Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1909 — Milliners Multiplying. [ARTICLE]

Milliners Multiplying.

Millinery ranks fourteenth among the pursuits in which women are engaged as bread winners. It is a distinctly woman’s occupation, 94.4 per cent, of all milliners in the United States being women. Only two occupations have a larger proportion of women; dressmaking, with 97.5 per cent., and housekeeping with 94.7 per cent. Seamstresses are 91.9 per cent, of them.women. These four occupations were the only occupations in which women constitute over nine-tenths of all persons employed.

Almost nine-tenths of the women milliners are native whites, In the large cities more than half the milliners were under 25 years of age. Probably wheh they exceed that age they marry and if they remain in business it is done in the husband’s name and the census credits him with being a merchant. In 1890 there was one milliner to every 323 women 15 years of age and over. In 1900 one to every 285. This change is thought to reflect the advance ip the prosperity of the country, since millinery to a certain extent is a luxury, and in family budgets forms an item that probably responds Quickly to fluctuations in income. It the manual training schools and technical institutions continue to run out milliners in the next ten years as they have In the last decade there will be one milliner to every hundred women, and in the not fir distant future.—Millinery Trade Review.