Note 9 — Chapter II · HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENTS
Reading edition
In Massachusetts, in 1885, the number of women employed in manufacturing industries exceeded the number of men in eight towns. These were Dalton, Dudley, Easthampton, Hingham, Ipswich, Lowell, Tisbury, and Upton. Census of Massachusetts, II., 176-187.
A weaver in Lawrence, Massachusetts, reported in 1882: “One of the evils existing in this city is the gradual extinction of the male operative.” Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence, p. 10. Reprinted from Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, p. 202.
In Massachusetts, in 1875, women predominated in fifteen occupations, eleven of them manufacturing industries. In 1885 there were also fifteen occupations in which women exceeded men in numbers, twelve of them manufacturing. These were manufacturers of buttons and dress-trimmings, carpetings, clothing, cotton goods, fancy articles, hair work, hosiery and knit goods, linen, mixed textiles, silk and silk goods, straw and palm-leaf goods, and worsted goods. Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1889, pp. 556-557.