Transforming Women's Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution
"No historian has done more to illuminate the achievements of female labor in the early textile mills than Thomas Dublin. . . . In this latest book, he provides a broad account of women's work during the industrial transformation of America, giving us the chance to test the typicality of the factory experience against other forms of female employment. He mines a breathtaking array of sources, including business records, census data, deeds, wills, diaries, and personal correspondence, to...
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From diaries, letters, account books, and censuses, Dublin reconstructs employment patterns across the century as he shows how wage work increasingly came to serve the needs of families, rather than of individual women. He first examines the case of rural women engaged in the cottage industries of weaving and palm-leaf hatmaking between 1820 and 1850. Next, he compares the employment experiences of women in the textile mills of Lowell and the shoe factories of Lynn. Following a discussion of Boston workingwomen in the middle decades of the century - particularly domestic servants and garment workers - Dublin turns his attention to the lives of women teachers in three New Hampshire towns.
List of FiguresList of TablesPrefaceAbbreviations1Introduction12Women and Rural Outwork293Lowell Millhands774Lynn Shoeworkers1195Boston Servants and Garment Workers1536New Hampshire Teachers2057Workingwomen in New England, 1900229Appendixes259Selected Bibliography299Index317
\ From the Publisher"An elegant and important contribution to the literature on women's employment."-Louise A. Tilly\ "In his impressively researched book, Thomas Dublin examines the transformation of women's work in New England, the first American region to be reshaped by the Industrial Revolution. . . . A valuable addition to the scholar's shelf. The data provide the single most detailed description of women and work a century ago."-New York Times Book Review\ "No historian has done more to illuminate the achievements of female labor in the early textile mills than Thomas Dublin. . . . In this latest book, he provides a broad account of women's work during the industrial transformation of America, giving us the chance to test the typicality of the factory experience against other forms of female employment. He mines a breathtaking array of sources, including business records, census data, deeds, wills, diaries, and personal correspondence, to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding women's work in New England from the 1820s to 1900. . . . Dublin's ingenious detective work in matching families in archival sources enables him to make important points."-Women's Review of Books\ \ \
