Hat Makers at Ayer, Houston & Co., photograph by W. C. Rideout, Portland, Maine, 1893. Courtesy of the Maine Historical Society.
Hat Makers at Ayer, Houston & Co., photograph by W. C. Rideout, Portland, Maine, 1893. Courtesy of the Maine Historical Society.
Women and girls were never trained in the apprentice system, but they were often indentured into service. When they were indentured, they typically served as domestic help, cooking and cleaning houses. The artist chose this scene to demonstrate women's work outside the home decades after the decline of the decline of the apprentice system.
The women in this photograph are working in a factory. No woman made an entire hat; she only finished the headwear by adding decorative trim after male workers had felted the material and shaped the hats. In this factory, everyone did piecework, performing the same repetitive tasks on all the pieces in order to complete products faster.