Gender, Race, and Publishing on the Left

Dhlazare at aol.com Dhlazare at aol.com
Thu Jun 18 06:35:03 PDT 1998


In 1833, a mill owner wrote to the Secretary of Treasury to say: "...our greatest difficulty at present is a want of females, women and children; and from the great number of factories now building, have my fears we shall not be able to operate all our machinery another year." Robt C Heilbroner and Aaron Singer, "The Economic transformation of America," p. 102.

Dan Lazare

Rob writes: << I have gone back over nineteenth

century labor records in the USA, and in reality the first waged labor force

in the USA was the vast majority FEMALE, both married and unmarried. Young

women worked in the factories, while 45-75% of New England households engaged

in outwork, with almost 100% if those outworkers being women who engaged in

both their family duties and waged work simultaneously within the home. So,

yes, the male breadwinner earned most of the income, but women have always

been significant contributors to household incomes. Historically in the USA,

this was hidden by the fact that prior to the Civil War, married women were

not LEGALLY ENTITLED TO COLLECT THEIR OWN WAGES -- THESE WAGES WERE PAID

HUSBANDS. Further, the high rate of heterosexual marriage in this country was

a pattern which only began in the 1950s. F'rinstance, 13% of all women born

in massachusetts 1820-30 never married, and there was a very, very high rate

of widowhood and abandonment. By the 1840s, it could be postulated that over

a third of all adult women were not receiving income from a paternal home!!!

By 1830, 1/3 of all freed black households in Philadelphia were headed by

women. (I can supply references for all this if anyone is interested).

I think rather than say women relied on working class men, it is safer to say

that working class men and the upper classes of capitalism SHARED women's

labor and they both received surplus from that labor.

>>



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