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