© 2006 Amber Bowles

As the United States continued to industrialize during the late nineteenth century, women and children began to enter the workforce, reformers became concerned about the safety and well being of these new laborers. To that end, Massachusetts began to require inspectors in factories in 1867. By 1891, Massachusetts passed legislation to appoint the first two women in Massachusetts. By 1911, Massachusetts had three female inspectors.1

Women Inspectors, Filers, and Drillers "doing their bit"

Middle and upper-class women reformers, allied with working class women, pushed for the introduction of female factory inspectors in the late 19th century.The reformers were concerned that certain issues involving what they termed “female propriety” would never reach the ears of a male inspector. Issues of female propriety included things like sexual harassment, which female workers would not only receive from fellow male workers, but also from their male employers and inspectors. A woman would be much more likely to tell another woman of grievances that involved sexual impropriety with men than she would be to tell a man.2

Fanny Ames and Mary Halley were the first two women inspectors assigned to factories. Ames had much experience in reform activity and served on the Massachusetts and New England Woman Suffrage Association. Halley participated in union activity in Fall River and worked as a textile operative. Though both women were appointed at the same time, Ames is acknowledged as the “first woman factory inspector in Massachusetts.” 3

“Women Inspectors at the Watershops Doing Their All That
This World May Be a Decent Place to Live In.”

The two women worked to reform factories for its workers. Fanny Ames focused on morality inside the factory. Her reports stressed the importance of supervision over interactions between men and women at work to sustain “morality.” While Ames’ reports reflected her deep concern about the morality of white women, they also displayed her concern about the growing number of immigrants working in Massachusetts factories. Ames described the immigrants as “the people [who] are smaller in size, less healthy, duller in aspect, more sordid, less clean and often sullen and half savage in appearance.”4 Ames also attributed the growing number of child laborers to the poor moral values of their immigrant families, an opinion shared by many other reformers during the early twentieth century.

By the time the United States entered World War I in 1917, the number of women inspectors grew considerably. A picture from the Springfield Armory during the Great War displays the eighteen female inspectors who served there. The photograph’s caption reads, “Women Inspectors at the Watershops Doing Their All That This World May Be a Decent Place to Live In.” Indeed, the Armory’s inspectors worked to preserve the respectability of America’s factory workers.