Let us speak first of watch-cleaning. What are the qualifications of
a good watch-cleaner? Nimble, sensitive fingers, neatness, and
carefulness.
Now put your finger there, and let me show you a watch-cleaner. He
works in a window only two squares from my Boston residence. He
weighs about two hundred and twenty pounds, and has a fist big
enough to knock down an ox. The whole thing looked so comical to me,
I thought one day I would go in and plague him a little. So, after a
little chat about watches in general, I said:--
"By the way, it has occurred to me that women might work at watch-
cleaning.
"Women," said he, "why, they couldn't clean watches. They haven't
the skill, they haven't the mechanical genius for it, sir. I don't
go in for none of your 'woman's rights,' sir; I think women should
attend to their own business."
"And, pray, what do you regard as their business?"
"Why, staying at home in their own sphere, and attending to their
domestic concerns; taking care of their children, and keeping their
husband's clothes mended."
I saw at once that the case was altogether too deep for me, and so I
simply remarked:--
"Yes, to be sure, of course; and is it not strange, that they should
not be willing to stay at home, and rock their babies, especially
the seventy thousand in the state of Massachusetts who can never
expect to have husbands?"
Cleaning watches is a business that should at once pass into the
hands of women. The opinion that they have not the requisite
mechanical capacity to take a watch to pieces and put it together
again, is the opinion of a goose. They can do the work quicker and
better than men. It is an employment that naturally belongs to them.
In the watch-making establishment at Waltham, several hundred
bright, intelligent young women find employment and good pay.
"There is a manufactory in England, where five hundred women are
employed in making the interior chains for chronometers. They are
preferred to men on account of their being naturally more dexterous
with their fingers, and, therefore, being found to require less
training."
It may be said, in one word, that, taking the world together, there
are many, many thousand women employed in manufacturing watches.
They do every part of the work, except what is called finishing, or
putting the pieces together, and in several establishments they do
even this, and finish the very best class of chronometer watches.
The making of watch chains is a business adapted to the delicate
fingers, and to the patience of women. Accordingly thousands are
occupied in this specialty.