1 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
that the process of manufacture was started in this country. A little later, about I/So, Tench Coxe, known as the "father of American industries," incorporated the "United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting Manufactures," and secured the first spinning jenny seen in America. In a short time he had four hundred women employed.
From the very beginnings of the factories we find women employed. In the colonial days they were hardly an economic factor at all. Their labor was chiefly confined to the house and farm. In addition to mere household duties they found time for much spinning and weaving. But near the close of this period they came to be employed in setting wire teeth in the cards used in preparing cotton for the wheel. This industry grew so rapidly that by 1784 one factory alone employed about 1200 hands, mostly women and children. In many cases the women worked at setting teeth at home. From the earliest times the manufac- ture of clothing and household stuffs was carried on by the women in the homes, but not as a wage-earning business, how- ever, as the materials produced were used largely in their own families. With the establishment of the cotton factories the industry which developed first here it is not strange that the work of the women should be in demand. Their home training had already made them adepts in the domestic arts of spinning and weaving, and so naturally they found their way from the kitchen wheel and loom to the large manufactories. Then, too, they were better fitted than men to do a great deal of the work connected with the new industry. Where deftness of fingers was required, men were certainly less skillful. Later, economic reasons crept in and influenced the employer in his choice of sex, and caused the continually increasing number of women who are employed outside of the home.
Chiefly on account of the conditions surrounding women workers in England, there was strong opposition to their employ- ment in America, but the inventions 1 of the age opened the door, and the women were glad to enter in, as the money earned
1 " The inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright practically inaugurated the factory
