This article was first presented at the Conference on Comparative Social History, Northwestern University, April 1986. It was substantially revised and completed while the author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I am grateful for financial support provided by National Endowment for the Humanities grant no.RA-20037–88, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship. My thanks to the members of the Minnesota Social History Seminar, the Stanford Sociology Department Colloquium, and the Bay Area French History Seminar for their helpful comments.

1. By 1940, clerical work was characterized by an extremely segregated work force, with women limited to jobs with little possibility for advancement. Men in clerical occupations also were limited to specific jobs, but these were on longer career ladders. Goldin, Claudia, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (New York, 1990), 66.Google Scholar Other recent studies which analyze historical evidence to further understanding of the sex segregation of occupations include Samuel Cohen. The Process of Occupational Sex-Typing: The Feminization of Clerical Labor in Great Britiain (Philadelphia, 1985)Google Scholar; and Milkman, Ruth, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War Two (Champaign, 1987).Google Scholar

2. Sen, Amartya, “Gender and Cooperative Conflicts”. in Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development ed. Tinker, Irene (New York, 1990), 131.Google ScholarIdem.“Economics and the Family”, Asian Development Review 1 (1983): 18–19Google Scholar, explicitly rejects Gary Becker's notion that “intrafamily allocation of work and commodities should be seen in terms of an ‘as if’ market with implicit prices”, and argues instead that “seeing family economics as a bargaining problem with cooperative conflicts leaves the normative question open”. This is helpful to historians who often have little evidence about norms or subjective views of actors in working-class families in the past. Bargaining in this sense is not a formal process but the outcome of day-to-day decision making. in which the process is not necessarily subjectively conceived as “bargaining”. See also Hartmann, Heidi I., “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex”, Signs 1 (1976): 137–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar:idem. , “The Family as Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework”, Signs 6 (1981): 366–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar: idem. and Markusen., Ann R., “Contemporary Marxist Theory and Practice: A Feminist Critique”, Review of Radical Political Economics 12 (1980): 87–94Google Scholar: Humphries, Jane, “The Working Class Family, Women's Liberation, and Class Struggle: The Case of Nineteenth-Century British History,” Review of Radical political Economics 9 (1977): 25–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar: idem., “An Open Letter (Response to Hartmann and Markusen)”, Review of Radical Political Economics 12 (1980): 94Google Scholar: and Sen, Gita. “The Sexual Division of Labor and the Working-Class Family: Towards a Conceptual Synthesis of Class Relations and the Subordination of Women,” Review of Radical Political Economics 12(1980): 76–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See Saxonhouse, Gary and Wright, Gavin. “Two Forms of Cheap Labor in Textile History,” in Saxonhouse, and Wright, , eds., Technique, Spirit and Form in the Making of the Modern Economies: Essays in Honor of William N. Parker (Greenwich, 1984)Google Scholar: and Leslie Page Moch and Tilly, Louise A., “Joining the Urban World: Occupation, Family and Migration,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27 (January 1985): 33–56.Google Scholar

4. Tilly, Louise A.. “Worker Families and Occupation in Industrial France,” Tocqueville Review 5 (1983): 317–35.Google Scholar

5. The Roubaix and Amiens material cited here is part of a larger research project on family and class from 1850 to 1914 in the cities of Amiens, Anzin, Avesnes-les-Aubert. and Roubaix. The chief sources are census nominal lists of individuals within households, contemporary sociological surveys, and government and company reports on industry (three government investigations – of the textile, shoe-making. and garment industries–were completed in the first decade of this century).

6. Motte, Gaston. Roubaix à travers les âges (Roubaix, 1946)Google Scholar: and Toulemonde, Jacques, Naisance d'une métropole: Roubaix et Tourcoing au XIXe siècle (Tourcoing, 1966).Google Scholar

7. Archives départementales du Nord (ADN) M264.8., Rapport pour l'année 1876: Questionnaire destiné aux Commissions cantonales d' hygiène et de salubrité.

8. Unless otherwise indicated, all census-based data are calculated from a ten-percent sample of individuals in households from the nominal lists of the 1872 and 1906 census of Roubaix and Amiens.

9. Proportion of children in school was calculated from school registration figures in Rapport sur l'administration et la situation des affaires de la ville de Roubaix pendant l' année 1872 presenté par M. le Maire au Conseil municipal (Roubaix, 1873)Google Scholar and Rapport sur l' administration et la situation des affaires de la ville de Roubaix pendant l'année 1906 presenté par M. le Maire au Conseil municipal (Roubaix, 1907)Google Scholar, and age distribution of census sample.

10. Goblet, Alfred, Le Peignage de la laine á Roubaix –Tourcoing et son évolution économique et sociale (Lille, 1903);Google ScholarDescamps, Paul, “La Flandre française: Les Patrons de l'industrie textile,” La Science sociale 66 (1910): 18–104Google Scholar: and Quillien, Nicole, “La Main de'oeuvre feminine textile dans I'arrondissement de Lille — 1890–1914” (Mémoire de recherches pour la Maîtrise d'histoire, Université de Lille, 1969).Google Scholar

11. Goblet, , Le Peignage: Paul Descamps, “La Flandre françhise: L'Ouvrier de l'industrie textile,” La Science sociale 59 (1909)Google Scholar, entire issue: and idem, “La Flandre françhise: Les Patrons.”

12. Quillien, “La Main d'oeuvre feminine,” 49–53.

13. Descamps, “La Flandre françhise: L'Ouvrier de l'industrie textile.” 9.

14. Translations of French occupation titles, names of machines, and descriptions of how they worked from Bureau de la statistique générale. c 1910: entry 4.40 (“Filature, spinning, Spinnerei”).

15. In contrast to this account, the factory inspector for the Roubaix region reported in his testimony to the Enquéte textile (five years earlier) that there were more métiers continus in Roubaix than renvideurs self-acting. Assemblée nationale, Chambre des deputés, Commission d'enquête sur l'industrie textile. Procès-verbaux de la Commission chargée de proceder à une enquête sur I'état de l'industrie textile et la condition des ouvriers tisseurs, vol. 2 (Paris, 1906), 231.Google Scholar

16. Descamps, “La Flandre française: L'Ouvrier de l'industrie textile,” 11.

17. Goblet, Le Peignage.

18. ADN, M 625/106 and 107. Rapport de la Chambre sydicale ouvrière de Roubaix et environs, à la Commission d'enquête parlementaire textile.

19. The manuscript notes of the Enquête textile mention that one (“a”) of the wool-spinning mills that was visited contained métiers continus a retordre (a separate thread-twisting process) run by women or children, in addition to mules run by male spinners, each one assisted by a male premier rattacheur (chief piecer), and boy and girl bobbin spoolers. Archives nationales [AN] C7318 Roubaix 1922, “Enquête parlementaire textile,” 593–612.Google Scholar

20. Descamps, ”La Flandre française: L'Ouvrier de l'industrie textile.” Hilden, Patricia, Working Women and Socialist Politics in France, 1880–1914: A Regional Study (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, declares that “few jobs in the mills were clearly assigned by sex – a fact which led to widespread bourgeois horror at the ‘immorality’ of such daily fraternization on the shop floors” (7), and that “almost every stage of this production process employed a combination of men, women, and children of both sexes” and that there was a “lack of clear-cut division of labor” between 1880 and 1914 (90). She is here confusing, on the one hand, occupations and jobs and, on the other, working in the same process and having the same job. Many textile occupation titles had both feminine and masculine forms, for women and men could theoretically do them. In any particular mill, men and women seldom held the same job, although they might be working in the same room or process. Workers with the same occupation in the same mill might be working in different rooms, with different machines. Thus, in the cotton-spinning mill described by Descamps. there was a hierarchical division of labor by sex at the automatic mules: only men were spinners and piecers, whereas women and children could be bobbin spoolers. In this process. men, women, and children did work together. Women also did most of the preparatory tasks, in separate rooms. In mills with throstle frante or ring spinning machines. women might be spinners with child assistants. (In the wool-combing mill practices described by Goblet (and echoed by Descamps). triage was done primarily by men (although some employers were attempting to change the sex designation of the job and hire poorly paid women in the place of expensive men): the étirage, the next process. was done exclusively by women: these jobs were done in separate rooms. The wool combing proper and weaving were sometimes done by either sex, depending on the machinery used and the employers' decision: whether men's and women's jobs were the same or whether they were working in the same rooms is not indicated by occupational titles. Foremen (contremaitres) who supervised women workers necessarily worked with them, of course. Wool spinning resembled cotton spinning in permitting women to be assistants to spinners but excluding them from being spinners themselves. There was no simple mixing, much carefully orchestrated segregation (which, it will be recalled, does not imply spatial separation or exclusivity to one sex, but distribution of the sexes in occupations or jobs disproportionately to their representation in the work force as a whole).

21. Ministère du Commerce 1894–97; Franchomme, Georges, “Roubaix de 1870 à 1900” (paper for Diplome d'études supérieures d'histoire, Université de Lille, 1960)Google Scholar; and Quillien, “La Main d'oeuvre feminine.”

22. The complex classification system carried with it an intricately stratified wage system, making it difficult for the textile inquiry committee to reach any general conclusions on wages. My evaluation of the female–male wage ratio is based on examination of numerous wage lists (for jobs in specific plants) recorded in the manuscript transcript of the committee's hearing in Roubaix. AN C7318 1922. “Enquête parlementaire textile.”

23. Descamps, “La Flandre française: L'Ouvrier de I'industrie textile,” 61.

24. Tilly, Louise A. and Dubnoff, Steven J., “Families and Wage Earning in Arniens and Roubaix, 1906: Measures of Income Adequacy and Household Response in Two French Cities” (unpublished paper, 1978): and Board of Trade (Great Britain), Cost of Living in French Towns: Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of France, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty, Cd 4512, 1909.Google Scholar

25. Assemblée nationale, Enquête sur l'état de l'indusnrie textile et la condition des ouvriers tisseurs, vol. 2, 195–96.Google Scholar

26. ADN M 625/1, Rapport de la Chambre syndicate ouvrière de Roubaix en environs.

27. AN C7318 922, “Enquête parlementaire textile,” 610.

28. See Dorchies, Emile, L'industrie à domicile de la confection des vêtements pour hommes dans la campagne lilloise (Lille, 1907).Google Scholar

29. Descamps “La Flandre française: Les Patrons.”

30. No female workers gave testimony to the textile industry investigation committee; only men signed the union's published statement, and the same men testified.

31. Lami, E. O.. Voyages pittoresques et techniques en France et à l'étranger. Le Nord de la France et excursions en Belgique (Paris, 1892).Google Scholar

32. Occupational data for Amiens 1872 was kindly provided by R. Burr Litchfield based on his sample of 1: 10 houses listed in the manuscript census of that year. My thanks to Professor Litchfield for his help.

33. Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale, Office du travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la chaussure (Paris, 1914), 374.Google Scholar

34. Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale, Office du travail. Enquêre sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la lingerie, vol. 3 (Paris, 1909). 156.Google Scholar

35. Ibid.

36. Aftalion, Albert, Le développement da la fabrique et du travail à domicile dans les industries de I'habillement (Paris, 1906), 74–75.Google Scholar

37. Ministère du travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la lingerie 221.

38. AN C7318 Amiens 1922. “Enquête parlementaire textile,” 805–18.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 782–97.

40. Ibid., 805–18.

41. Ibid., 782–97. It is possible that Amiens' industrial backwardness lay behind these women spinners, or it may as well have been a matter of better alternative jobs for men in the more diverse economy of Amiens.

42. Ibid., 813.

43. Ibid., 707.

44. The evidence for the loss of textile jobs suggests the contrary, as do employment patterns in the 1906 census sample. Ibid., 825–29. This may be explained because textile mills were more likely to be found in suburban communities, while the census data cover the commune only.

45. Ministére du travail. Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans l'industrie de la chaussure, 385, 377.

46. Mouillon, Marthe-Jultette, “Un Exemple de migration rurale de la Somme dans la capitale: Domestique de la belle époque à Paris (1904–1912),” Etudes de la région parisienne, 27 (July 1970): 1–9.Google Scholar

47. Thédor, Diane, “Travail des enfants dans les manufactures amienoises au XIXe siècle” (Travail d'Etudes et de Recherches, Faculté des lettres d'Amiens, 1972).Google Scholar

48. Ministère du travail, Enquête sur le travail à domicile dans I'industrie de la lingerie, 218, 221.