¹ Hakim, Catherine, Occupational Segregation: A Comparative Study of the Degree and Pattern of Differentiation between Men's and Women's Work in Britain, the United States and Other Countries, Research Paper no. 9 (London: Department of Employment, 1979)Google Scholar; Armstrong, Pat and Armstrong, Hugh, The Double Ghetto (Toronto, 1978)Google Scholar; Armstrong, Pat, Labour Pains (Toronto, 1985).Google Scholar

² An exception to this pattern is Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, “The Sex-Labelling of Jobs,” Industrial Relgtions, 7 (05 1968), 214–34Google Scholar. Community and industry variations in access to skilled occupations are clear in Aldrich, Mark and Albelda, Randy, “Determinants of Women's Wages during the Progressive Era,” Explorations in Economic History, 17, (Fall 1980), 332–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Alison M. Scott makes this same point about the ways in which aggregation disguises the “full extent and function of gender segregation” in her “Industrialisation, Gender Segregation and Stratification Theory,” in Gender and Stratification, Crompton, Rosemary and Mann, Michael, eds. (Cambridge, 1986), 157.Google Scholar

³ Stephenson, Mary, “Women's Wages and Job Segregation,” in Labor Market Segmentation, Edwards, Richard, Reich, Michael, and Gordon, David, eds. (Lexington, Mass., 1973), 245–46Google Scholar. Ruth Milkman has made such distinctions in her longitudinal study of male unionists and sex segregation in the U.S. case. See Milkman, Ruth, “Organising the Sexual Division of Labor: Historical Perspectives on ‘Women's Work’ and the American Labor Movement,” Socialist Register, no. 49, 10:1 (1980), 95–150.Google Scholar

⁴ Smith, David M., The Industrial Archaeology of the East Midlands (London, 1966), 27Google Scholar; Church, Roy A., Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town: Nottingham 1815–1900 (London, 1966), 259Google Scholar, 262; Erickson, Charlotte, British Industrialists: Steel and Hosiery 1850–1950 (Cambridge, 1959), 94, 176–78. The Canadian factory hosiery industry began, as did the English, in the 1850s; Penman's, the leading Canadian firm, dates from 1868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Oppenheimer, “Sex Labelling,” 228; Alexander, Sally, Women's Work in Nineteenth Century London (London, 1983), 22Google Scholar. F. A. Wells, the modern authority on the hosiery trade, notes the power of prefactory custom in factories in the 1890s, in Wells, The British Hosiery Trade (London, 1935), 190.Google Scholar

⁶ I am grateful to Dr. Stanley Chapman of the University of Nottingham for pointing out these early examples to me and sending me evidence for one active knitting centre. In the framework village of Ruddington there were 12 female framework knitters in 1841, 29 in 1851, and 14 in 1861. Roughly 5 percent of all frameworkers were female in this village in these years. Census Enumerators Returns, 1841–1861.

⁷ These patterns are charted by Osterud, Nancy Grey, “Gender Divisions and the Organisation of Work in the Leicester Hosiery Industry,” in Unequal Opportunity, John, Angela V., ed. (Oxford, 1986), 45–70Google Scholar; and Rose, Sonya, “Gender Segregation in the Transition to the Factory: The English Hosiery Industry 1850–1910,” Feminist Studies, 13:1 (Spring 1987), 163–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ William Felkin, the best source on nineteenth-century knitting technology, describes the circular, known also as the griswold, as a ladies' machine. Felkin, William, History of Machine Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers (London, 1967 [1867]), 496Google Scholar. Wells, F. A. describes the differentials in adaptation to steam power in The British Hosiery and Knitwear Industry (London, 1972), 174Google Scholar. On the dominance of women-run circulars in the early factory stage, see Gumham, Richard, A History of the Trade Union Movement in the Hosiery and Knitwear Industry 1776–1976 (Leicester, 1976), 34Google Scholar; Erickson, , British Industrialists, 181Google Scholar; Felkin, , History, 507, 543–44Google Scholar; and Wells, , British Hosiery and Knitwear, 156.Google Scholar

⁹ Felkin, , History, 498Google Scholar; Wells, , British Hosiery and Knitwear Industry, 156Google Scholar; Royal Commission on Labour, 1892, c 6795-VI, vol. XXXVI, 549, British Parliamentary Papers [hereafter Labour Commission 1892]Google Scholar; “Workmen's Grievances,” Knitters Circular and Monthly Record (05 1895), 2Google Scholar; “Stockingers Past-Present-Future,” Hosiery Trade Journal [hereafter HTJ] (01 1900), 7;Google Scholar “Hosiery Manufacture—Past and Present,” HTJ (07 1905), 243Google Scholar; Taylor, Sandra, “The Effect of Marriage on Job Possibilities for Women and the Ideology of the Home: Nottingham 1890–1930,” Oral History, 5 (Autumn 1977), 50.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Hinckley, 10 November 1920, National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers (NUHKW), DE 1655 3/3 Leicester Record Office (LRO); HTJ (06 1914)Google Scholar; Labour Commission, 1892, c 6795-III, vol. XXXVI, pt. 3, 579; Leicester, 21 October 1922, NUHKW, DE 1655 2/7, LRO; Gurnham, , History, 55Google Scholar, 108; Davis, William, “Notes and Comments on Trade Topics,” HTJ (09 1919), 500Google Scholar; Chamberlain, John, “The Future of the Knitting Industry,” HTJ (05 1926), 80Google Scholar; Osterod, “Gender Divisions,” 64. On the influence of local factors on gender divisions in the Scottish hosiery industry, see Gulvin, Clifford, The Scottish Hosiery and Knitwear Industry 1680–1980 (Edinburgh 1984), 81Google Scholar, 114. The post-World War II Working Party on the Hosiery saw labour availability as central in the reshaping of gender divisions in knitting. See Board of Trade, Working Party Reports (Hosiery) (London 1946), 38–39Google Scholar. For similar patterns in the woven textile industry, see Lazonick, William, “Industral Relations and Technological Change: The Case of the Self-Acting Mule,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2 (09 1979), 239Google Scholar, 249; and Saxonhouse, Gary and Wright, Gavin, “Two Forms of Cheap Labor in Textile History,” Research in Economic History, Supp. 3, 1984, 3–31.Google Scholar

¹¹ See, for example, HTJ (06 1905), 199Google Scholar; and “Development of the Seamless Hosiery Machine,” HTJ (09 1918), 434–36. Advertisements noting the affinity of the new circulars to unskilled female labour appeared in almost every issue.Google Scholar

¹² “Stockingers Past and Present,” HTJ (01 1900), 7Google ScholarPubMed; “Knitters and Knitting, New and Old,” HTJ (06 1902), 167Google Scholar; HTJ (01 1907), 7Google Scholar; “Editorial,” HTJ (04 1910), 138Google ScholarPubMed; Chamberlain, , “Future,” HTJ (01 1919), 80.Google Scholar

¹³ Gumham's History is the best study of the hosiery unions; see especially chs. 3–5. See also Wells, 239–40. The active role of unions in shaping gender divisions in the workplace is discussed in Milkman, “Organising,” 101; and in Rubery, Jill, “Structured Labour Markets, Worker Organisation and Low Pay,” in The Economics of Women and Work, Amusden, Alice, ed. (Harmondsworth, 1980), 244.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Labour Commission, 1892, c 6795-IX, group c schedules, 49–50; Wells, 1935, 239; Gumham, , History, 105–06Google Scholar. John Benson has written recently about this pattern; Benson, , “Work,” in The Working-Class in England 1875–1914, Benson, John, ed. (London, 1985), 78–79.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Nottingham, 5 June 1915, NUHKW DE 1655 4/1, LRO; Leicester trades, 22 February 1918, 1 March 1919, NUHKW DE 1655 2/7, LRO; Nottingham hosiery finishers, 27 September 1921, 28 July 1927, NUHKW DE 1655 5/1, LRO; Leicester, 17 August 1920, NUHKW DE 1655 2/7, LRO.

¹⁶ “Terms of the Recent Strike,” HTJ (09 1919), 524Google ScholarPubMed; Leicester trades, 24 June 1919, NUHKW DE 1655 2/7, LRO; Nottingham, 28 August 1915, 5 February 1916, 4 March 1916, NUHKW DE 1655 4/ 1, LRO. A contemporary analysis of the use of this “unsymmetrical pressure” by male unionists is Edgeworth, F. Y., “Equal Pay to Men and Women for Equal Work,” Economic Journal, no. 128, 32 (12 1922). The quotation is at 438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Hinckley, 10 November 1920, NUHKW DE 1655 3/3, LRO; Loughborough, 15 May 1925, 20 June 1925, 17 October 1925, NUHKW DE 1655 7/1, LRO.

¹⁸ Labour Commission, 1892, c 6795-III, XXXVI, pt. 3, 577; Leicester trades, 30 January 1918, 22 February 1919, 2 March 1921, 14 March 1922, NUHKW DE 1655 2/7, LRO; Nottingham, 26 October 1919, NUHKW DE 1655 4/2, LRO.

¹⁹ HTJ (06 1921), 498Google Scholar; Ilkeston, 23 August 1920, NUHKW DE 1655 6/2 LRO; Nottingham, 27 November 1920, NUHKW DE 1655 4/2, LRO; Leicester, 24 November 1926, NUHKW DE 1655 2/7 LRO; HTJ (08 1927), 104.Google Scholar

²⁰ “Union Official's Attack on the Shift System,” and editorial response, HTJ (12 1937)Google Scholar; on “Changing Methods in the Hosiery Trade,” see the 1939 article by William Davis of the University College, Nottingham, in the Hawick Express, in Hosiery Clipping Files 1919–1939, Nottingham Local Studies Library (NLSL). See Armstrong, similarly Peter, “If It's Only Women It Doesn't Matter So Much,” in Work, Women and the Labour Market, West, Jackie, ed. (London, 1982), 32.Google Scholar

²¹ In 1919 John Chamberlain argued that this aspect of job composition “cannot be settled in the offhand manner which is sometimes used by machine builders. The number of machines workable by one operator often depends more upon the operator than the machines, and due allowance must be made for the type, sex and efficiency of the operator.” “Production of Standard Knit Goods,” HTJ (01 1919)Google Scholar. On agreements under the Joint Industrial Council see Wells, 1935, 241. The Hinckley discussion of men's and women's entitlements to American Scott and Williams Model K machines is interesting as the discussants were clearly aware that U.S. gender divisions in knitting differed from those they were establishing, Hinckley. 19 May 1920, NUHKW DE 1655 3/2, LRO; Willis, F., “Modem Seamless Automatics,” HTJ (03 1927), 64Google Scholar; “Modem Seamless Automatics,” HTJ (07 1927), 54Google Scholar; Working Party Report (Hosiery), 1946, 33Google Scholar. The most odd intervention on this question is Chamberlain, John, “Future,” HTJ (05 1926)Google Scholar, which argues that British knitters were less efficient than American knitters on seamless hose machines because more British operators were women. Seamless hose machines were run by both men and women in the U.S. as well. They were more productive, because American operators ran more heads than either men or women did under the midlands collective agreements. Baker, Elizabeth Faulkner, Technology and Women's Work (New York, 1964), 137–39Google Scholar; Working Party Report (Hosiery), 1946, 34.Google Scholar

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²³ Armstrong, in West, 30; the lending analogy is from Cockburn, Brothers, 160.

²⁴ W. E. Boswell, Lecturer, University College, Nottingham, “Training Operatives in the Hosiery Industry,” HTJ (03 1939), 56; Transcript A15, 11, Oral History Collection, NLSL.Google Scholar

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²⁷ On the effects of yarn quality on knitting see Hopewell, H. B., “The Importance of Efficient Spinning and Winding,” HTJ (05 1937), 44Google Scholar. The same arguments are made for the Canadian case by Hill, Roscoe, “Problems of Production and Quality,” Canadian Textile Journal [hereafter CTJ] (4 12 1942), 29. On the interdependence between the yarn and knitting rooms see Paris Industrial History Project—Interviews [cited hereafter as PIHP followed by the pseudonym assigned the respondent], Irene Cobbett, 13; Henry Kelly, 7.Google ScholarPubMed

²⁸ Smith, D. A., The Forks of the Grand, II (Paris, 1982), 205–07; Penman's Immigrant Registers, nos. 1–3, Paris Historical Society Collection.Google Scholar

²⁹ 1930 Appraisal, Penman's Ltd. by Canadian Appraisal Company, Penman's Archives; reconstruction of Penman's labour force from personnel and plant records. Numbers of circular knitters: 1936, male 37, female 25; 1948, male 45, female 21. In 1948 48 percent of knitters on American circulars and 28 percent of knitters on British circulars were women. On burson knitting see PIHP: Frank Boyle, 5–7, 22; on knitting foremen see PIHP: Charles Harrison, Sam Howell, Clarence Cobbett.

³⁰ PIHP: Irene Cobbett, 7, 8, 10, 13; Alice Russell, 7; Charles Harrison, 30; Horace Timpson, 8, 11.

³¹ CTJ (01 1916), 12Google Scholar; “Philadelphia Hosiery and Knit-Goods Exhibition,” CTJ (30 04 1918), 161Google Scholar; Hill, Roscoe, “Canada's Knitting Industries,” CTJ (3 03 1939), 20Google Scholar; Working Parry Report (Hosiery), 1946, noted this feature of the Canadian industry, 199.Google Scholar

³² “Circular Knitting Machine Maintenance,” CTJ (24 04 1942), 36, 38.Google Scholar

³³ “Circular Hosiery: Some Notes on Costing and Management,” CTJ (21 09 1934), 26.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Penman's Limited, What Penman's Offer You (Paris, 1923), 8, Paris Historical Society Collection.Google Scholar

³⁷ PIHP: Annie Hedley, 11; Irene Cobbett, 5, 6, 12–15; Alice Russell, 5, 8, 10–12, 16; Horace Timpson, 13; Sam Howell, 27; Paul Nelles, 11.

³⁸ Hill, Roscoe, “Canada's Knitting Industry,” CTJ (3 03 1939), 20, 34–35;Google ScholarHill, Roscoe, “Training Knitting Machine Fixers,” CTJ (24 04 1942), 35–36Google Scholar; Working Party Report (Hosiery), 1946, 34, 200; PIHP: Charles Harrison, 7; Horace Timpson, 8–9, 13; Irene Cobbett, 12; Alice Russell, 5.Google Scholar

³⁹ The 1946–1948 organising campaign and the 1949 strike will be the topic of another paper. Records of the campaign are preserved ia the Parent-Rowley Collection, MG 31 B 19 PAC.

⁴⁰ The recruitment of young male knitters is evident in the declining relative age and length of work histories of men between these two years. In 1936 women knitters had worked an average of 14.9 years (n=30); men, 23.4 years (n=43). In 1948 women knitters had worked an average of 16.7 years (n=36); men, 18.1 (n=56). In 1936 41 percent of knitters were women (n=73), while only 36 percent were women in 1948 (n=88).

⁴¹ PIHP: Charles Harrison, 7; Paul Nelles, 5, 6, 11, 13; Horace Timpson, 9, 10, 17; Clarence Cobbett, 22.

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⁴⁴ Rubery, “Structured Labour Markets,” 250, 243–44.

⁴⁵ Stephenson, “Women's Wages,” 251–53.

⁴⁶ Milkman, “Organising,” 102–3; Alexander, “Women's Work,” 65; Hartmann, Heidi, “Capitalism, Patriarchy and Job segregation by Sex,” in Women and the Workplace, Blaxall, Martha and Reagan, Barbara, eds. (Chicago, 1976), 137–70.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Alexander, “Women's Work,” 65.

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