Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860

Thomas Dublin

Columbia University Press, 1979 - Business & Economics - 312 pages

In this prize-winning study, Thomas Dublin explores, in carefully researched detail, the lives and experiences of the first generation of American women to face the demands of industrial capitalism. Dublin describes and traces the strong community awareness of these women from Lowell and relates it to labor protest movements of the 1830s and '40s.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - mdobe - LibraryThing

Excerpted as "Factory Employment as Female Empowerment" in Gary Kornblith, ed., The Industrial Revolution in America (1998) In the 1830s and 1840s the mills at Lowell Massachusetts attracted young ...

Contents

• Women Workers and Early Industrialization: iii
• The Lowell Work Force 1836 and the Social Origins of Women Workers: xxv
• The Social Relations of Production in the Early Mills: 32
• The Boardinghouse: 57
• The Early Strikes The 1830s: 62
• The Ten Hour Movement The 1840s: 82
• The Transformation of Lowell 18361850 and the New Mill Work Force: 106
• Immigrants in the Mills 18501860: 119
• Housing and Families of Women Operatives: 139
• Careers of Operatives 18361860: 157
• The Operatives Response 18501860: 172
• Preparation of the Hamilton Company Payroll 1836: 183
• APPENDIX 2 The Social Origins Study: 193
• The Hamilton Company Work Force August 1850 and June 1860: 198
• APPENDIX 4 The 1860 Millhand Sample: 204
• Sources of Bias and Considerations of Representativeness: 213
• Abbreviations: 225
• Notes: 227
• Selected Bibliography: 267
• Index: 283

Popular passages

Page iv - In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation on which...

About the author

Thomas Dublin is professor of history at the State University of New York, Binghamton. cHe has edited two colections, Farm to Factory, Second Edition and Immigrant Voices and authored Transforming Women's Work: New England Lives in the Ninteenth Century.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860; ACLS Humanities E-Book; Bancroft Dissertation Series; History e-book project
• Author: Thomas Dublin
• Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1979
• ISBN: 0231041675, 9780231041676
• Length: 312 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / General