e factory system and
the constant invention of new machinery had long ago removed from homes
the few branches of the work that could be carried on within them.
Processes had divided and subdivided. The mill-worker knew no longer
every phase of the work implied in the production of her web, but became
more and more a part of the machine itself. This was especially true of
all textile industries,--cotton or woollen, with their many
ramifications,--and becomes more so with each year of progress.

Cotton and woollen manufactures, with the constantly increasing
subdivisions of all the processes involved, counted their thousands upon
thousands of women workers. Another industry had been one of the first
opened to women, much of its work being done at home. Shoemaking, with
all its processes of binding and finishing, had its origin for this
country in Massachusetts, to the ingenuity and enterprise of whose
mechanics is due the fact that the United States has attained the
highest perfection in this branch. Lynn, Mass., as far back as 1750, had
become famous for its women's shoes, the making of which was carried on
in the families of the manufacturers. At first no especial skill was
shown; but in 1750 a Welsh shoemaker, named John Adam Dagyr, settled
there and acquired great fame for himself and the town for his superior
workmanship. In 1788 the exports of women's shoes from Lynn were one
hundred thousand pairs, while in 1795 over three hundred thousand pairs
were sent out, and by 1870 the number had reached eleven million.

Beginning with the employment of a few dozen women, twenty other towns
took up the same industry, and furnish their quota of the general
return. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor gives, in its report for 1873,
the number of women employed as 11,193, with some six hundred female
children. Maine and New Hampshire followed, and both have a small
proportion of women workers engaged in the industry, while it has
gradually extended, New England always retaining the lead, till New
York, Philadelphia, and many Western and Southern towns rank high in
the list of producers.

As in every other trade, processes have divided and subdivided.
Sewing-machines did away with the tedious binding by hand, which had its
compensations, however, in the fact that it was done at home. There is
only incidental record of the numbers employed in this industry till the
later census returns; but the percentage outside of Massachusetts