remained a very small one, as even in Maine the total number given in
the Report of the Bureau of Labor for 1887 is but 533, an almost
inappreciable per cent of the population. The returns of the census of
1880 give the total number of women in this employment as 21,000, the
proportion still remaining largest for New England.

Straw-braiding was another of the early trades, and the first straw
bonnet braided in the United States was made by Miss Betsey Metcalf, of
Providence, R.I., in 1789. For many years straw-plaiting was done at
home; but the quality of our material was always inferior to that grown
abroad, our climate making it much more brittle and difficult to
handle. The wage at first was from two to three dollars a week; but as
factories were established where imported braid was made up, the sum
sometimes reached five dollars. The census of 1860 gave the total number
of women employed as 1,430. According to the census of 1870, nine States
had taken up this industry, Massachusetts employing the largest number,
and Vermont the least, the total number being 12,594; while in 1880 the
number had risen to 19,998.

Up to the time of the Civil War, aside from factory employments, the
trades open to women were limited, and the majority of their occupations
were still carried on at home, or with but few in numbers, as in
dressmaking-establishments, millinery, and the like. With the new
conditions brought about at this time, and the vast number of women
thrown upon their own resources, came the flocking into trades for which
there had been no training, and which had been considered as the
exclusive property of men. A surplus of untrained workers at once
appeared, and this and general financial depression brought the wage to
its lowest terms; but when this had in part ended, the trades still
remained open. At the close of the war some hundred were regarded as
practicable. Ten years later the number had more than doubled, and
to-day we find over four hundred occupations; while, as new inventions
arise, the number of possibilities in this direction steadily increases.
The many considerations involved in these facts will be met later on.
General conditions of trades as a whole are given in the census returns,
though even there hardly more than approximately, little work of much
real value being accomplished till the formation of the labor bureaus,
with which we are soon to deal. Every allowance, however, is to be made
for th