About 150 women worked in the printing business in Portland in the early years of the 20th century.
Among the printing companies employing women on Exchange Street were Portland Publishing Co., F.J. Smith Co. and Smith & Sale.
Some women worked as compositors, picking type out of cases and placing it in forms. Others operated linotype machines that cast type in metal.
Alice Walsh, like many working women, remained single. She worked as a compositor for the Portland Evening Express.
She and her two younger sisters, who worked for the telephone company and who also were single, earned enough by 1925 to move to a socially prominent address on Thomas Street in the West End.
