Excerpt from The Millinery Trade, in Boston and Philadelphia: A Study of Women in Industry As the increasing use of machinery in production gradually made possible the substitution of the unskilled labor of women for the more skilled labor of men, emphasis was changed from the usefulness of manufactures in affording employment for 'otherwise idle persons' to the supposed competition of women with men and to the evil effects of such rivalry upon the wages, hours and general condition of men's labor. This point of view characterized much of the trade-union arguments in the United States during the thirties and forties. The report of the com mittee on female labor of the National Trades' Union conven tion of 1836 contains the following: These evils themselves (of the effect of female labor on the health and morals of the workers) are great, and call loudly for a speedy cure; but still another objection to the' system arises, which, if possible, is productive of the other evils, namely, the ruinous competition brought in active opposition to male labor, actually producing a reversion of the very good intended to do the guardian or parent, causing the destruction of the end which it aims to benefit; because, when the employer finds, as he surely will, that female assistance will compress his ends, of course the work man is discharged, or reduced to a corresponding rate of wages with the female operative. 1 Thus the question of women's labor was treated as subsidiary to the greater and more impor tant one of men's labor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.