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Although by 1920 the number of jobs available to women had expanded remarkably compared to previous decades, relatively few women were hired outside of domestic or secretarial jobs. One sector which had employed women since the beginning of the industrial revolution was light industry, such as the manufacture of pocket books. These manufacturers sought out women in large part because they usually had been trained to do needlework and to work with materials. So despite a post-World War I recession, a firm in Springfield, Massachusetts, advertised for workers in Greenfield, a town some forty miles north of it.

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