ded that both male and female apprentices to
burgesses should themselves become burgesses at the expiration of
their term of service. Similar statutes relating to apprentices
in London likewise made no distinction between boys and girls. The
problems centring about woman's relation to industry not having
arisen, the fact of her employment presented no serious difficulties.
When the proclamation of 1271, relating to the woollen industry, was
issued, it permitted "all workers of woolen cloths, male and female,
as well of Flanders as of other lands, to come to England to follow
their craft." Indeed, the women were less fettered than the men in
their industrial avocations, for, while by the statute of 1363 the men
were limited to the pursuit of one craft, women were left free in the
matter.

In this connection, it is interesting to refer to the development of
the silk industry as a typical occupation of woman. It is impossible
to determine the time when "the arts of spinning, throwing, and
weaving of silk" were first brought into England. We do know, however,
that, when first established, they were pursued by a company of women
called "silk women." The fabrics of their skill were in the many forms
of laces, ribbons, girdles, and other narrow goods. Toward the middle
of the fifteenth century, these women were greatly distressed by the
Lombards and other Italians, who imported into the country the same
sort of goods, and in such quantities that their sale was hindered and
the workers placed in danger of starvation. This led to a reference
of their complaint to Parliament, with a statement of the grievances
for which they desired redress. This document bore the title:
_The petition of the silk women and throwesters of the craftes and
occupation of silk-work within the city of London, which be, and
have been, craftes of women within the same city of time that no
man remembereth the contrary_. The petition then goes on to set
forth "that by this business many reputable families have been well
supported; and young women kept from idleness by learning the same
business, and put into a way of living with credit, and many have
thereby grown to great worship; and never any thing of silk brought
into this land, concerning the same craftes and occupations in any
wise wrought but in the raw silk alone, unwrought, until now of late
that divers Lombards and others, aliens and strangers, with a view
of destroying the silk-working in this