|1,401,900 1,299,500|1,576,100 1,447,500|
---------------------------+--------------------+--------------------+

From this table we perceive that while the number of males engaged in
these manufactures has increased by 53 per cent. during the half
century 1841 to 1891, the number of females has increased by 221 per
cent. This movement, which must be regarded partly as a displacement
of male by female labour, partly as an absorption of new manufactures
by female labour, proceeded with great rapidity from the beginning of
the period up to 1881. The check apparent in the last decennium, in
which the number of males employed seems to have increased faster than
that of the females, does not, however, indicate a reversal or even a
suspension of the industrial movement. It is attributable to an
abnormal change in a single great industry--the cotton trade;
excluding this, the employment of females in each group of
manufactures has grown faster than that of males.

[Illustration: TEXTILE WORKERS.]

If we confine our survey to adults (excluding males and females below
fifteen) the rapid and regular advance of female employment as
compared with male is still more striking.

[Illustration: DRESS WORKERS.]

When we turn to the textile industries and to dress, the change of
proportionate employment among the sexes is very noteworthy. In
textiles and dyeing there was a continuous decline in the absolute
numbers of adult male workers and a continuous increase of female
workers up to 1881. In 1851 there were 394,400 men employed, in 1881
the number had fallen to 345,900, while the women had risen during the
same period from 390,800 to 500,200. The census figures for 1891 mark
a decided check in this movement. Adult male workers show an increase
of 34,000 upon the 1881 figures in the textile industries, while the
increase of female workers is only 15,000. This is due, on the one
hand, to the feverish and disordered expansion of the cotton
industry, which offers a larger proportion of male employment than
other textile branches; on the other hand, to the alarming decay of
the lace and linen industries, which show an absolute decline of
female employment amounting to nearly 13,000. So likewise in the dress
industries 377,400 men were employed in 1851, and 335,900 in 1881,
while the number of women employed had increased from 441,000 to
589,000.[240]

[Illustration]

These figures chiefly indicate a displacement of