invested was $40,000, and the relative number of males and females
employed is also recorded,--

Males employed from the age of 17 and upward 10,000
Women and female children 66,000
Boys under 17 years of age 24,000

For these women spinning was the only work. Hand-looms still did all the
weaving, nor was it possible to obtain any plan of the power
looms,--then in use in England, and a recent invention. Another mill had
been built in 1795; and thus the first definite and profitable
occupation for women in this country dates back to the close of the
eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century, the history of
its phases having been written by Tench Coxe. The village tailoress had
long gone from house to house, earning in the beginning but a shilling a
day, and this sometimes paid in kind; and in towns a dressmaker or
milliner was secure of a livelihood. But work for the many was unknown
outside of household life; and thus wage rates vary with locality, and
are in most cases inferential rather than matter of record.

Cotton would seem, from the beginning of manufacturing interests, to
have monopolized New England; but other industries had been very early
suggested. In May, 1640, the General Court of Massachusetts made an
order for the encouragement by bounties of the manufacture of linen and
woollen as well as cotton. In 1638 a company of Yorkshiremen came over
and settled in Rowley, Mass., where they built the first fulling-mill in
the United States. Fustians and the ordinary homespun cloth were woven;
but few women were employed, the work being far heavier than the weaving
of cotton. It was hoped that broadcloths as good as those imported could
be made; but American wool proved less susceptible of high finish,