Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States

Eileen Boris

Cambridge University Press, May 27, 1994 - Business & Economics - 383 pages

In the minds of most people, the home has stood apart from the world of work. Bringing the factory or office into the home challenges this division. From the 1870s, when New York cigarmakers attempted to end tenement competition, to New Deal prohibitions in the 1930s, gender ideologies shaped the battle over homework. But by the 1980s, the middle-class mother at the keyboard replaced the victimized immigrant as the symbol of homework. Home to Work restores the voices of homeworking women to the century-long debate over their labor. The book also provides a historical context to the Reaganite lifting of New Deal bans. Where once men's right to contract precluded regulation, now women's right to employment undermined prohibition. Whether empowerment comes from rights to homework or rights as workers depends on whether homeworkers become visible as workers who happen to mother.

Contents

• A mans dwelling house is his castle Tenement house cigarmaking and the judicial imperative: 21
• White slaves of the cities Campaigns against sweated clothing: 49
• Women who work and women who spend The family economy vs the family wage: 81
• Visions and voices: 123
• Soldiers of freedom garments of slavery Patriotic homework: 125
• To study their own conditions States rights to regulate: 151
• Homework is a community question The worlds of the homeworker: 171
• Engendering the New Deal: 199
• To improve on business through law Homework under the National Recovery Administration: 201
• Strike while the iron is hot The politics of enactment the perils of enforcement: 245
• Unknown to the common law The Fair Labor Standards Act: 273
• Home work redux: 303
• With a keyboard in one hand White collars in the home: 305
• Deregulating the rights of women: 337
• Index of cases: 367
• Index: 369

Bibliographic information

• Title: Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States; ACLS Humanities E-Book; History e-book project
• Author: Eileen Boris
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1994
• ISBN: 0521455480, 9780521455480
• Length: 383 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Labor / General; Family & Relationships / Parenting / Motherhood; History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / United States / General; Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations; Social Science / General