 The percentage of female clerical workers in Chicago, for example, increased from 11 percent in 1880 to 21 percent by 1890, reaching 30 percent by 1900.Various moral concerns were raised about men and women mixing in such offices, which were characterized as being masculine spaces, full of tobacco smoke and profanity and therefore unsuitable for women.The new female workers typically worked as typists or stenographers, using the recently invented typewriter, which grew in number in U.S. offices from 146 in 1879 to 65,000 by 1890.