the other hand, began as a man’s job in the first mills.
When power-driven looms came in to make the work lighter, however,
when spinning machinery was producing more yarn than there were
weavers to weave it, women were drawn into the work. During the
1850’s weaving was considered a woman’s job. Then, however, weaving
machinery became constantly heavier and was run at greater and greater
speeds. This, and the fact that many male immigrants were looking for
jobs, led to women weavers being replaced by men again. From about
6 in 10 of all cotton workers in 1870, women came to be about 4 in 10
in 1940 (as they still were in 1947).
Children worked in the mills almost from the first days cotton milling
machines were invented and installed. The children’s learning how to

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run them was thought good for the community. Children less than 10
years old were working in southern mills as late as the 1900’s, both as
"helpers” and as regular workers on the pay rolls.
As people began to realize that work in the cotton mills was not good
for either the health or the welfare of children, the industry decided to
rely less heavily on their labdr. Several things helped in bringing the in
dustry to this decision. Foremost were child labor and compulsory educa
tion laws. Then changes in the machines made it difficult to use children
to run them. Finally, minimum-wage laws made it illegal to employ
anyone at wage rates below the minimum set by the laws, and it no
longer paid to employ children when adults could be hired for the same
money.
The first children to be helped were the youngest. In 1910, 5,130 girl
workers 10 to 13 years old worked in the mills; in 1930, 107. Gradually
older children were helped too. The 30,000 girls under 18 in the mills
in 1910 had by 1940 come to be less than 2,500, and not many of these
were under 16.
On the other hand, since 1920, women 20 to 44 years old in the mills
have increased greatly in number and in the proportion they are of all
the women in the mills. The proportion of those over 45 has increased
too.
32

The proportion who are married women is also very great—twothirds—in part, no doubt, a survival from the earliest days of cotton
milling, when whole families worked in the mills.
Knit Goods Workers

Long after making cotton cloth had been turned over to the factories,
knitting stockings was still a home industry (except in Pennsylvania).
It was still chiefly women’s work when factory-made stockings took the
place of home-made ones. Women also worked in mills that knitted
underwear, sweaters, caps, gloves, dresses.
After the Civil War people began to want to use factory-knit goods
much more than they had before. Improvements in knitting machinery
made it possible to meet their demands. The industry flourished, par
ticularly after full-fashioned hosiery machinery was introduced in the
eighties. More and more women were employed.
Women totaled 2,000 (better than half of all the workers) in 1870. By
1900 they had multiplied 17 times and were three-fourths of the workers.
Then they began to give ground to men, particularly after 1920; in 1930
and 1940 they were only about two-thirds of all the workers.
It was after 1920 that full-fashioned hosiery began to be made and
bought in great quantity. Women probably began to lose some of their
lead because men were given most of the skilled jobs in this section of
the industry. So great was the production of full-fashioned hosiery, how
ever, that, even so, more women had come to work in the knit goods
industry —125,000 by 1940.
Men do not have ail the skilled jobs in the full-fashioned hosiery mills.
The topper, for instance, who transfers the legs of stockings to foot
knitting machinery, has a highly skilled job, and is usually a woman.
So is the looper, whose job of joining the two parts of the toe and the
lower parts of the heel is equally skilled.
Wool and Worsted Workers

Newer types of textiles have to some extent taken the place of woolen
and worsted materials. This had a serious effect on women working in
such mills. Between 1920 and 1930 their number dropped from 64,000
to 49,000. "Modernization’’ of the industry, which made fewer workers
necessary for a given amount of output, was in part the cause, even
though modernization brought about some new kinds of jobs. (An ex
ample is the drop-wire girl’s job, not a very skilled one. She places a
drop wire on each warp thread, by hand, at the back of the loom, so
that when a thread breaks the drop wire will fall and stop the machine.)
Exact figures for woolen and worsted workers separately from other
workers are available only from 1910 on. Since then, women have become
fewer relative to men, but were still more than 2 out of every 5 workers
in 1940 (and in 1947) and had again passed the 61,000 mark.
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50 -6

Silk and Rayon Workers

Silk and rayon have become more and more important as wool and
cotton, once the only fabrics in general use, have become less so.
Before 1910 the silk and rayon industry was almost entirely a silk in
dustry. Rayon, rather poor material when first put on the market in
about 1900, through great improvements made after 1920 won deserved
popularity. By 1940 so many silk and cotton mills had shifted to rayon
and so many new rayon mills had been built that it was now "the silk
and rayon industry.”
Women were the mainstay of the silk culture and weaving industry
in colonial times. Bounties paid then, to stimulate the silk industry, were
often paid to women. However, silk culture never became a highly im
portant industry. Silk spinning and weaving did, and employed many
women.
Just as in the cotton industry, developments in the silk industry
brought about shifts of jobs from men to women and from women to
men. Hand looms for weaving broad silk in 1870 were operated by men.
Then power looms came in, and women took over in large numbers.
Warping in 1870, on the other hand, was completely woman’s work, but
the horizontal warping mill came to replace the earlier type, and by 1910
men were almost exclusively the warpers. On ribbon weaving, it was the
other way around again: men had customarily run the ribbon looms,
but when, about 1900, high-speed looms came in, women took over most
of the work.
From the low level of 2,300 workers in 1870, women came to be 75,700
in 1930, but dropped back to 48,200 by 1940. From seven-tenths of the
workers in 1870, they came in 1940 to be only half the workers (and
were still only a half in 1947).
Carpet and Rug Makers

The rapid rise in the standards of living in the United States was aptly
illustrated by the clamor for carpets and rugs. The industry complied.
Between 1870 and 1910, it boomed, helped by technical improvements
in carpet making and by the fact that hand weaving in this country was
taken over completely by machines.
From 6,000, women came in the same period to be 22,000 of the
workers. Then, however, they dropped—to 12,000 in the next 10 years,
and since have had their ups and downs. They had pulled up a couple
thousand by 1930, but by 1940 had fallen back again to 13,000. Less than
a third of the workers in 1870, almost half in 1900, they were nearly twofifths of all workers in 1940.
Dyers and Textile Finishers

Textile finishing, as a factory industry, dates back to the colonies. Even
at that early time, "every community boasted three mills—one for lum
ber, another for flour, and a third for finishing wool cloth.”
34

Much of the home-produced cloth, just the same, was also dyed at
home by the women. They gathered berries, nuts, and oak bark, grew
Dyer’s Broom and woad in their gardens, and made their own dyes. A
woman, in fact—Eliza Lucas Pinckney—manager of her father’s South
Carolina plantation, introduced indigo as a crop to this country.
Colors and patterns, lovely though some of them were, were limited
when dyeing was a home industry. As textiles came to be made in fac
tories, almost every hue and pattern under the sun became possible, and
fashion and style now rule here also.
,
Dyeing, printing, bleaching, and other textile finishing work was a
well-established commercial industry by 1870. It employed 1,300 women,
who were about one-seventh of all the workers. Both their number and
the proportion they were of all workers see-sawed after that. By 1940
they reached the highest number ever—just under 7,000, but they were
only one-eighth of all the workers.

CLOTHING WORKERS
One of the most important tasks women and girls had in Revolu
tionary days was making clothes for all the members of the family.
Three-quarters of a million women carried on the work in 1940, but in
a factory. (By 1947 they were four-fifths of a million.)
What brought on the change was the invention of the sewing ma
chine in 1846 and the fact that standard sizes were developed when
uniforms had to be made for the soldiers of the Civil War.
From an industry limited before 1830 to making clothes for sailors in
port, the men’s clothing industry had grown by 1870 to a point where
"the mass of the male population of the United States was clad in ready
made clothing.”
The cloak, usually made by a mantua maker in the Colonies, was the
only woman’s garment manufactured in any quantity by factories in
1870. By 1900, however, women’s suits, lingerie, shirtwaists, had gone
into the factory too.
More than any other manual work, making clothes still belongs to
women. The three-quarter million women clothing workers in 1940
were the largest group of women in all manufacturing. They outnum
bered the men 3 to 1—as they had, in fact, on an average, since 1870. At
times they outnumbered the men 4 to 1. At others, men encroached on
their 3 to 1 lead, as when such jobs as cutting, pressing, and basting were
assigned to men, and as when various waves of immigration made both
experienced and highly skilled male workers available. However, men
in general do not have women’s deftness and skill in placing and mov
ing a garment about on the machine—work that is more important than
the actual stitching. Women, it seems safe to say, will always do most of
the work of clothing all the members of the country’s families.
35

Apparel Workers

Actually there are three subgroups among the women clothing
workers: the apparel and accessories workers, the dressmakers, and the
tailoresses.
Taking the apparel and accessories workers alone from 1910 on—their
numbers increased at an ever faster rate. The proportion they were of all
the workers—men and women—also grew, from three-fifths in 1910, to
four-fifths in 1940, when they numbered about 550,000. (By 1947, they
had reached 800,000.)

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Dressmakers

What the women apparel and accessories workers gained between
1910 and 1940, women in the skilled sewing trades lost. Nearly 400,000
women left dressmaking occupations at the same time that nearly
350,000 additional women were becoming apparel and accessories
workers.
Women practically had a monopoly in dressmaking jobs. In apparel
factories some of the jobs that complete a garment are men’s jobs.
What happened in those 30 years, then, was that economic forces were
pushing women out of a "women’s occupation” into one in which both
men and women work.
The rate at which women left dressmaking was less at the end of the
30 years, however, than at the beginning, so that conditions seem to be
settling.
Tai/oresses

Tailoresses are even more highly skilled than dressmakers. The Census
classifies them as craftsmen. They work in coat and suit factories, in tailor
shops, in clothing and department stores. Like the dressmakers, they'
lost ground between 1910 and 1940, not at as rapid an average rate, but
they were a much smaller group to begin with, and were losing ground
faster at the end of the 30 years than at the beginning. The whole tailor
ing occupation is, as a matter of fact, losing in importance, but the effect
is greater on women than on men tailors.
HAT MAKERS
Long ago in this country the straw and felt hat makers were plying
their trade in hand-made hats. (The cloth hat makers and milliners are
not included here.) In 1789 a young Massachusetts girl discovered how
to bleach and braid meadow grass and make it into bonnets. The felt
hat industry is even older, dating back to the hand-made beaver hats of
very early Colonial days. Not until 1840 were machines evolved for
making hats of felt.
By 1870 the hat industry employed almost 5,000 women, who were
nearly one-third of all the workers. By 1910 they had reached 14,000, but
after that their numbers fell off, leaving them in 1940 at about the same
point they had been in 1870.
WOODWORKERS
Offhand, we do not think of women in jobs as woodworkers, though
the energy with which they mend and refinish antiques at home should
have tipped us off. They were, to be sure, few in 1870, but every 10-year
census count thereafter showed their numbers growing—by leaps in 1910
37

and 1920. World War I, as wars do, fostered women’s employment in
unexpected occupations and probably accounts in part for the spurt in
the years just before 1920.
Over half the 32,000 women who were woodworkers by 1940 were
helping make clothespins, matches, baskets, wooden boxes, and other
small, light, standardized items that women can handle or pack with
fair ease. Furniture and store fixture factories also had a goodly propor
tion of the women woodworkers—something under two-fifths of them.
One-tenth were working in sawmills —not with a saw —for only onehundredth were actually sawyers.
Although making furniture began to shift from shop to factory in
1840, not until the work became mechanized and specialized did it offer
real opportunities for women. By 1940 almost 12,000 had found jobs in
furniture and store-fixture factories. Most, but not all, of these jobs were
in upholstery departments, in assembling, and in sanding.

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PAPER MAKERS
Paper formerly was made from rags, as better papers still are, and
until 1827 was made by hand in the United States. That year the ma
chine was introduced. Forty years later the process of extracting cellulose
from wood for use as a paper base was discovered. Machinery and wood
pulp together made it possible to put a low-priced product on the
market. Paper became much more widely used and for a far greater
variety of purposes.
Just before 1900, for example, the paper box branch of the industry
showed a great spurt. Before that time, most articles you purchased were
handed you in a paper bag. Now some merchants began to put articles
in individual boxes. The custom won such favor that a great demand
arose for a large supply of boxes, at reasonable cost. The need fathered
the necessary machinery for producing paper boxes cheaply, and the in
dustry was off on its way to the important position it still holds.
39

As the paper and paper-box industry flourished, as machinery im
proved, more women came into this work—an average of 7,000 every
10 years after 1870. From one-third of the workers in 1870, they rose to
one-half in 1890 and 1900, and fell back to one-fourth in 1940, although
in that time their numbers grew from 6,000 to 56,000. (By 1947 they
were estimated to be 90,000.)
The industry really has three branches: The pulp, paper, and paper
board mills are one branch. The factories making paperboard boxes and
containers are another. The third is the "miscellaneous pulp and paper
products’’ branch. The first two have usually been the largest fields for
women. Not quite so many women have been in the third whose
miscellany of products includes envelopes,- cards, tags, paper bags,
novelties.
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING WORKERS
Forty-three thousand women in 1940 were setting type on linotype
and monotype machines in composing rooms; feeding simple presses in
press rooms; operating machines and doing most of the table work in

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mderies. (By 1947, it was estimated, these 43,000 had become nearly
100,000.)

The compositor and typesetter’s job is highly skilled, requiring a
6-year apprenticeship. Nevertheless 8,000 women had served this ap
prenticeship in 1940 and were composing and setting type. But in 1910
their number had been almost 14,000.
For, in spite of the tremendous volume of printing that is done (so
that this is called The Paper Age almost as often as The Machine Age),
both men and women compositors, up to 1940 at least, had been becom
ing fewer, especially women. One in 10 of all the workers in 1910,
women were only 1 in 20 in 1940.
Less than a fifth of the women in 1940 were compositors or typesetters.
Women pressmen, electrotypers, stereotypers, engravers, photoengravers,
or lithographers were far fewer.
The bulk—well Over three-fourths of the 43,000 women printing and
publishing workers—were "operatives and laborers,” chiefly in binderies,
in 1940. In fact, except for the journeymen binders who handle com
plicated machines, most of the workers in binderies are women. They
serve a year’s apprenticeship, for their work is semiskilled. Some of it is
hand work, as in hand folding, hand sewing, pasting in inserts, as
sembling signatures (sets of pages). Some of the work is done with
small machines, as in machine sewing, in gluing fabric reinforcements
on signatures, and in feeding machines.
CHEMICAL WORKERS
Women work in a variety of chemical industries. This is nothing new
to them. Before the Civil War "the trying kettle, the ash-leach, and the
candle-mold continued necessary features of every well-conducted farm.”
Women had made their own dyes and, when, before I860, dyes were the
most important chemical, a woman played a part by growing and
marketing indigo, as we said earlier. A few acids, salts, painters’ colors,
and medical preparations also were being produced then. The great ex
pansion in the chemical industry did not come until the 20 years before
World War I. New processes were discovered then, and byproducts put
to use.
From less than 500 of the workers in 1870, women came by 1940 to
be 38,000 (and, it is estimated, more than 100,000 by 1947). Most were
working in the branch of the chemical industries that make soap, candles,
dyes, turpentine, celluloid, fireworks, fuses, cartridges, drugs, and other
products too many to list. Many women were also in the branch that
turns out products made of rayon and like products. Only a few worked
in the paint and varnish, petroleum refining, or petroleum and coal tar
products branches. Women’s best opportunities have been in the lighter
chemical lines, and particularly in finishing and packing jobs.
In the whole .chemical industry women were 1 in 10 of all the manual
workers in 1940 (but 2 in 10 by 1947).
41

RUBBER WORKERS

Rubbers and automobile tires brought about the greatest rise in the
number of jobs for women in one industry—the rubber products indus
try—a rise from 2,000 in 1870 to 26,000 in 1940 (and to about an esti
mated 52,000 in 1947). Rubbers and tires were made possible by Charles
Goodyear of New Haven, Conn., and his discovery in 1839, after years
of heartaches, headaches, and jeers from his townsmen, of how to heat
crude rubber with sulphur (vulcanize it), so that it would keep both
shape and elasticity, not melt in hot weather, nor become brittle in cold.
The first rubber ever made was the crude rubber invented by Indians of
South and Central America, long before Columbus’ time, for balls, for
shoes, for bottles, for making feathers adhere to the body.
Until the time of the automobile, before about 1910, the chief use
made of rubber was for galoshes and other rubber footwear. Before that
women had been from one-third to one-half of the workers. Between
1910 and 1920 more women came into the industry than in all the 40
years before.
The speed with which the industry became mechanized after 1920
resulted in still more jobs for women. Many worked in tube building,
many in rubber manufacturing. Because of their dexterity they were in
demand for making the smaller molded rubber goods items. In all
branches of the industry they held jobs in finishing, inspecting, and
packing departments.
The opportunities for women seem to be growing, for although men
became somewhat fewer after 1920, women made slight gains.

FOOTWEAR WORKERS
Women—and children—became important to the shoe industry in
the late 1700’s, when shoe uppers were given out to them to be stitched
and bound at home. Beginning about 1850, labor saving machines were
introduced, the most important of which was the sewing machine.
Women then began to come into the factories.
By 1870 the industry had become sizable and employed 10,000 women,
though compared to the men they were few—only 1 woman to every
19 men. The women’s job was still fitting and stitching shoe uppers.
Even after 1900 this was their chief job, though they then began to
branch out.
By 1900 shoemaking was no longer a highly skilled handicraft, but a
completely mechanized industry. It was in the next 10 years that the
greatest number of women came into the shoe factories and repair shops.
Their numbers and their proportions have risen steadily since. By 1940
they had reached 102,000 and were 1 in 3 of all the workers.
42

LEATHER WORKERS

Through 1890 there never had been as many as 300 women workers
preparing leather, that is tanning, currying, or finishing it. In the next
10 years, however, the machines in use were improved, and girls and
women began to be hired in place of men. Still, it never became a
promising field for women. Even in 1940, only 4,300 women were em
ployed in it, and though they had made steady gains, they were then
only one-tenth of all the workers (and by 1947, nearly one-eighth).
Women making leather products—pocketbooks, luggage, leather
gloves and mittens, for example—in 1940 outnumbered those who
worked preparing leather 5 to 1. In fact, women had practically all the
many stitching jobs in 1940. Altogether there were nearly 25,000 women
making leather products, and they were close to halt the workers.

GLASS WORKERS
When one thinks of the early glass industry, the image before one’s
eyes is that of the glass blower and his skilled, picturesque, hazardous
work in the furnace room. He was the symbol of the glass industry until
about 1900. His work, like that of the molder and the presser, whose
place was also in the furnace rooms, was "man’s work.’’ Women’s work
had remained secondary and chiefly in the finishing, inspecting, and
packing rooms, although women had been "painting glass’’ as early as
1832. Between 1870 and 1900 their numbers rose from 180 to only 2,700.
During World War I a continuous-process method was introduced
into the glass industry. That, and the increasing use of machinery, meant
that skills like those of the glass blower were no longer very important,
and that fewer workers of all kinds were needed. After 1920, in spite of
the fact that people used more and more of the three chief types of glass
products—containers, windows for buildings and automobiles, and table
and kitchen ware—the numbers of both men and women glass workers
fell off. The proportion of women increased, however, which meant that
women had less of a setback than men. Glassware, like bottles and fruit
jars, for example, was made in great quantities, but did not require the
individual glass blower’s skill. By the new process, automatic equipment
blows compressed air into glass molds and moves them on to a conveyor.
The conveyor carries them into the lehr (annealing oven) where they
are subjected to high heat and slowly cooled. The job of finally taking
them off the conveyor, examining, and packing them, is women's work.
After optical and scientific glass began to be made, the opportunities
for women grew. When safety glass came in, and particuarly after 1930
when nothing but safety glass was permitted in automobiles, women’s
opportunities became even better, until in 1940 women had 14,000 jobs
in the glass industry; and, instead of 1 in 50 of the workers as in 1870,
they were now 1 in 5. (By 1947 they were 1 in 4.)
43

POTTERY WORKERS

These workers make the pottery and porcelain we use in cooking and
on our tables, the pottery and porcelain vases and ornaments whose
variety has no end. Women were but a handful of the workers in 1870—
just over 100, although they had been in the industry many years. By
1940, however, they had reached 10,000.
In general, the heavy, disagreeable, or hazardous industries have not
tended to employ many women. Not so pottery, with its dangers from
the use of lead in glazes, from breathing in sand particles and contract
ing silicosis. For by 1940, 10,000 women were working in the industry.
However, improvements in working conditions took place during the
years women were taking up the work seriously.
In Europe, as well as in this country, women have usually had the
finishing jobs —decorating, dipping, grinding, and polishing, though
some have done the firing, particularly of small pieces of pottery and
porcelain. World War I, which shut us off temporarily from European
markets, gave a boost to the home pottery industry. Since then women
have "belonged.” By 1940 they were almost a third of all the workers.
(By 1947, well over a third, in fact, more nearly two-fifths.)

DRILL PRESS OPERATOR

T it
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WORKER USING MAGNIFYING GLASS TO MAKE FINAL INSPECTION

STRUCTURAL CLAY WORKERS
These workers, who make brick, tile, and terra cotta, included only 80
women in 1870. Since then, not more than about 2,000 women have ever
been in the work at one time. The materials that must be handled are
heavy and make it unsuitable for women. At that, they were 1 in 25 of
all the workers in 1940.
METAL TRADES WORKERS
Gains made by women during World War I placed 137,000 in the
metal trades by 1940. (World War II helped to run the number up to
more than 400,000 by 1947, it is estimated.) Many though they were,
they still had only a small foothold in this immense industry. Four
groups of metal products, in the main, are made with the use of their
labor: clocks, jewelry, watches, and silverware; iron and steel products;
machinery; automobiles and automobile equipment.
The long-run advances women made (from 5,000 women —1 in 25 of
all the workers in 1870, to 2 in 25 of all the workers in 1940) came about,
for the most part, through changes inside the industry itself. Specialpurpose and combination machine tools were invented; improvements
were made in their form and accuracy; oiling became automatic; alloys
made cutting edges harder and sharper; assembly jobs were broken
45

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Bf'Jk.

WATCHMAKER

down, so that workers had fewer and simpler operations to carry out;
lifting devices made it easier for women to move heavy pieces of work.
As a result fewer skilled and more semiskilled workers could be used.
It is a pattern of development that usually opens up opportunities for
women.
Between 1910 and 1920, over 50,000 more women—the greatest num
ber in any 10 years—came into the metal trades. World War I gave a
great spur to the industry. Women were needed, not only to replace
men, but for new types of jobs. They went irito the machine shops to
operate machines, to inspect finished products, and to do various kinds
of handwork. They worked in assembly departments.
In the next 10 years, which included the depression years, few more
women came into the metal trades, but comparatively few men also, for
the proportion of women to men did not change.
Most of the women in 1940—something less than three-fifths of
them—had jobs in the group of the metal trades that turn out iron,
steel, and other metal products; machinery (other than electrical ma
chinery); and transportation equipment (other than automobiles). Here
their work ranged from sorting and inspecting tin plate (heavy work),
to jobs on small articles like tin cans, enameled ware, wire, cutlery, and
hardware.
Better than one-fifth of the women in 1940 were working in auto
mobile and automobile equipment plants. They were few in the early
46

days of autos, but when the industry mushroomed between 1910 and
1920, their numbers mushroomed with it. Their work, for the most part,
was such typical "women’s work" as sewing in upholstery departments,
rather than on heavier jobs. During World War II, however, when many
auto factories converted to making planes, women were put on ''men’s
jobs,” and to some extent at least have stayed in reconverted plants. (In
1947 their number was still over twice what it had been in 1940.)

ELECTRICAL WORKER-INSTALLING COIL IN MOTOR

Si*-- v 4#

ELECTRICAL WORKERS

The history of the electrical industry illustrates how invention de
veloped a whole new industry, in fact, a whole new way of life. It began
with the telegraph in the 1840’s. Then, in the 1870’s, came the telephone;
in the 1870’s and 1880’s, the dynamo, arc light, and incandescent lamp.
After 1900, wireless transmission and the radio. New applications of
electricity have followed in an unceasing stream. All require equipment
to be made—equipment that ranges from spark plugs through the com
plicated mechanism of a "mechanical brain’’ or of a wireless trans
mission tower. That equipment meant 74,000 jobs for women in 1940
(and, it is estimated, more than 200,000 in 1947).
Th? Vise of electricity for light, in particular, opened up many op
portunities for women, because the parts to be made are small and need
delicacy of handling. When the radio industry began to develop in the
1920’s, a great variety of assembling and inspection jobs became avail
able. By 1940, women had two-fifths of all the electrical machinery and
equipment jobs, and many of them were highly skilled workers.

ELECTRICAL WORKER-ASSEMBLY

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FOOD PACKER-BOXING FOR QUICK FREEZE

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE GRADERS AND PACKERS
There was a time when fresh vegetables were to be had only in the
summer and fresh fruits only when they ripened in orchards nearby.
Oranges were a rarity and other semitropical fruits curiosities. Now fresh
fruits and vegetables come to us all year round, from one area where
they have ripened, and then, as the sun moves to another, from that.
Coming long distances, they must be well packed. Because the purses
which will pay for them are of different sizes, they must be graded.
Quickness and dexterity are needed, and careful handling to avoid
spoiling.
Since 1910 a growing number of women have worked as graders and
packers. In 1940, there were 15,000 of them—almost three-fifths of all
the workers. As the work is seasonal and temporary, these women are
for the most part women who live nearby.
49

CHAPTER FOUR

Women Service Workers

THIS MODERN WORLD in which we live needs not
only a vast white-collar army to keep the wheels of business humming,
and armies of manual workers to take raw materials and make them into
things we can use; it needs people to do for us things that in bygone
days were unnecessary or that we did for ourselves but now are far too
busy to do.
Our present way of life would go to pieces without these people who
take over our tasks at home; give us practical nursing care when we are
ill; keep our public buildings, offices, and churches neat and clean; run
elevators; clean, cook, and serve us meals in hotels and restaurants,
lodging and rooming houses; launder, dry clean, and dye our clothes;
groom us in beauty parlors and barber shops; take our tickets and usher
us to seats in theaters and other amusement places. These and like things
were being done for us by 3,700,000 women in 1940—the largest number
in any one group of women workers in 1940.
SERVICE WORKERS IN PRIVATE AND IN
PUBLIC HOUSEKEEPING
About three-fourths of all the women service workers in 1940 were
carrying on with our housekeeping jobs—in our homes, and in our
hotels, restaurants, offices, and other "public” buildings.
However, women have seemed to care less and less for the work. For
though almost half of all women workers were in private or public
housekeeping jobs in 1870, only about one-fifth were in 1940. World
War I drew many of them into work more vital to the war. Between the
two World Wars women took "housekeeping” jobs again, but many no
doubt because the depression years left them little choice. World War II
once more drew them away in great numbers, into jobs that offered
better working conditions, better hours, better pay, and an opportunity
to serve the country.
Between 1870 and 1940 women were also giving ground to men in
"housekeeping” jobs, dropping from 43 in 30 of all the workers to 39 in
51

50. Also, the number of women in public housekeeping jobs has tended
to increase at the expense of the number in private housekeeping jobs—
which probably means two things: (1) that women prefer public house
keeping over private housekeeping jobs; and (2) people are depending
more on laundries, cleaners, hotels, and restaurants, and less on having
services supplied at home by a person hired to do them. It is not strange
that the public housekeeping jobs should be preferred because in general
working conditions, hours, and pay are somewhat better and the workers
have protection under labor, workmen’s compensation, and social
security laws that workers in private housekeeping jobs generally do not
have.
Problems of long hours, low wages, and poor working conditions are
particularly serious in private household employment. Women are not
eager, when they can find jobs in factories, offices, shops, to go into a
field that has low standards of work and wages. The fact that immigrants
became fewer also cut down on the number of women willing to enter
household employment. Being fewer, household workers could ask and
receive somewhat higher wages—in any case, wages higher than many
people felt they could afford to pay.

PUBLIC HOUSEKEEPERS—CAFETERIA WORKERS

The demand for household employees has also become less pressing,
partly because the work of running a household has become easier.
Families have become smaller, and the houses and apartments we live
in, too. Machinery and electricity have made household tasks lighter.
More and more people eat at least some of their meals out.
Still, the shortage of household employees has been a hardship in
many homes. The United States and Canada are making efforts to follow
the example of England and particularly of the Scandinavian countries
by setting up standards that will take away objections women now have
to household jobs. If these efforts succeed, homes which have suffered
because they lacked help, particularly homes in which there are small
children, will benefit. For many women like housework and, given an
even break, would prefer work in a home over a job in a store or office
or factory.

LAUNDRY WORKERS
Women laundry workers’ jobs felt two contradictory influences in
recent years. One tended to add to the number of jobs, the other to
make them fewer. Laundering has, on the one hand, gone with other
services out of some homes into commercial plants, especially plants
that give a high type of service at reasonable prices and that need then
to hire more workers. On the other hand, such practical and efficient
home washing machines have come on the market that many women,
especially those prejudiced against commercial laundries, would rather
do the washing themselves at home.
Home washing machines, perhaps with the help of laundromats, have
kept ahead in the race. Though the 400,000 women laundry, cleaning,
and dyeing workers of 1940 were 7 times as many as there had been in
1870, still they were 200,000 fewer than they had been in 1910. The wars
and the depression had the same effects on the laundry workers they had
on the public and private housekeeping workers.
Laundresses have been forsaking work in homes, in spite of better
washing machines, or perhaps the washing machines were not brought
in until the laundresses had left. At any rate, 150,000 fewer laundresses
were working for private families in 1940 than in 1930. At the same
time, laundresses in commercial laundries increased by about 10,000.
In homes, the service workers who did the laundry were almost always
women, but not in the commercial laundries, though women were and
still are the great bulk of the workers. Taking all laundry, cleaning, and
dyeing workers together, including the laundry workers for private fami
lies, women were 9 in 10 of all the workers in 1870, but by 1940 had
fallen to 7 in 10. The greatest shift to men workers came after 1920, when
the "family-bundle business” grew by leaps and bounds and some of the
work in laundries became too heavy for women to handle.
53"

BEAUTICIANS, BARBERS, AND MANICURISTS
The girls who bobbed their hair about 1920 were doing much more
for women than they knew. They started a fashion that swept the country
and opened up innumerable jobs for women. The barber shops did the
first hair cutting and trimming. But then it became important also to
have one's hair waved and, gradually, to have all sorts of other "beauty
treatments." Beauty parlors sprang up almost like mushrooms after a
humid night in spring.

LAUNDRY WORKER

*h 1

Between 1920 and 1940 some 185,000 more women became beau
ticians, barbers, and manicurists, making a total of 218,000 serving the
need of America’s women to be lovely and in style. Of course some of
these women were manicurists in men’s barber shops, but then some
men were barbers and hair stylists in the women’s beauty parlors. Men,
as a matter of fact, seem to be better served in being made handsome
than are women, for just under half of all the barbers, beauticians, and
manicurists in 1940 were women—who serve mainly women; over half
were men—who serve mainly men. To be more exact, there was 1 man
barber, beautician, or manicurist for every 298 boys and men in the
United States in 1940, and only 1 woman barber, beautician, or mani
curist for every 301 girls and women.
In 1870 the men of the country fared even better, compared to the
women, for nine-tenths of the workers in the barber and beautician field
were men, few of whom served women. Only one-tenth of the workers—
1,500—were women then.
One thing has happened since 1940 that is cutting into the women
beauticians’ jobs—the inexpensive gadget with which women can give
themselves their own"permanents” at home. The cost of the home
treatment is a fraction of that in a beauty shop. It is hard to say yet what
the effect on jobs will be; many women have stopped using the beauty
shops, but many never will.

PRACTICAL NURSES AND MIDWIVES
How many of the 104,000 practical nurses and midwives in 1940 were
one or the other, it is not possible to say. Some may have been both.
Though more and more babies are born in hospitals or at least under a
doctor’s care, many regions in the United States are not served by hospi
tals or doctors, and many people in cities cannot afford either. The
midwife is still in great demand and the practical nurse is needed
everywhere.
Although there were ten times the number of practical nurses and
midwives in 1940 that there had been in 1870, still there were some
37,000 fewer than in 1930. For many more women than before were
becoming trained nurses. Seriously ill people were being cared for in
creasingly by these trained nurses in hospitals and less often by practical
nurses in the home.
Whether by practical nurses at home or trained nurses in hospitals,
nursing, as always, is almost entirely women’s work. During the 70 years
between 1870 and 1940, over nine-tenths of all the practical nurses and
midwives were women.
It is older women we depend on for the most part for practical nursing
and midwifery: considerably over half the practical nurses and midwives
were 45 years old or over in 1940; only about an eighth were less than
25 years old.
55

ELEVATOR OPERATORS

The Census first reported women elevator operators in 1900—30 of
them. Ten years later they were 5 fewer. Then came World War I, and
women had to take over men’s jobs. Even when the war was over, and
many men had come back to their jobs, women had been found capable
of the work and continued to be hired for it. By 1940, 14,000 women
were operating elevators. The job is definitely one of those to which
women were introduced during a war and then were able to keep on
working in it.

ELEVATOR OPERATORS

itms.

s'-'

JANITORS AND SEXTONS
How much city life, with its numberless apartment houses, its huge
office buildings, and many churches, has grown is shown by the fact that
there were 378,000 janitors and sextons in 1940, over a tenth of whom
were women. At one time, 1910, women were almost a fifth of all the
workers. Therefore, although the number of janitors and sextons, includ
ing the number who are women, is growing, still, job openings are more
and more for men rather than for women.

AMUSEMENT AND RECREATION SERVICE WORKERS
These workers do many kinds of jobs, from setting up pins in bowling
alleys to shifting scenes on stages, from caddying on a golf course to
ushering in a theater. Not too many women are in the work. Some of
the jobs, like the stage hands', are too heavy work for women. Some,
like the pin boys’ or ushers’ are in surroundings not generally thought
desirable for young girls. However, the 47 women in the work in 1870
had become 3,600 by 1930. During the next 10 years commercial amuse
ments grew considerably, so that by 1940 almost 12,000 women were in
the amusement and recreation services and they were one-seventh of all
the workers.
BOARDINGHOUSE AND LODGINGHOUSE KEEPERS
Workers without a family, who must have a home, who cannot afford
to pay high prices for it, find their answer in boardinghouses and lodginghouses. Particularly when our cities first began their rapid growth,
when construction boomed and factories began to hum, workers often
had to leave their homes and go where the work was. At least until they
could set up homes of their own again, they needed the services of the
boardinghouse and lodginghouse keepers. Again during the wars, when
workers were shifted to war manufacturing centers, cheap homes for
workers away from home were needed.
In 1870 over 7,000 women boardinghouse and lodginghouse keepers
provided such homes; in 1940, almost 101,000. The number in 1940,
however, were thousands fewer than in 1910. With the continuing
growth of our cities, the "small, intimate, home type” of boardinghouse
has been giving way to commercial rooming houses and restaurant
service.
The job of running boardinghouses and lodginghouses still has op
portunities for women, nevertheless, for many people continue to prefer
them over commercial rooming houses and restaurants. And women
who were only something over half the boardinghouse and lodginghouse
keepers in 1870, by 1940 were over nine-tenths of them.
,
57

CHAPTER FIVE

Women Professional Workers

PROFESSIONAL WORKERS do not make things like
the manual workers, or take part in selling and distributing things like
the white collar workers, but like the workers we talked about in the
last chapter, sell their services. The difference is that these services are
more highly skilled and were learned through a long period of specialized
training.
In 1870 the 94,000 women in professional work had had little choice
outside of teaching: nine-tenths were teachers in schools or colleges. Each
of the other professions gave jobs to 5,000 or fewer women—mostly
fewer. About 1,000 women were nurses, only 1 was an architect, and
none was a chemist, engineer, veterinarian, or library assistant (though
43 were librarians).
In teaching and nursing women were doing work that seemed to
follow naturally from training children at home and from home-care of
sick people. When new kinds of professions came about through our
social and economic development, women found some opportunities in
these too. The old, established professions, like law, medicine, and
theology, were the ones most reluctant to allow women to come in.
Opportunities for higher education began to come to women about
1850. With the years, these opportunities grew, women made the most
of them and, by 1940, 1 Vi million women were in the professions. Over
half were still teachers, one-fourth were nurses, but none of the pro
fessions now excluded women.
TEACHERS
Teaching is and always has been the occupation in which women have
found most of their opportunities for professional work, that is, after
they began to be admitted into the professions at all. Women are not the
teachers or most of the teachers in all countries. In this country they are.
They were not always. In the early days of the Colonies and the young
States, what teaching was done was by the ''dominie," a man, and
parents paid to send their children to him. In the colleges only men
59

taught, of course. Higher education was then still only for the few, and
those few men. Some women, whose families were more broadminded
than ordinary, were educated by private tutors.
By the time of the Civil War, however, the idea that the best citizens
are informed citizens was becoming accepted, and with it, the belief that
since not all parents could afford to pay for their children’s schooling,
such education should be a public expense. Massachusetts adopted the
first compulsory school law in 1852. When Mississippi passed such a law
in 1920, Nation-wide compulsory schooling had been achieved.
By the time of the Civil War, too, the high schools, normal schools,
and seminaries, which had begun to be established for women some 20
years earlier, were turning out an available supply of women teachers.
The 5 years of the Civil War drained the States of men. In both public
and private schools, then, women took over, and they made good.
Some people believe that the fact that the Civil War came just when
the public school system was developing accounts for the fact that most
of our teachers are women. Other causes predate the Civil War: first, the
fact that women were finding opportunities to become educated and able
to teach. Then, there was a growing belief that women had peculiar gifts
for teaching, including superior characters. They were also more likely
than men to stay in the work. Above all, it was cheaper to hire them
than men.
By 1870 almost 85,000 women were teachers and were two-thirds of
all the teachers. Every 10 years thereafter an average of over 100,000
women came into the work, until by 1940 there were over 822,000.
Up until 1920, women took over more and more of the work. At that
time, 4 out of 5 teachers were women. But between 1920 and 1930,
many men came into the work, and continued to in the next 10 years,
so that by 1940 women, instead of 8 in 10 of all the teachers, as in 1920,
were only 7 in 10. Between 1930 and 1940 the number of women teachers
actually dropped by over 50,000.
While women have nevertheless had a big edge on men in general
teaching, this is not so in college teaching. They never were as much as
one-third of the "college presidents, professors, and instructors.’’ Since
1930, their proportion also has fallen off. In fact, in 1940 less than 3 in
a hundred women teachers had attained this level of teaching.
It seems that women teachers now are older on the average than the
group that were teaching 40 years ago, and more of them are married.
There was a time when it was thought a woman who married lost some
of her qualifications as a teacher, but the idea has begun to grow that
perhaps married women make better teachers. At any rate, nearly a fourth
of the teachers in 1940 were married.
As everyone knows, there is a great shortage of teachers now. Like
other service workers, many left teaching for other work during the war,
and found such work preferable. In the meantime the number of school
children has grown immensely. It would seem that there will be open
ings in teaching for some time to come.
60

NURSE

TRAINED NURSES
How important this profession has become is shown by the difference
between the thousand nurses it is thought there were in 1870 and the
363,000 nurses there were in 1940. Before 1900 all nurses, "trained” and
"practical,” were lumped together with midwives as "nurses and mid
wives” and listed by the census with the domestic and other personal
service workers. This is one of the fields of work that with the years
developed into a profession.
Modern standards in nursing grew out of the Civil War. Schools of
nursing were opened and both schools and hospitals continued to im
prove. The training the nurses received and the skills they learned en61

titled them to be classified with the "professional workers.” As more and
more hospitals and clinics were built and public health services set up
by communities, States, and the Federal Government, more and more
women found opportunities for work that satisfied their need to be of
very direct service to others. Low wages, long hours, and the strain of
the work for many years discouraged nurses, but with time, these too
improved.
Nurses were very badly needed during World War I. After the war,
and during the depression, there was an oversupply of nurses—at least
there were more than people could afford to pay for. During World War
II there was again a great shortage, and there is still, in hospitals, includ
ing veterans’ hospitals, in mental institutions, and in the public health
services.
Men’s contribution to nursing has been very small compared to
women’s. Men were never as many as 1 in 10 of all the nurses, and from
1920 on nursing has been almost entirely a woman’s job.
Nurses for the most part are neither very young nor very old. In 1940,
three-fourths of them were between 20 and 44 years old. Only about a
fifth of the nurses were married. (Taking all women workers together, a
much larger proportion were married—nearly two-fifths.) The fact that
many nurses must live at hospitals and that private-duty nurses must
also generally be away from home and in addition work long hours make
ir hard to continue with a nursing career after marriage.
SOCIAL, WELFARE, AND RELIGIOUS WORKERS
Social, welfare, and religious work (except the clergyman’s which is
talked about later) also belongs mainly to women. For a period it was all
considered semiprofessional, but social and welfare work, like nursing,
developed into professions. The evil conditions that came with the In
dustrial Revolution, as when whole large groups of people were thrown
out of work by the invention of some labor-saving device, showed the
need for trained people to deal with the problems of the workers’
families. In large cities people were herded together, yet were farther
apart; neighbors did not come in to help in an emergency, the way they
do in the country. Such services in large part became the job of social
agencies.
In time schools connected with universities and separate social welfare
schools were set up, and the trained social worker more often than not
has a special degree like any other professional worker. Women in the
work are generally more highly trained than men. In 1940 considerably
over half the women had had 4 years or more of college training; less
than half the men had as much training.
Social and welfare and religious work is still a field of growing op
portunities for women. In 1940 women were three-fourths of all the
religious workers (except clergymen) and almost two-thirds of all the
62

social and welfare workers. Together they had grown from 9,000 in 1910
to 74,000 in 1940; and from about half of all the workers — men and
women—to over two-thirds.
MUSICIANS AND MUSIC TEACHERS
First men, then women, then men again had the advantage in this
field. Music once was taught only privately and teaching provided work
for the majority of workers in the music field. In the early days, like
other teaching, it was chiefly men’s work. But by 1870, 6,000 women
were in the field, and they were a third of all the workers. Then, like
other teachers, most of the music teachers came to be women. By 1910
women were 84,000 of the musicians and music teachers and were threefifths of all the workers in the field.
After that, for whatever reason, the number of music teachers dropped
off. Much more of our music came to us in movies, in theaters, over the
radio. But most of the performers were men. The result was that by 1940,
women musicians and music teachers had dropped to 66,000 and they
were now only two-fifths of all the workers.
ARTISTS AND ART TEACHERS
Art and teaching art seem to offer even fewer opportunities to women
than music and teaching music. From less than 500 in 1870 women
artists and art teachers came to be 21,000 by 1940 (less than a third the
number of musicians and music teachers), and this was a slight drop
from 1930. And though they had risen from one-tenth of all artists and
art teachers in 1870 to nearly half in 1890, by 1940 women were only a
third. As some women drop out of the work, others will of course take
their place. For one thing, teaching art in the schools by teachers who
have that as their only responsibility has become customary in many
school systems, and more often than not the art teacher is a woman. Art
and teaching art do not, however, seem to be growing fields for women.
ENTERTAINERS
Most women entertainers are actresses or in dancing as dancers,
dancing teachers, or chorus girls. (A fourth are actresses, two-fifths are
in dancing.) Only a tenth of the men are actors or in dancing. For "en
tertainers” include a number of other types of workers: athletes, show
men, sports instructors and officials, motion-picture projectionists, and
the owners, managers, and other officials of theaters, motion-picture
houses, and other amusement and recreation places.
In entertaining, too, opportunities for women seem to have been fall
ing off. From 800 in 1870, women came to be 29,000 of the entertainers
in 1930, but by 1940 had dropped to 28,000. From a sixth of all the
workers, they came to be a fifth, and then a sixth again.
63

The rate at which opportunities for women entertainers grew was
much more rapid before 1900 than after. There was a spurt again during
World War I, for during wars people seem to demand more entertain
ment. The depression probably had much to do with the decline among
entertainers, as among musicians and music teachers, artists and art
teachers. World War II undoubtedly brought new life to these fields
again.
AUTHORS
A fair-sized list of women writers, some of whom are still well known
today, could have been made well before 1870. Women had been authors,
not only of novels, poetry, and cookbooks, but of religious and philo
sophical works as well. They contributed to the "great magazines” that
date from the 1850’s. Nevertheless, the Census listed only 115 women
as authors in 1870. Few women, clearly, were earning their living as
writers. Even today the writer, unless she is one of the few highly suc
cessful ones, usually must snatch the time for writing from her "leisure
time,” the time left over from jobs like teaching, or journalism, or from
household responsibilities.
Few though they were in 1870, women were one-fourth of all the
authors. In 1910 they were close to one-half, but by 1940 they had
dropped back to one-third, and, their numbers had fallen off from 1930.
The depression was bad for the book business as for everything else.
Nevertheless, about 5,000 women were authors in 1940, and certainly
many of them had won fame. Writing is one of the arts in which
women's contribution is unquestioned.
LIBRARIANS
There were not many libraries in 1870 and only 43 women librarians,
and they were one-fifth of all librarians. The 35,000 women librarians of
1940 are an indication of the rise in the educational and cultural level
of the United States. Free public libraries are rated by some to be nearly
as important in their way as the free educational system, for libraries can
be used by both young and old. Many people, cut off from a formal
education too early, can continue to educate themselves through the
libraries. Certainly the public libraries opened up opportunities for the
employment of women—opportunities that are still growing.
LIBRARY ASSISTANTS
The work of library assistants is clerical more than it is professional.
Up to 1930 it was a small field and in fact smaller in 1930 than in 1910,
when 3,000 women had been library assistants or attendants. Between
1930 and 1940 the number jumped from 1,500 to 17,000, largely as a
result of the public emergency work programs during the depression.
64

Both the work of librarians and of library assistants and attendants is
mainly women’s work. From five-sixths of the workers in 1910, women
librarians and library assistants fell to just over half in 1920, then rose
again to three-fourths in 1930, and to four-fifths in 1940.
EDITORS AND REPORTERS
An educated population wants an endless number and variety of books,
newspapers, magazines. As women took advantage of the opportunities
for higher learning available to them after 1850, their training made it
possible for more and more of them to take part in the work of turning
out these books, newspapers, and magazines.
The same number of women were editors or reporters in 1870 as were
librarians—43, but that number grew fast and steadily, to 16,000 in 1940.
The opportunities increased for men too, but more rapidly for women;
from less than one one-hundredth of the workers in 1870, women came
to be one-fourth in 1940.

:a * S * « t

LIBRARIAN

WOMEN IN THE "LEARNED PROFESSIONS”
AND RELATED FIELDS
Theology, law, and medicine are the three old, established professions
which have been used as yardsticks to measure newer fields to see
whether they may really be called professions. Even in these venerable
fields training gradually became possible for women after 1850, though
opposition to women working in them was very determined and wide
spread. Women, however, made considerable headway.
Women now have shown their ability to do professional work, and
there is much challenging work beckoning in the "learned professions,”
but women seem to have a lessening interest in them.
Doctors

A medical diploma was given a woman for the first time in America
in 1849. This marked the first step in women’s effort to take part in a
field of work which had been almost entirely their’s in Colonial days—
taking care of the sick and serving as midwives. (Doctors were few in
those days.) During the last half of the 1800’s a number of women made
great efforts to get a medical education, then to get a chance to work in
hospitals.
By 1870 there were over 500 women physicians and surgeons of vari
ous types. By 1940, 8,800 women were physicians, surgeons, or osteo
paths. Nearly another 12,000 women were chiropractors, healers, and
some other types of medical workers. Taken together all these women
were about 200 fewer than they had been in 1930, but from 1 in 100 of
all the workers in these fields—men and women—in 1870, they had come
to be 1 in 10.
This was a very great advance, of course. In spite of the falling off be
tween 1930 and 1940, the number of women had increased nearly 38
times over 1870. It is particularly interesting that actually women physi
cians and surgeons gained in number between 1930 and 1940, by almost
900. It was the osteopaths who lost out, by nearly 500 and the chiro
practors, healers, and so forth, by over 600.
Dentists

This field too, offers opportunities for women, but the numbers of
women in it have been falling off. From 25 in 1870 women dentists rose
to almost 2,000 in 1920, and then fell to little over a thousand by 1940.
Ministers

Though the first woman graduated from a theological school com
pleted her course as long ago as 1851, rhe resistance of both men
66

ministers and congregations to women’s coming into this field has kept
their numbers down.
Before 1910 the Census counted ministers with other religious and
social and welfare workers. In 1910, however, the Census counted 685
women clergymen. Thereafter an average of about 85 a year were added,
so that by 1940 there were 3,300. From 1 in 200 of all ministers they had
come to be 5 in 200, but though their numbers had increased, it has been
more and more slowly.
More women enter divinity schools than become ministers. In general,
they prepare themselves for work as teachers of religious education, or
as missionaries or administrators.
Lawyers

It has been particularly hard for women to break down the barriers
which will let them actively practice law. Before 1870 legal training was
generally obtained by studying or "reading law” in a law office. Few
women found law offices willing to take them in. The opening of law
schools in the next 30 years, however, made it possible for women to
get a legal education in at least some of them.
The number of women lawyers and judges has stayed small, growing
from about 500 to 4,500. The rate of that growth, however, is quite
remarkable.
As in the ministry, many women in the field of law do not practice.
They use their legal training in work as editors of legal publications, in
business, in government, and in other professions. The figures above do
not tell how many women have obtained law degrees, or even how
many women have been admitted to the bar.
_
The proportion women lawyers and judges were of all lawyers and
judges is about the same women clergymen were of all clergymen, both
in 1910 and in 1940.

WOMEN IN SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL PROFESSIONS
Technicians and scientists have become more and more important in
industry, for the making of numberless new products we have is based
on chemical and physical principles. Chemical and physical tests must
be made at various stages in the manufacture of a growing number of
these products. The complexity of large scale production also calls for
technical services of engineers and the assistance of designers, draftsmen,
and technicians. Large scale building needs the services of trained archi
tects, for safe and economic construction, as much as for functional and
artistic design. The introduction of scientific methods into agriculture
affected the veterinary’s profession. To some of these fields women
contributed little, to others a good deal.
67

DESIGNERS

#&• I

iJ^

J.'.;/£:
ra.'»ia9

Designers and Draftsmen

Designing clothing, accessories, textiles has opened up work for a
number of women—to about 9,000, in fact, in 1940. Women draftsmen
have been fewer (about 1,500 in 1940); their chief opportunities came
during World Wars I and II, when they took over the work of men
draftsmen who had gone into the armed services.
68

Women designers and draftsmen together had been only 13 in 1870—
1 out of every 100 workers. By 1940 they were 9 out of every 100. Their
numbers, though not large, have been growing fairly steadily. Interest
in design is keen in our modern world. More and more of the articles
we use are having design applied to them. It would seem that opportuni
ties will continue to open up for women, many of whom have consider
able aptitude for design.
Laboratory Technicians

The fact that there are no earlier census figures for laboratory tech
nicians that can be compared with 1940 figures indicates that this new
semiprofession had a meteoric rise. In 1910 and 1920 the work was so
like many other kinds that technicians were grouped, under very general
headings, with several types of workers.
By 1930, 8,000 women were grouped together as "technicians and
laboratory assistants." In 1940 other workers were brought into the
group—X-ray technicians; laboratory assistants in electric and steel
manufacturing; testers in dairies, in radio, in rayon and silk mills, and
in oil refineries; chemists’ assistants; and other such workers. We now
had a fairly clear-cut new semiprofessional field of work. Women were
nearly 23,000 of these technicians and assistants and were one-third of
all the workers; also a-thousand women were technicians other than
laboratory technicians and were one-tenth of all the workers.

DRAFTSMAN

Chemists, Assayers, and Metallurgists

More clearly professional and responsible than the work of the labora
tory technicians is that of the chemists, assayers, and metallurgists. Far
fewer women have had a part in it—only 1,700 in 1940. They have made
strides, however, for in 1870, when a scientific education was practically
impossible for women, not a single woman was reported by the Census
in this field. By 1880, however, there were 49 women in it. In spite of
the advance since, the number ol women dropped between 1930 and
1940, as in other professional fields. The proportion women were of all
the workers also continued to drop after 1920, when they were 5 in 100
of all the workers. In 1940 they were 3 in 100, back almost to the little
over 2 in 100 they had been in 1880.
•
Technical Engineers

The fact that even a few women have been successful in finding a
place in technical engineering is important. Women had not seemed
much inclined to challenge the idea that this is exclusively men's work.
Of the 278,000 technical engineers of 1940, about a thousand were
women—not a great number but a start.
Because of the hard nut this field is to crack, it is interesting to see
how the women engineers of 1940 lined up:
Civil engineers
Surveyors
Electrical engineers
Mechanical engineers
Industrial engineers
Chemical engineers
Mining and metallurgical engineers

231
101

224
228
74
59
74

Architects

Women began earlier and made more progress in architecture than in
engineering. Architecture needs both artistic and technical ability;
women’s artistic talents have never been questioned as their technical
capacities have been, and these talents gave them an "in.” Then, too, a
good deal of architecture deals with home-building, some of it with
landscaping, and women’s interest in and right to contribute to these
has also been .considered legitimate.
Only 1 woman was an architect in 1870. By 1940, not more than 500
were, but architecture is not in any case a very large field—only about
22,000 workers in all in 1940. Women were not an infinitestimal part of
them as of the engineers, but better than 1 in 50 of all architects, and
while their proportion has been growing slowly, it has been growing
fairly steadily.
,
70

Veterinarians

As in most other fields, scientific method was applied also to agricul
ture. It advanced the profession of the veterinary also. At first his work
expanded, when it was seen how much it could do for saving and im
proving all livestock. When horses, oxen, mules, and donkeys began to
be supplanted by farm machinery, however, the veterinarian’s services
were needed for fewer animals, and the number of all veterinarians be
gan to fall from the all-time high of some 13,000 in 1920. That year only
one woman was a veterinarian. But when by 1940 veterinarians had
shrunk to an 11,000 total, 100 of them were women, most of whom were
probably working in dog and cat hospitals.

CHEMIST IN A PAPER MILL

M* H

OTHER PROFESSIONAL WORKERS
Photographers

Photographic work has a number of branches, women have gone into
many ot them, and in fact have a monopoly of some. In the profession
of photographer, however, women are a minority although some of them
have done work as outstanding as that of the best men photographers.
Beginning with 137 in 1870, the number of women photographers
grew at a fast rate through 1900. Another spurt came between 1910 and
1920, probably because of a demand for them during the First World
War. Since 1930 their number has grown more slowly than men’s, so
that by 1940 there were very few more than in 1930—about 5,000—and
though they had grown from 2 out of 100 of the workers in 1870 to 15
out of 100 in 1930, they dropped back to 13 out of 100.
Funeral Directors and Embalmers

Earlier these workers were called ''undertakers" and grouped with
workers in trades. In 1940 they were placed in the semiprofessional
group of workers and called "funeral directors and embalmers.” The 20
who were women in 1870 came to be over 2,000 by 1940—a slow but
fairly steady increase from 1 in 100 to 5 in 100 of all the workers.
Aviators

In the 1910 census aviators were grouped with showmen, which tells
pretty clearly how they were regarded then. The tremendous growth of
aviation since has made it a separate occupation. The technical knowl
edge needed—navigation, meteorology, physics—has made it a pro
fession.
Few women have been reported as aviators—only 8 in 1920,66 in 1930,
and 51 in 1940 —never over 1 in 100 of all aviators. These are the num
bers of women who went into aviation as paid pilots. Many more hold
pilots’ licenses.

CHAPTER SIX

Businesswomen

THESE ARE THE WOMEN who own a business and
often run it too, and women who run or have a large share of responsi
bility in running businesses for others. They may be "captains of in
dustry” or milliners who own their own shops and work in them alone.
Not many, however, have been captains of industry. Few, even, have
had highly important positions running or sharing responsibility for
running businesses of others. Those few, though, are an important
vanguard.
Actually women were in business well before 1870—in a great variety
of businesses, as ads in Colonial newspapers show. A shopkeeper’s or
tradesman’s wife often worked as his partner. Many a woman, after her
husband’s death, kept going as the owner of such businesses as that of a
tanner, printer, tailor, painter, shipwright, silversmith, or gunsmith.

BUSINESSWOMAN—SPECIALTY TRADE

Other women themselves opened a millinery or drygoods store, a pastry
shop, a tavern, an inn. Women are known to have run such industrial
enterprises as a fulling mill, a grain mill, a distillery. By 1870 there were
8,000 women in selected businesses with which 1940 comparisons could
be made; in 70 years their numbers multiplied almost 40 times, to
319,000.
Throughout those 70 years most of the women were in trading busi
nesses, though their proportion of all businesswomen fell off from
seven- to six-tenths. The two next largest groups in 1870 were women in
restaurant and cafe businesses and women in hotel businesses; first one
group was in the lead, then the other, until by 1940 the first were twotenths of all business women, the second one-tenth. Other groups,
though smaller, increased in numbers and proportions over the years:
women postmasters and women in mining, construction, manufacturing,
transportation, and communications. Newer types of business women,
who entered the field after 1870 and whose number in 1940 would raise
the count of all business women that year considerably, are included in
the discussion of types of business women that follows.
WOMEN IN FOOD BUSINESSES
The businesswomen in food and dairy products stores multiplied over
50 times between 1870 and 1940, from about 1,400 to over 69,000. The
great development of chain stores did not stop their progress, for they
rose from 1 in 100 to over 10 in 100 of all business people —men and
women—in this retail field.
WOMEN IN RESTAURANT AND CAFE BUSINESSES
Many women, suddenly faced with the need to earn a living and un
trained except in running a household, have started a boardinghouse.
(We talked about them under "Boardinghouse and Lodginghouse
Keepers.”) Others, with similar problems, specialized somewhat more
and opened restaurants or tea rooms.
About 750 women had gone into the business of running a restaurant,
tea room, or the like by 1870, and they were only about one-hundredth
of all people in this type of business. By 1900, 7,000 women were in the
business. Then the custom of "eating out” became more common, par
ticularly after 1900. Women with a talent for organizing restaurants and
making them pay found that here was an opportunity for them. By 1940
over 66,000 women were in the business, and they were nearly one-fourth
of all people in it.
BUSINESSWOMEN IN SPECIALTIES TRADES
A considerable number of women, for that time, were traders and
dealers in certain specialties in 1870—3,500, and they were trading and
74

dealing in a large variety of goods. Some of the most important were
cigars and tobacco; liquors and wines; sewing machines; crockery, china,
and stoneware; agricultural implements; books and stationery; iron, tin,
and copperware; newspapers and periodicals; gold, silverware, and
jewelry; and musical instruments.
Women found trading and dealing a fast growing field of opportunity
between 1870 and 1890. For 20 years, then, there was no great change.
In the next 10 years, however, 4,000 more women took up this business,
then 12,000 more, then 24,000, until by 1940 over 57,000 women were
traders and dealers. New types of trading businesses had sprung up.
Women now were also in such businesses as limited price variety stores,
motor vehicles and accessories retailing, filling stations. From 1 in 50 of
all these specialty traders and dealers in 1870, they had come to be 3 in
50 by 1940.
BUSINESSWOMEN IN GENERAL MERCHANDISE, APPAREL,
SHOE, AND MILLINERY TRADES
The story of women’s trading in these types of goods was somewhat
different than the one of their trading in the specialties we just talked
about.
The 864 women trading in these types of goods in 1870 had grown to
62,000 and nearly two-thirds of all such traders by 1890. In 20 years more
their numbers doubled, but they were losing out to men for at the end
of that time they were now only two-fifths of all the traders. The women
traders have been falling off ever since—to 55,000 and to one-fourth of
all the traders in 1940.
Part of the reason, at least, for the falling off of opportunities for
women traders in this field is thought to be that in earlier days many of
the goods traded were hand made, by women who both made and sold
them; as customers became less interested in hand-made goods, women
lost out.
BUSINESSWOMEN IN INDUSTRY
Women in this group may include the owner of a small local bakery,
the silent partner in her deceased husband's machine shop, the president
of a big coal company, the publisher of a large chain of newspapers. The
degree of responsibility varies greatly, as does the amount of money
income.
Actually this field includes mining; construction; manufacturing;
automobile storage, rental, and repair services; railroads and railroad
repair shops; street railways and bus lines; taxicab service; trucking
service; other transportation; and communications. Seven-tenths of the
women in this field in 1940 were in manufacturing.
From less than 300 in 1870, women rose to 27,000 by 1940 and at the
same time from 1 in 200 to 7 in 200 of all business people in industry.
75

s^3Sj.

■

BUSINESSWOMAN IN INDUSTRY-RUNS HER OWN PRINT SHOP

Opportunities for women, though still limited, are growing. The daily
papers, if nothing else, tell us of positions of great responsibility, paying
high incomes, that some of these women hold.
WOMEN IN HOTEL BUSINESSES
In Chapter IV, Service Workers, we spoke of the women who opened
boardinghouses and lodginghouses, to provide inexpensive places to live
for other workers away from their own homes, and to provide them
selves a means of earning a living. Still other women were encouraged
to take up the more pretentious venture of running a hotel, a tourist
camp, a motel. About a thousand women had done this in 1870—one
thirty-third of all the people in the business. Their numbers grew at a
rapid rate through 1910, thereafter not so fast, although by 1940 there
were 22,000 of them, and they were a third of all people in the business.
WOMEN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND INSPECTORS
Women have special interests and qualifications in some of the fields
into which government has extended, for instance, factory inspection
and health work. Following the granting of suffrage to women they'have
taken a greater part in civic and political life, and this, too, has led to
their being considered more and more often for appointment to the gen
eral run of official posts. Also, as women’s employment in government
work generally increased, greater numbers of them have had a chance
to get the background and experience necessary for supervisory jobs.
76

As a result, to the 3,500 women officials and inspectors in Federal,
State, and local governments in 1910, 15,000 more were added by 1940.
The proportion they were of all government officials and inspectors also
rose steadily during that time, from 4 in 100 to 9 in 100.
WOMEN POSTMASTERS
Since the signing of the Articles of Confederation in 1777, running
our postal system has been a Federal Government task. Women post
masters came on the scene that same year. About 250 were postmasters
by 1870, and they were 3 of every 100 postmasters. Their numbers and
the proportion they are of all postmasters has grown steadily, until by
1940 there were nearly 17,000 women postmasters who were 42 of every
100 postmasters.
WOMEN DRUGGISTS AND PHARMACISTS
There was probably not a woman in the Colonies who had not had
handed down to her by her mother recipes for salves, for ointments, for
various curative herb teas, and other home remedies. Handbooks for
women’s use in running their households then also included such recipes.
Not until 1820 did the National Pharmacopoeia appear, the book which
lists and sets up standards for drugs and medicines for the guidance of
drug manufacturers, and of the pharmacists who were taking over from
the women much of the work of providing remedies for illnesses and
ailments. Women all over the country, however, still had their pet tonics
and teas and salves for their families until very recent times. Your
grandparents, if not your parents, will remember at least "spring tonics,"
sulphur and molasses, figs and senna leaves. In some parts of the country
home remedies are still much in use.
By 1870 compounding medicines and preparing other remedies (other
than those a few women still prepared at home) was almost entirely in
the hands of men. Only 33 women were druggists or pharmacists, and
they were a very small fraction of all druggists and pharmacists.
With the years, the standards for drugs continued to improve, new
drugs came on the market, their preparation became far more scientific
and complex, and it became necessary to have a specialized education in
pharmacy to become a pharmacist dispensing drugs. Pharmacy is there
fore now rated as a profession. One who simply owns or operates a drug
store is in business as a druggist.
In the early days, the druggist was his own pharmacist. Here pharma
cists and druggists have been grouped together, so that we might have
figures we could compare with the figures for earlier years.
Women druggists and pharmacists have been a small but steadily
growing group. By 1940 they numbered 6,000 and were 3 in every 50
druggists and pharmacists. Almost three-fifths of these women were ac
tually professional pharmacists, two-fifths were in the trading business
as druggists.
77

BUSINESSWOMEN IN BANKING AND FINANCE
Before World War I most women’s jobs in banking and other financial
houses were routine clerical ones. During the war women replaced men
in a number of the more skilled jobs. This accounts in part for the rapid
rate of increase, from 2,300 to 5,000, of women owners, managers, offi
cials, and salesmen in banking and other finance between 1910 and 1920.
Their numbers still grew between 1920 and 1930, but then came the
depression, which hit banks and other financial institutions particularly
hard, so that from almost 9,000 in 1930, women dropped back to less
than 7,000 by 1940.
Over the 30 years between 1910 and 1940 women gained a little on
men, rising from 3 of 100 business people in banking and finance to 5.
WOMEN OFFICIALS IN ORGANIZATIONS
Since as far back as the early 1850’s women’s organizations have been
increasingly important in American life. The members of some of these
clubs were women who wanted to reach out beyond the daily round of
their household tasks. Then, as more and more women became paid
workers outside the home, women who had similar interests growing
out of their work also formed organizations. These organizations, the
trade unions, and organizations that were formed for social, civic, and
philanthropic purposes offered women small but growing opportunities
to become officials, managers, agents, and representatives in such organ
izations.
From 2,000 in 1910, the number of women who found careers in or
ganizations rose to over 4,000 by 1940, but at the same time their pro
portion dropped from almost a fourth of all organization officials to well
under a fifth.
BUSINESSWOMEN IN INSURANCE
We have already spoken of women insurance agents under "WhiteCollar Workers.” Here we are speaking of women who are owners, man
agers, or officials of companies in the insurance business. The pattern of
their growth in numbers is very like that of the women insurance agents.
Few in 1910 (only 140), the rate of growth was rapid through 1930 and
then slackened off. Their actual numbers still continued to grow, how
ever, if not so fast, to almost 3,000 in 1940.
Relative to men, insurance businesswomen did somewhat better than
women insurance agents. From 1 in 100 of all people in the insurance
business, women came to be 7 in 100 by 1940, whereas the women in
surance agents became only 5 in 100 of all insurance agents. As greater
numbers of women came into the insurance field, more found oppor
tunities for responsible positions. In clerical and other departments,
where women’s work was nothing new, experience made it possible for
women to rise to positions as officers in the business.
78

CHAPTER SEVEN

Women Agricultural Workers

ONE OF THE MOST important movements that has
taken place in American life is the shift of people from the country and
farm work to cities and industrial work. Farmers and farm workers of
1870 were over half of all the country’s workers. Until 1910 their num
ber grew, but not as fast as the number of industrial workers. After 1910
farmers and farm workers became fewer. The 9 million persons in farm
work in 1940 were not much more than one-sixth of all the workers in
the country.
The number of very large farms has been growing in recent years, but
to a great extent farming is still in the hands of the farmer (owner or
tenant) whose acres are no larger than he and his family can handle.
Roughly five-eighths of the people in farming in 1940 were farmers or
farm managers or foremen, one-eighth were unpaid family workers, and
only two-eighths were farm wage workers, which shows that most farms
were run without hired farm help.
In this picture women’s place, judging by official figures, is small. The
census counted only something over one-half million women in farming
in 1940. It left out of the count the bulk of farm wives whose work in
the household is vital to the success of the farm. Five out of every ten
of the women counted were unpaid family workers, 3 were farmers, and
2 were wage workers.
The pioneer farm was self-sufficient. All labor was hand labor and pro
duced almost everything that was necessary to sustain life; little call was
made on the outside world. Much less money exchanged hands then
than now. The role of the farm wife and other unpaid women workers
of the family was much more important then than even now. From
Colonial days to the Civil War these women for the most part took care
of the dairy, the poultry yard, the garden, in addition to their many other
tasks. Some women made an independent living as planters or small
farmers. Others hired out to care for the dairy or poultry on the farms
of other persons. Although all these women did rather rough work, like
cutting wood and milking, they were seldom "put into the ground” or
used in the fields.
79

a#*N

Shortly after the Civil War came the homestead movement. Farming
livened up. Hand labor gave way to horse-drawn machinery. The char
acter of farm work was changing. The number of women farmers, paid
and unpaid women farm workers grew fast, almost until World War I,
when there were over a million of them. . After the war, their numbers
shrank more and more until by 1940 there were about half a million.
There had been not far from one-half million in 1870.
The women owner and tenant farmers, managers, and foremen grew
from 25,000 in 1870 to 312,000 in 1900 and dropped to 154,000 in 1940.
The women paid and unpaid farm workers began at 430,000 in 1870, rose
to 895,000 in 1910 and dropped to 367,000—less than there had been in
1870.
80

►

For women farmers, managers, and foremen, the above figures are
fairly accurate, but the figures for the farm workers are rather rough.
The difficulty with the figures for the farm workers is that the censuses
were taken at different times of the year (in 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900
in June; in 1910 in April; in 1920 in January; in 1930 in April; in 1940
in March). But the agricultural work is seasonal—greatest at planting
and at harvest time. The farmer is on his farm all year round and always
has some work to do on it; he will report himself to the census as a
farmer at any time. Help is hired, however, only during the busy sea
sons, and the unpaid family women are apt to report themselves as
housewives in off seasons because they do little outdoor work then. Only
at planting and at harvest time, then, could the census get a fairly accu
rate count of the paid and unpaid women farm workers. Even if the
census could arrange to take the count the same month each year, the
weather, which sometimes hurries and sometimes delays planting and
harvest, might throw the count off.
Because of the unpaid work of the farm wife, the farm family has de
pended somewhat less on actual money income than the city family to
reach a given level of living. The wife’s work, of course, helps to bring a
cash return to the farm, but more than that her kitchen garden, her
chickens, ducks, and geese, her canning and preserving add to the fam
ily’s health and well-being. In addition she often does many other things

FARM WORKERS

::: »»

5*’ „

mem.
-* U

■.

which the city family usually pays to have done—things such as making
and taking care of clothing, making soap, furniture polish, hand lotions,
bedding and mattresses.
.
The farm wife’s household duties have generally kept her from work
ing on the farm’s cash crop. A study ot cotton farming in Texas, for
example, has shown that for the most part it is the unmarried woman on
the farm who works in the fields. But counting farm wives who do work
in the fields, the other unpaid women of the family who also do, and the
women outside the family who are hired, they have not, since 1870 at
least, been a very great proportion of all paid and unpaid farm workers—
one-eighth in 1870, one-fifth in 1920, and one-tenth by 1940. The fact
that farm products were so greatly needed during World War I, when
men were being called away from the farms, probably accounts for the
fact that 1920 was the peak year for these women’s part in farm work.
Women farmers, managers, and foremen were an even smaller part of
all farmers, managers, and foremen—less than 1 in 100 in 1870, 5 in 100
in 1900, and 3 in 100 in 1940.

"rvh:

CHAPTER EIGHT

Women in Trades and Crafts

WOMEN IN TRADES and crafts do not include women
in the trading business, whom we talked of under "Businesswomen,” but
women who have a trade or a craft or are foremen. We do not have in
formation on all of them all the way back to 1870, so that we cannot
say what shifts took place before they reached a total of 122,000 in 1940.
One fact is fairly clear. The work of the craftsmen is skilled and has a
long apprenticeship, often it calls for physical strength, union regula
tions have held down the number of people who may enter the craft; as
a result, throughout these 70 years, right up through 1940, the crafts
were not a field of wide opportunities for women.
There is even some doubt about the small numbers of women whom
the census reported in specific crafts. A woman who was reported as a
blacksmith, say, may simply have been the owner of a blacksmith shop
left her by her husband; women reported as machinists, may have in fact
been machine operators. Further, some of the gains between 1930 and
1940 may be not real but the result of different methods used by the
census those years in counting and checking.
FOREMEN
The work of foremen is of many types, some much less responsible
than others. The facts on their numbers are apt to be more correct than
those on other craft workers. The 23,000 women in the field in 1910
went up in 1920, down in 1930, and up again, to 38,000, in 1940.
Throughout the 30 years the portion they were of all foremen stayed
about the same—somewhat under one-tenth.
All but a fourth of the women foremen in 1940 were in manufactur
ing, and of those in manufacturing, over half were in the textile products
and apparel industries. Over a tenth were in food industries, under a
tenth in the metal industries, the rest—considerably less than a tenth in
each case—were in the other groups of manufacturing industries.

DECORATORS AND WINDOW DRESSERS
Decorating and window dressing have proved a fast growing though
small field of opportunities for women, according to figures since 1900.
Homemakers who are taking an ever livelier interest in decorating and
redecorating their homes consult private decorators and decorators in
department stores. Any number of magazines are spurring them on.
Stores vie with one another on ever handsomer and more effective
window displays (even calling on well-known artists—a Dali—for some
thing really exotic). Both types of work are a ''natural" for women,
though training in commercial art and decorating schools is usually re
quired before a woman can qualify for a position.
At any rate, from 300 and less than a tenth of all decorators and
window dressers in 1900, women came to be 6,500 and over a fourth of
all of them by 1930. Then came the depression, and while a few more
women came into the work —less than 300—women dropped back to
not much over a fifth of all decorators and window dressers.
PAINTERS
Beginning with 96 in 1870, women came to be over 10,000 of the
painters in 1940, and rose at the same time from 1 in a thousand painters
to 20 in a thousand—not great numbers, but growing ones, that mean
new opportunities for women. A third of the women painters in 1940
were working in new buildings or helping maintain old ones. Two-thirds
were in factories and shops, where they were 7 out of every 100 painters;
their chief opportunities here were in spray painting.
PAPERHANGERS
Offhand, one does not think of paperhanging as likely to attract many
women. Nevertheless, a larger proportion of the paperhangers than of
the painters have been women —1 in 100 in 1870, rising to 6 in 100 in
1940. The total number of paperhangers is much smaller than the num
ber of painters however, and the number of women paperhangers in
1940 was not very large—1,700.

UPHOLSTERERS
Upholstering is closely related to women's work in the home, and it
is a venerable occupation for women, for women have been in (he up
holstery business since pre-Revolutionary days. However, there were only
141 women upholsterers in 1870, but their numbers rose steadily to just
over 2,000 by 1940. Relative to men, their numbers wavered, from 3 in
every 100 upholsterers in 1870, to 7 in 100 in 1920, back to 5 in 100 in
1940.
84

CHAPTER NINE

Women Protective Service
Workers

THROUGH THE LONG COURSE of history women
have had the role of keepers of the hearth and home and men the role of
fighting for and protecting hearth, home, and the community of which
they are a part. How much these historical roles have affected men's and
women's jobs is shown by men's overwhelming superiority in numbers
in the protective services.
Up through the 1940 census no woman had been a fireman, soldier,
sailor, coast guardsman, or marine. Women were not accepted in the
armed services until World War II.
In other protective services women’s part grew with the public's
realization of the importance of crime prevention. Women had a growing
number of jobs in women's divisions in police departments, as store de
tectives, and as guards. They never were much more than 1 in 100 of
these workers, however, although their actual numbers grew from 20 in
1870 to over 4,000 in 1940.

CHAPTER TEN

Remarks

TO SUM UP, about a fourth—over 11 Vi million ‘—of the
women in the United States who were 14 or more years old were
employed in 1940. They were, in round figures:
White-collar workers
Manual workers
Service workers
In public and private housekeeping
In other service work
Professional workers
Businesswomen
Agricultural workers
Workers in trades and crafts
Protective service workers

3,440,000
1,970,000
3,723,000
1,493,000
319,000
322,000
122,000
4,000

To say that another way, in a group of 100 women workers, chances
are there were:
30 white-collar workers
17 manual workers
32 service workers (24 in public or private housekeeping, 8 in other
service industries)
13 professional workers
3 businesswomen
4 agricultural workers (half of them unpaid workers)
1 worker in trades and crafts
The protective service workers were fewer than 1 in 100.
Earlier chapters have told you something of individual occupations in
which women were working and how these jobs developed, to give you
a general view of the fields in which women work. If you wish to explore
further, there are several publications that will serve you.
1 Actually there were about 12 {/2 million, including some 981,000 who have not been
covered in this account, about 441.000 of them because they did not report their occupa
tions to the census, about 540.000 because there were no groups of workers in earlier years
with which to compare them.

First of all, if you wish further detail on the story that has been told
here, you will want to refer to the book on which it is based, Janet
Hooks’ Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades, Bulletin 218 of
the Women’s Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor.
The Women’s Bureau has also published two leaflets, Your Job Future
After High School, and Your Job Future After College, that have very
helpful suggestions for girls planning what they want to do when school
work is over.
Then, Marguerite Zapoleon of the Women’s Bureau has written two
series of booklets that tell a great deal about a number of specific jobs.
The first series is The Outlook for Women in Occupations in the
Medical and Other Health Services (Bulletin 203). The account of each
job is a separate publication:
1. Physical Therapists
2. Occupational Therapists
3. Professional Nurses
4. Medical Laboratory Technicians
5. Practical Nurses and Hospital Attendants
6. Medical Record Librarians
7. Women Physicians
8. X-Ray Technicians
9. Women Dentists
10. Dental Hygienists
11. Physicians’ and Dentists’ Assistants
12. Trends and Their Effect Upon the Demand for Women
Workers .
Mrs. Zapoleon’s second series is The Outlook for Women in Science,
(Bulletin 223):
1. Science (General introduction to the series)
2. Chemistry
3- Biological Sciences
4. Mathematics and Statistics
5. Architecture and Engineering
6. Physics and Astronomy
7. Geology, Geography, and Meteorology
8. Occupations Related to Science
A third series, The Outlook for Women in Social Work, is being
written. A byproduct of this series, The Outlook for Women in Police
Work, is ready.
A very useful book, Occupational Outlook Handbook—Employment
Information on Major Occupations for Use in Guidance, was prepared
by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation
with the Veterans Administration.
87

The United States Employment Service issues helpful occupational
guides. The Office of Education of the Federal Security Agency also
issues guidance literature, especially on vocational guidance methods and
techniques, but publishes also bibliographies of guidance literature.
Recently the Office of Education prepared, and the Women’s Bureau
published, "Occupations for Girls and Women—Selected References.”
The Department of Commerce has a number of booklets for people
who want to set up a small busines establishment, and the Department
of Agriculture has booklets for people who want to take up farm work.
These and other publications you may have by writing the various
agencies.

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1949 0-F—840888