(4) EXTENT AND CAUSES OF NON-EMPLOYMENT.

The following table shows the extent and the causes of non-employ

ment.

TABLE 39. Extent and Causes of Non-employment for Families of Home Workers on Wearing Apparel.

Five hundred and eighty-one families of home workers on Wearing Apparel reported as to the extent and cause of non-employment during the year. Of this number, 207 were out of work part of the year on account of industrial causes, usually dull season, 58 were voluntarily idle, and 52 remained out of work through illness.

2. JEWELRY AND SILVERWARE.

BY MARGARET HUTTON ABELS.

A. Introductory.

Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut have come to be the leading States in the Union in the manufacture of jewelry. In Boston, in revolutionary times, the Revere family did a thriving business as gold and silversmiths. A little later, in North Attleborough, a Frenchman, remembered only as "the foreigner" and Serile Dodge in Providence, were making breastpins, ear-drops, watch keys, and silver spoons. When Nehemiah Dodge, the pioneer of jewelry manufacture in the modern sense, introduced machinery and invented rolled plate, enterprising Attleborough jewelers on the pretense of purchasing presents for country cousins are said to have ascertained the secrets of the Providence manufacturers and thus launched Attleborough upon its career as a jewelry manufacturing town. For more than 100 years, through periods of prosperity and seasons of depression, the industry has increased and spread from these centers. The fall in the price of silver in 1893 and 1894 led to its use in a great variety of silver novelties so that nearly all leading jewelers became silversmiths also and it is increasingly difficult to separate the two industries. In this study no attempt has been made to make such a separation.

How long home work has been carried on in the jewelry towns can not be ascertained, but one firm reported the employment of outside workers for over 50 years. It is in Attleborough, Plainville, Mansfield, Taunton, and Norton that most of the firms employing home labor are located. The Boston jewelers, who never adopted the Dodge methods and even now do chiefly order work upon the best grades of jewelry, employ no home workers.

For this study 252 jewelry and silverware firms were interviewed, 197 in person, and 55 by correspondence. Of these, 70 employed home workers, 66 being in Attleborough and vicinity, and four in Cambridge, Somerville, and North Swansea. Among the products of these factories are included all kinds of jewelry and silverware, but those of interest in a study of home work are mesh bags, chains, enameled pins and brooches, and a general line of the cheaper grades of jewelry.

B. Processes and Rates of Pay.

Home work processes connected with the jewelry industry may be divided into four groups: (1) Various processes upon mesh bags; (2) turning, linking, and soldering chains; (3) painting on enamel; and (4) miscellaneous processes mostly upon very cheap grades of jewelry.

(1) MESH BAGS.

By far the largest number of workers is employed upon mesh bags for 13 firms. There are three kinds of mesh: Ring, lock (known also as hook and eye and unbreakable), and punch (called also fish scale and coat of mail). There is a bewildering number of sizes and styles of bags and an equally bewildering variation in rates of pay for home work. The size of the ring, the degree of difficulty of the pattern, the season of the year, the number of contractors concerned, the nationality of the worker, and other considerations enter into the fixing of rates of pay.

The following list of processes and rates will give an idea of the range of prices in 1912 and 1913 and the usual price for some of the common styles and sizes of bags and the processes connected with their making:

Processes and Rates of Pay for Home Work on Mesh Bags.

Each bag is begun with a chain of alternating single and double links. If the double link occurs 15 times the size of the bag is said to be 30 doubles.

A full bag is one which is to be shirred at the top before hanging in a six-inch frame. Often the price is the same for the full as for the plain bag although the former requires more work.

Fringe is sometimes made separately by special workers to be linked to the tops or bottoms of plain bags.

1 A linking process on which there is a patent has been omitted from this list.

Insertion,.

$0.10 a yard.

Insertion and daisies are also made separately and are sometimes of intricate patterns.

Bands,

$0.25 to .45 a yard.

Bands are the plain straight portion of certain styles of bags. Children often make the bands while adult workers add the tops, fringes, etc.

Opera tops,

2. Closing bags (bottom and one side),

.25 a yard.

.08 to .54 a dozen.

Bags from some factories go through the hands of three sets of workers, being linked up by one set, closed by another, and hung by a third.

3. Hanging bags on frames,

Three-inch bags (13 rings at top),

.09 to

.24 a dozen.
.17 a dozen.

Bags are usually hung on the frames in the factory by hand or by machines which press and rivet them to the frames, but some firms send them out to home workers.

Bags poorly made are often sent to some experienced worker or agent to be repaired. Mesh made in sheets by machinery often has rents in it which are repaired and soldered by workers at home.

This mesh comes from the factory in rolls twice the width of the bag to be made. It must be separated with the fingers, made into the desired shape, and closed at the side and bottom. Trimming bags with spangles,

.

.02 each.

The spangles are put on with the rings which close the bottom of the purse.

Most of the work upon mesh bags consists in the linking or hitching up of ring mesh. Rings made of silver or German silver are weighed out to the worker and instructions given as to the style of bag desired.

Anyone who can use pliers can readily learn to make ring purses. Each ring is taken up with the pliers from a pad on which the rings are spread; it is opened by being pressed against a grooved thumb ring worn upon the left hand, or against a screw in a bench pin; it is then put into place in the bag and closed with the pliers. The same tools and methods are used for closing the bags at the side and bottom and for linking them to the frames. Sometimes the bags must be shirred at the

Fig. 2. Ring on which the stone was glued at home (three cents a gross).

Fig. 3.

Lock mesh bag as it comes from the home worker.

Fig. 4. - Wooden-headed hat pin on which seed pearls were cemented (36 cents a dozen).
Fig. 5. Ring mesh bag, the chain having been put on in factory (six cents to eight cents apiece).
Figs. 6 and 8. Metal watch fobs, assembled at home (50 cents a gross).

Punch purse, ready for sale.

Fig. 7.