TABLE 18.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as textile-mill operatives.

a Includes also the few foreign-born white whose parents were natives of the United States.

TABLE 18.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as textile-mill operatives-Continued.

a Includes also the few foreign-born white whose parents were natives of the United States.
Less than 0.1 per cent.

Of the women and girl workers who immigrated from French Canada, almost two-thirds (63.7 per cent) are employed in the textile mills. But in the second generation the proportion is not much more than one-third, being 35.8 per cent. No other nationality is represented in the textile mills by percentages that approach these in either generation. The next highest percentage is that for Polish immigrant female workers, of whom 18.8 per cent are textile-mill operatives. In the second generation of this nationality the percentage declines to 7.2. In the case of the Scotch the decline is from 12.8 in the first generation to 7.8 in the second; in the case of the English and Welsh from 15.8 to 9.2.

In the case of the Irish, on the other hand, the percentage of textilemill operatives is greater in the second generation of female breadwinners than it is in the first. This is true to a less marked degree of the Germans. It will be found that in each of these two instances the percentage employed in the cotton mills is smaller in the second generation than in the first, but that this decrease is more than offset by the increase in the percentage employed in other and less important branches of the textile industries. For some reason the second generation of mill operatives seem disposed to discriminate against the cotton mill. In the first generation of French Canadians, for instance, the number of female breadwinners (23,073) in the cotton mills is more than three times the number in other textile mills (7,168); but in the second generation the numerical difference between these two

classes of textile-mill operatives largely disappears, there being 6,258 in cotton, as against 4,942 in other textile mills. The Irish show the same tendency but to a more striking degree, the change in the relative importance of the two classes of mill operatives here distinguished being as follows: In the first generation of Irish, 8,275 women and girls in cotton mills, as against 10,027 in other textile mills; in the second generation, 9,873 in cotton, as against 30,639 in other textile mills.

CLERICAL PURSUITS.

While the occupation group consisting of clerks, stenographers, and bookkeepers includes comparatively few immigrant women or girls, it attracts large numbers and a greatly increased proportion of the second generation of female workers. Of the 245,613 females reported as employed in these occupations at the last census, only 20,467, or 8.3 per cent of the total, were foreign-born, while 99,708, or 40.6 per cent of the total, were the native white whose parents were foreign-born.

The relative importance of the first and second generation in each of the three occupations included in this group is indicated by the following tabular statement:

As shown by the table next presented, of the first generation of female breadwinners only 2.3 per cent are employed in clerical pursuits. For the second generation the proportion is 8.4 per cent.

TABLE 19.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as clerks, stenographers, bookkeepers, etc.

a Includes bookkeepers and accountants, clerks and copyists, stenographers and typewriters.
Includes also the few foreign-born white whose parents were natives of the United States.

TABLE 19.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as clerks, stenographers, bookkeepers, etc.— Continued.

a Includes also the few foreign-born white whose parents were natives of the United States.

The increased percentage of clerks, stenographers, and bookkeepers in the second generation of female breadwinners is very noticeable in each nationality or foreign-parentage class distinguished in the foregoing table. It is especially marked in the case of the Austrians, Hungarians, Irish, and Swedes. For the Austrians the percentage advances from 1.7 in the first generation to 11 in the second; for the Hungarians, from 2.1 to 12.5. Exceptionally large percentages are recorded for the second generations of English Canadians and Russians, but as compared with the first generation the contrast is not so marked as it is in some other nationalities, including those just mentioned.

There is no other nationality which has so small a percentage of clerks, etc., in the second generation of female breadwinners as the French Canadians. The Poles rank next to them in this respect, and then the Bohemians.

SALESWOMEN.

In the year 1900 the census reported 17,967 immigrant women and girls employed as saleswomen, representing 2 per cent of the total number of female immigrants employed in all occupations. In the second generation, consisting of the native white whose parents were immigrants, the number of saleswomen increases to 68,445 and the percentage to 5.8. The occupation has therefore almost three times the relative importance in the second generation that it has in the first.