The Portland daily press., 1889-01-25
woMAN's WORK.
A Revolution which Has Taken Place
In the Pine Tree State.
Busy Workers In a Multitude Of
Profitable Pursuits.


AUGUSTA, Jan. N.-What is perhaps the
most interesting investigation ever made in
to the condition of labor in Maine has been
concluded this year by Mrs. Flora E. Haines
Of Bangor, who has been employed by La
Dor Commissioner Matthews, to investigate
the condition of the woman wage workers
Of Maine. Mrs. Haines has spent ninety
two days of the past summer and autumn
travelling among the woman wage workers
In Bangor, Belfast, Lewiston, Au-
burn, Waterville, Eastport, Portland,
Freeport, Cumberland Mills, Saccarappa.
B.ddeford and Saco. Mrs. Haines found
Maine women employed in the following
manufactures: Boots and shoes, brushes,
blank books, cotton sheetings, meal and
grain bags, cotton bed spreads, cotton tow
els, cotton dress goods, confectionery. cigars,
woolen mems and boys clio thing, busters,
spruce and parafine gum, women's felt hats,
hose, matches (brimstone), pickles, paper,
paper boxes, suspenders, mems shirts, silk
dress goods, slippers, .women's. underwear,
waterproof cloth, and women's wrappers
She saw women also at work as attendants
In libraries, bookkeepers and cashiers clerks
In p0stoffices, insurance offices, bakeries
laundries, and dye houses; compostors in
printing and newspaper Offices; cooks in
boarding. houses, etc; domestics; editorial
ers and cutters; librarians; milliners; laun-
dries; m0unters of photographers, portrait
makers In pastel, crayon, etc; proof readers,
press feeders; photograph retouchers and
.n0unters, rag pickers, stenographers, straw
bonnet sewers, saleswomen everywhere in
stores; tailoresses; telegraphers; telephone
operators, type writers; washerwomen and
wig makers. 81
In short the women of Maine are engaged
In earning their living in multitude Of 0c-
fl.af a.
mothers hold their hands up in amazement
could they have been told the wide variety
OF usefulness OF their grandchildren. In a
generation the avenues Of employment that
have been opened to women are scores
Compared with what America was in re-
spect to woman's work when Harriet Marti-
mean wrote of this country, the change that
is marked by this report to the Maine Labor
Commissioner amounts to an important re-
volution.
men are engaged in earning money in many
other ways than those mentioned above The
Portland Directory alone gives the addresses
of IS female nurses. The dressmakers are
legion. The Maine Directory advertises S65
and most of these employ from one to a
dozen helpers. Quite an army of women in
shops and in their own houses make mems
and boys w00len clothing. One we'll in
formed manufacturer. in Waldo county says
that seventy thousand dollars are paid year
M
OF Belfast send work into every town but
one in the. couety.. One of these firms,
at whose head Is widow who
learned the tailor's trade thirty-eight years
ago, has on its books the names of 23l
women to whom work is let out. These
names represent many more workers. A
Penohscot manufacturer who has been in
the business thirty years and understands it
very well estimates the amount paid to
Maine women yearly for the making of
ready made woolen clothing, overalls, shirts,
ETC., at half million dollars.
Many of the young women of Maine, es-
pecially lii the shore towns, act as hotel
walters in summer and in winter do knitting
and make fancy work for wholesale dealers
In other States. One young lady does quite
business. employing her young friends In
making a peculiar kind of jewelry. Another
is growing an orchard. Another woman. a
widow, is managing one of the best hotels in
Maine, the Collins House at Fort Fairfield.
The school teachers, music teachers, teach
ers OF drawing and painting, are numbered
by the hundred. There are also many can
vassers. On one of the islands of Penobscot
Bay the women do good deal of netting,
making hammocks, fish nets, etc. There are
ten or dozen regularly educated women
ordained women clergymen, all of them
Universalist There is one daily newspaper
proprietor.
The young woman who receives the largest
salary coming within Mrs. Haines's knOwl-
EDGE. receives sixteen hundred dollars
year for making portraits in crayon and pas
tel.
By far the greatest number of woman
workers of Maine are employed in the cot
ton mills. Mrs. Haines visited the Andros-
coggin, Avon, Bates, Continental and Hill
Mills In Lewiston; the Laconia and Pepper
III in Biddeford. and the York mills in Saco.
She found in these mills 5721 women at work.
The other mills Of this kind in Maine would,
In her Judgment bring the number well up
to 1000.
Mrs. Haines describes at length the condI-
tion and the work of these women. The
report on this subject is on the whole cheer
full. Ring spinners earn from "a cents to
$1.0S day, and the rooms where they work
are generally clean. Most of the weavers In
same wages as men, and by the ''cut" In
one mill 60 cents a 'cut" for seersuckers.
"a cents for '.peck and peck ginghams, Al
cents for common ginghams. A good wea-
yer runs four looms and takes off about "a
three "cuts" of gingham a day. 1t will thus
be seen that the wages of weavers are from
$1.41 day upwards. Some do little better
In the amount woven.
Speaking Of the nationality of the mill
girls, Mrs. Haines says that in visit to
a Biddeford mill she saw few girls who
showed traces of Indian blood that in one
room the girls had recently arrived from Ire
land that in another room almost every one
was French; in another room there was
sprinkling of English; in the York mills in
SacO there are some Scotch weavers. In the
Lewiston mills the American girls are nearly
all weavers, webb drawers, beamers and at
work in the cloth hall. Mrs. Haines was
then told that ".about every overseer found
his wife in his mill" circumstance that
speaks well for the girls.
The most, in fact the only really unpleas-
ant feature of Mrs. Haines' report, so far as
1t has been made, is the following passage
Snuff is used to an alarming extent by cotton
mill operatives all over the State and In other
States as we'll. Sometimes it is filed in between
the lower lip and gum and any Interested observ-
er can quickly detect It by the bulging of the lip
waste. Girls will get together and 'scour' and
rush as they say. seemingly enjoying themselves
In this way somewhat as tobacco smokers enjoy
their social pipes and cigars