male immigrants, first from Cuba and then from European countries, able to produce a better cigar than the homemade product, began to displace them. Until 1860 men dominated in the tobacco industry. Since then that same industrial transformation, founded on improved machinery and the division of labor, that brought back the woman shoemaker, has also brought back the woman cigar-maker. In 1860 women formed 9 per cent, of all persons employed in the making of cigars and cigarettes. In 1870 they formed 10 per cent; in 1880, 17 per cent.; in 1890, 28 per cent.; in 1900, 37 per cent.; and in 1905, 42 per cent. In a recent report of the Commissioner of Labor it was pointed out that in some factories women form 80 per cent, of the total number of employees, and the stogy factories of Pittsburgh employ over two thousand women and only about four hundred men. Until about twenty-five years ago the manufacture of cigars was mainly a tenement industry, with all its accompanying evils. But since then it has rapidly developed into a factory industry, and so affords another example of the transition of women from home to factory.
NEW FIELDS OF EMPLOYMENT
Closely allied with the manufacturing occupations are those branches of industry classified in the census reports under the heading: "trading and transportation." They comprise all commercial activities. Merchants, clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen and women, typewriters, telegraph and telephone operators, etc., are enumerated in this class. Flourishing industries are invariably accompanied by flourishing commerce, and the capitalistic system of production depends upon a constant expansion of trade. It is self-evident, therefore, that the number of persons engaged in commercial activities in the United States must have increased rapidly with the growth of domestic and foreign trade. But the number of women engaged in these occupations is out of all proportion with the general growth. Here we behold a striking change in the nature of woman's work, the coming of women in unprecedented numbers into a new field of employment. In 1870 only 1 per cent, of all women workers were in the class, "trade and trans-
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