snit snat wrote:
>
> At 03:05 AM 8/5/2004, Dennis Redmond wrote:
> > > We have since been fighting for the
> > > working man
> >
> >...men *and* women. Women have always worked, of course; it's just that
> >they weren't paid cash wages, until relatively recently (and even today,
> >housewives perform essential social labor for free).
>
Huge numbers of women worked in industry from the very beginning. Maggie Coleman had this material on her finger tips. I miss her on this list. Probably it is also covered in Stephanie Coontz, _The Way We Never Were_, a book I have on my bookshelf but haven't read yet. Herman Melville's great story on industrial labor was on a paper plant employing women (The Tartarus of Maids and the _____ of Men" (or something like that).
Carrol