The wave of organization reached at last the women workers. In 1830 the
well-known Philadelphia philanthropist, Mathew Carey, asserted that
there were in the cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore about 20,000 women who could not by constant employment for
sixteen hours out of twenty-four earn more than $1.25 a week. These were
mostly seamstresses and tailoresses, umbrella makers, shoe binders,
cigar makers, and book binders. In New York there was in 1835 a Female
Union Association, in Baltimore a United Seamstresses' Society, and in
Philadelphia probably the first federation of women workers in this
country. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a "Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity
for the Protection and Promotion of Female Industry" operated during
1833 and 1834 among the shoe binders and had at one time 1000 members,
who, like the seamstresses, were home workers and earned scanty wages.
Where nearly every trade was in motion, it did not take long to discover
a common direction and a common purpose. This was expressed in city
"trades' unions," or federations of all organized trades in a city, and
in its ascendency over the individual trade societies.
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