Table of Contents

Acknowledgments   ix
List of Abbreviations   xi

Introduction   1
Chapter 1. The Daily Labor of Our Own Hands   11
Chapter 2. Working Girls and White Slaves   34
Chapter 3. Gender, Class, and Consumption   66
Chapter 4. Solving the Servant Problem   102
Chapter 5. Democracy Is Only an Aspiration   129

Notes   165
Index   209

Illustrations follow page 10

Promotional Information

Recasting the meaning of women's work in the early fight for gender equality

About the Author

Lara Vapnek is a professor of history at St. John's University. She is the author of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary.

Reviews

"This work is the best history we have of the class tension between elite women reformers and wage-earning women. Vapnek adds a strong, new perspective to interpretive debates over the meaning of dependence, independence, protections, rights, and citizenship." Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara