title: Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America
author:  David M. Katzman 
description: Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America [May 01, 1981] Katzman, David M.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Chapter 3_
  
  
  Urbanization and Industrialization, 1865-1885
  
  
  Between 1870 and 1890, the number of Wisconsin female industrial workers rose
  from 3,784 to 12,751. Besides maintaining homes, women found a variety of ways
  in which to become wage earners. In Milwaukee, the manufacture of clothing,
  including knits, gloves, hats, and caps, employed sixty-seven hundred women
  pieceworkers, some working at home rather than in factories. Tailors also
  often farmed out their piecework to women at home. Women edged their way into
  male-dominated fields, including those of factory-made clothing, hosiery, and
  knitting mills.[1](Kort_9781440221248_epub_c16_r1.html#d7e41649195)
  
  
  Retailing and the office and counting rooms of businesses and manufacturers
  remained male domains at the end of the Civil War decade. Just ninety-eight
  women in Wisconsin worked as clerks and accountants in retail stores,
  according to an 1870 occupational census. Change came slowly as more women
  moved into retail; a