certain industries have tended,
especially in the Netherlands and in England, to segregate themselves in
farm-houses and towns. Women naturally participated in these
activities, generally taking the least desirable parts. With the freeing
of the mind, which followed the democratic revolutions at the end of the
eighteenth century, inventions blossomed out and perfected steam
engines, cotton gins, spinning jennies, and a thousand other machines
driven by steam or water power, which have changed the civilization of
Europe and America. Miss Edith Abbott has shown us how this change,
involving increasing segregation and specialization, came into America
even in the pre-Revolutionary time.[35]

[35] EDITH ABBOTT, _Women in Industry: A Study in American Economic
History_, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1910.

Spinning and weaving industries led the way in this movement, but its
full force was not felt until the late eighteenth century. Since then,
one industry after another has left the home for the factory until
to-day, in all large communities, even the preparation of food
increasingly goes to the packing-house, the canning establishment, the
bakery and the delicatessen-store. These industries needed hands, and so
the women followed them to the factories.

As 1870 marks the beginning of higher education for women, so it also
marks the beginning of her industrial self-consciousness. The perfecting
of such inventions as the typewriter, the telegraph and the telephone,
and the creation of a great variety of office appliances, together with
the perfecting of highly elaborate means of distribution, like the
departmental store, called for thousands of cheap workers possessed of
some slight intelligence but not necessarily having any serious
preliminary training. Our elementary schools and high schools have
increasingly turned out a multitude of girls who could meet these
requirements. The increased cost of living, the lessened labor demands
of the home, and the attractions of the pay envelope, have called
millions to work in industrial plants. In 1890, there were 4,005,532
wage-earning women in the United States; in 1900, 5,319,397; while in
1910, we have probably nearly 8,000,000.

Like most other great changes in civilization, this industrial
transformation was neither preceded nor accompanied by any general
consciousness of what was happening. Daily necessities were offset by
weekly pay envelopes, or the failures fell out of