Existing comment:
Working
The booming publishing industry was one of the first fields to employ on a large scale those with artistic training. Like workers in other industries, they found themselves in settings where work was segmented, assembly-line style, and individual tasks were specialized and repetitive. But they saw themselves contributing to the nation's economic grown, and the work they produced fed a growing aesthetic sense among middle-class consumers.
The printing industry offered new opportunities, especially for white middle-class women with artistic training. Tools such as these, from 1889, were used for engraving printing plates to mass-produce illustrations. Other industries besides printing employed people with artistic skill. Industrial mills used drawing instruments to create technical drawings. |