The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman's WorkPenny, Virginia
General
The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman's Work
Penny, Virginia
Women -- Employment
Half are Americans. No other parts of
the occupation are suitable for women than those in which we employ
them. Help once settled in the country, if married, are likely to be
permanent--in cities, _vice versa_, changing about. Our workmen have a
fine reading room. Board, $1.50 for women, $2.50 for men."
=248. Watches.= A watch is said to consist of 992 pieces. We have seen
it stated that two hundred persons are employed in the entire process of
making a watch, and that, with the exception of the watch finishers (who
put the parts together), not one of the workmen could perform any but
his own specific part. In Switzerland, families, for generation after
generation, devote themselves to making particular parts of watches.
Women have proved their ability to execute the most delicate parts.
Twenty thousand Swiss women earn a comfortable livelihood by watch
making. They make the movements, but men mostly put them together. I
think a few women work as finishers. We quote from the _Englishwoman's
Review_: "Geneva has always refused to employ women, and has now totally
lost the watch trade. None of the Geneva watches, so called, come from
that part of Switzerland, but are manufactured elsewhere, and
principally in the canton of Neufchatel, where women have been employed
from the first." Mr. Bennett, of London, "states facts relative to the
mental culture of both sexes, which is deemed requisite in Switzerland
to prepare the intellect, the eye, and the hand for watch manufacture,
and he refers to the salubrious dwellings of the operatives." A
traveller states: "We see women at the head of some of the heaviest
manufactories of Switzerland and France, particularly in the watch and
jewelry line." In England, women have been until lately excluded from
watch making by men, but some are now employed in one establishment in
London and in several of the provincial towns. "There is a manufactory
at Christchurch, England, where five hundred women are employed in
making the interior chains for chronometers. They are preferred to men,
on account of their being naturally more dexterous with their fingers,
and therefore being found to require less training." From the November
number of the _Knickerbocker_ we quote: "All imported watches are made
by hand, the American watches being the only ones made by machinery in a
single establishment by connected and uniform processes. The Waltham
watches have fewer parts and are more easily kept in order than any
others; and are warranted for ten years by the manufacturers. They have
over one hundred artisans employed, more than half of whom are women."
The manufactory occupies a space more than half an acre in extent. Hand
labor is cheaper in Europe than this country, but American watches are
cheaper, because made by machinery. Making the cases is a distinct
branch from the interior work, and furnishes employment to some women.
Cleaning watches would form a pretty and suitable employment for women.
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