Tracey M. Wilson
The types of jobs workers held, and their relationship with their employer changed substantially through the turmoil of the years 1880 to 1920. The control of production slipped out of the hands of skilled workers and into the hands of supervisors who regulated the new machines. The all around skilled craftsman, trained by a union apprenticeship and able to work in any area of the trade without management instruction and supervision, was replaced by the semi-skilled machine operative trained by the company to work on a few tasks using modified and specialized machinery. These technologically advanced machines divided the skill of the craftworker into many different parts which a mere machine tender could perform. The new premium was on swiftness and endurance rather than versatility, judgement, and expertise. Women were able to enter new areas of manufacturing due to this change, while the skilled craftsmen desperately tried to hold on to their power in the work place.
In the economy as a whole, there was an unprecedented increase in the amount of goods produced as mass production and mass distribution became facts of daily life. There was an equally remarkable amount of consolidation of this production from individually owned businesses into large corporate holdings. In Connecticut by 1919, corporations owned 38.3 percent of the total number of establishments and this 38.3 percent employed 94.2 percent of all wage earners. These corporations controlled 93.9 percent of the total value of products made in Connecticut. While the number of wage earners increased 20.3 percent over this period, the value of products increased 162.1 percent. Clearly, new methods of organization allowed for larger and fewer establishments, placing control in the hands of a very powerful minority.
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In Connecticut, this process was accelerated by the outbreak of World War I. Connecticut produced fifty-five percent of the munitions used by the U.S. in the war as well as a large share of other war supplies. As early as August of 1914, two Hartford factories received orders for munitions from Canada. The contracts to these two concerns caused a boom for the five or six companies who either directly or indirectly received work from these orders. In 1915, Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Company received over $30 million in ammunition contracts from France and Britain. By the end of June, 1915, Colt had to double its plant size to fill the orders for its machine guns. The gearing up of the United States’ own war machine increased Colt’s output. From a pre-war work force of 750, Colt’s payroll increased to 6500 workers by mid-1918.
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Connecticut was experiencing the most prosperous era of her modern history and there was hope for industrial employers and employees alike that the prosperity and the war would continue. Manufacturers not only expanded their facilities, but were compelled constantly to increase production efficiency and rationalization.
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They introduced new techniques and procedures, increasingly segmented labor processes, and revamped the management and organization of their factories to meet the demands. Time and motion experts were in great demand.
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These new divisions of labor, caused by the dilution of trade, based on scientific work-time studies allowed the introduction of women and unskilled men into new areas of the metal trades. These new jobs were clearly sex-segregated, but did provide opportunities for women workers which caused shifts away from traditional women’s employment. They were by no means skilled positions. Women received special training and paternalistic supervision, and were often acclaimed by managers as docile and hardworking.
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Even though there was a perception that women both in Connecticut and the U.S. were flocking to industry, a comparison of the percentage of women to men employed in manufacturing actually showed a decrease over the decade.
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This decrease was due to the larger influx of men into the work force, and the growth of heavy industry, still wholly reserved to men.
During World War I, women’s importance in the industrial world actually diminished. Of course, just as in the 1970s and 1980s, every time a woman entered an occupation sanctioned for generations as a pursuit for men only, attention was called to the fact by the woman’s co-workers and in some cases by the press. In Connecticut, a “Survey of Opportunities for Women in Industry” was conducted by the state Council of Defense. A Department of Women in Industry was established in the state which, through the U.S. Employment service in Connecticut, helped recruit women for government contract work in factories. The Department paraded before the press a series of photographs to show the wonders of women working in previously all-male industries. The publicity given these changes in the occupational status of women caused the public to believe that a large and increasing proportion of women were seeking employment outside the home. When a woman dropped out of domestic service or gave up dressmaking or came in from the tobacco fields to work in a munitions factory or to become a street-car conductor, the entire community heard of her new employment, but no one recognized that she was only moving from one occupation to another; the belief that vast numbers of women were entering the paid work force was just not true.
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So, even though the number of women working in factories increased, industry had expanded even more quickly, and proportionately more men entered these jobs than women.
Between 1910 and 1920, Connecticut experienced a 19.9 percent growth in the number of women employed with a concurrent population increase of 23.9 percent, and a growth of 19.8 percent in the entire work force. One contributing factor to the seemingly low work force growth rates compared to general population is that by the time the 1920 Census was taken, many employers had laid off employees due to the end of the war and the loss of government contracts. However, it is clear that the increased number of women in the work force did not expand disproportionately with the growth in population. It is also true that the women workers did not take over many skilled or high paying “male jobs.”