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, though of better wearing quality than the English. Various grades of cloth, with shawls, were manufactured; but the growth of the industry was slow, and constantly hampered by heavy duties and much interference. In 1770 the entire graduating class at Harvard College were dressed in black broadcloth made in this country, the weaving of which had been done in families. Yarn was sent to these after the wool had been made ready in the mills, and the census of the United States for 1810 gives the number of yards woven in this way as 9,528,266. What proportion of women were engaged we have no means of knowing; but the census of 1860 shows that New England had 65 per cent of the total number then at work. The cotton manufacture had but 38 per cent of males as against 62 per cent of females; while in woollen, males were 60 per cent. In New England 10,743 women were in woollen-mills; in the Middle States, 4,540; and in the South, 689. For the West no returns are given. Many more would be included in the Southern returns were it not that most of the weaving is still a home industry, this resulting from the sparseness and scattered nature of the population.