Twilight of the Velocipede: Typesetting Races Before the Age of Linotype

Nevertheless, the Boston contest marked a watershed moment for women printers, coinciding with a growing movement of women pressing their way into big city composing rooms around the country. Women’s share of the printing workforce had more than doubled since the Civil War (from about 4 to more than 10 percent). But they remained largely excluded from the newspaper composing rooms, which were heavily unionized. That exclusion stemmed not just from endemic cultural biases but also from male printers’ sense of economic self-interest. Women were typically paid 25–50 percent less for similar composing work. In an era when unions were pushing hard to increase wages and put other protections in place, the potential availability of a large female labor pool was seen as a growing threat to the union’s bargaining power. There were cultural barriers at work as well. Although women had been working in printshops almost from the beginning — often with a high degree of skill and mastery — the male-dominated culture of the time precluded them from attaining the rank of journeyman or as the decades went on, from joining most of the typesetters’ unions.