"TO LEARN ME THE WHOLE OF THE TRADE": CONFLICT BETWEEN A FEMALE APPRENTICE AND A MERCHANT TAILOR IN ANTE-BELLUM NEW ENGLAND.

Rural New England farm daughters who left home to apprentice in tailoring frequently were exploited as cheap labor and never taught the requisite skills. Without certain critical skills these women were forced to remain nothing but a shop girl. Unable to achieve their goal of learning a trade, they were forced to continue working for the tailor for wages comparable to and sometimes lower than those paid to female textile workers. And unlike female textile workers, shop girls had no opportunities for collective resistance except in the large semi-industrial shops in urban areas. Most tailoring shops of this period had fewer than half a dozen workers. This employment situation represents an early stage in the proletarianization of female garment workers. In the 18th century system of household manufacturing, women designed, cut out, and sewed the entire garment; in the early 19th century shops women sewed together garments cut out for them by the master tailor. Thus, they no longer worked for themselves, moreover, they held the lower paying, lower status positions.