of factory labor. The American country girls were replaced in the mills by Irish immigrant women; these again were supplanted by French Canadians, and so on. The type of girls who had welcomed factory labor as a first opportunity for economic independence were compelled, by pressure from below, to seek other avenues of employment, and this led to a gradual, constant extension of woman's field of work.
Until now I have considered the factory labor of women only in the textile industry. I have laid special stress upon this branch of industrial work for three reasons: Firstly, the earliest factories in this country were all devoted to textile manufacture. Secondly, this particular industry was a traditional industry of women, one in which practically all women were employed in their homes before the rise of the factory system. Thirdly, the textile industries still employ the greatest number of women who are at work in factories at the present time. With the constantly expanding realm of woman's work, it is impossible even to touch upon every industry that employs women to-day. I must, therefore, confine myself to a brief examination of a few industries in which the greatest number of women have found employment.
SEWING TRADES
One of the leading industrial occupations of women is generally summed up under the heading, the sewing trades. These comprise the making of men's and women's suits and dresses, coats, hats, shirts, underwear, collars and cuffs, gloves, etc. As we have seen, the making of wearing apparel has always been woman's work. During the domestic period of industry the same hands that spun the thread and wove the cloth also sewed the garments. When spinning and weaving had been taken out of the home and made specialized factory occupations, the making of clothes still remained a domestic occupation because no machinery had as yet been applied to this branch of manufacture. The individual woman's needle, thread and scissors continued to be the only tools employed. Nevertheless this industry, too, was revolutionized in the general transformation from the individual to the social form
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