II.
EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY.
For nearly a century and a half, dating from the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, the condition of laboring women was that of the same class in all struggling colonies. There were practically no women wage-earners, save in domestic service, where a home and from thirty to a hundred dollars a year was accounted wealth, the latter sum being given in a few instances to the housekeepers in great houses. Each family represented a commonwealth, and its women gave every energy to the crowding duties of a daily life filled with manifold occupations.
The farmer—for all were farmers—was often blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter, and more or less proficient in every trade whose offices were called for in the family life. The farmer's wife spun and wove the cloth he wore and the linen that made his household furnishing, and was dyer and dresser, brewer and baker, seamstress, milliner, and dressmaker. The quickness, adaptiveness to new conditions, and the fertility of resource which are recognized as distinguishing the American, were born of the colonial struggle, especially of the final one which separated us forever from English rule.
The wage of the few women found in labor outside the home was gauged by that which had ruled in England. For unskilled labor, as that employed occasionally in agriculture, this had been from one shilling and sixpence for ordinary field work to two shillings a week paid in haying and harvest time. For hoeing corn or rough weeding there is record of one shilling per week, and this is the usual wage for old women. To this were added various allowances which have gradually fallen into disuse. A full record of these and of rates in general will be found in "Six Centuries of Work and Wages."[4]
Unskilled labor during the whole colonial period—meaning by this such labor as that of the men who sawed wood, dug ditches, or mended roads, mixed mortar for the mason, carried boards to the carpenter, or cut hay in harvest time—brought a wage of seldom more than two shillings a day, fifteen shillings a week making a man the envy of his fellows, while six or seven was the utmost limit for women of the same order.
On this pittance they lived as they could. Sand did duty as carpet for the floor. The cupboard knew no china, and the table no glass. Coal and matches were unknown; they had never seen a stove. The meals of coarsest food were eaten from wooden or pewter dishes. Fresh meat was seldom eaten more than once a week. A pound of salt pork was tenpence, and corn three shillings a bushel. Clothing was as coarse as the food, and imprisonment for the slightest debt was the shadow hanging over every family where illness or any other cause had hindered earning. Boys and girls in the poorer families were employed by the owners of cattle to watch and keep them within bounds, countless troubles arising from their roaming over the unfenced fields. Andover, Mass., being from the beginning of a thrifty turn of mind, passed, soon after the founding of the town, an ordinance which still stands on the town records:—
"The Court did herupon order and decree that in every towne the chosen men are to take care of such as are sett to keep cattle, that they may be sett to some other employment withall, as spinning upon the rock, knitting and weaving tape, &c."
Spinning-classes were also formed; the General Court of Massachusetts ordering these in 1656, this being part of the general effort to begin some form of manufactures. But fishing to load ships, and shipbuilding to carry cured fish absorbed the energies of the growing population; and these vessels brought textiles and manufactured goods from the cheapest markets everywhere and anywhere.[5]
These "homespun" industries soon showed a tendency toward division. By 1669 much weaving was done outside the home as custom work; and there is record of one Gabriel Harris who died in 1684 leaving four looms and tacklings and a silk loom as part of the small fortune he had accumulated in this way.[6] His six children and some hired women assisted in the work. In 1685 Joseph, the son of Roger Williams, entered in an account book now extant,[7] a credit to "Sarah badkuk [Babcock], for weven and coaming wisted." This work was, however, chiefly in the hands of men.