Research Catalog

Working women of collar city : gender, class, and community in Troy, New York, 1864-86

Title: Working women of collar city : gender, class, and community in Troy, New York, 1864-86 / Carole Turbin.
Author: Turbin, Carole.
Publication: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, ©1992.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Book/Text	Use in library	HD6073.L32 U58 1992	Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 231 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"Why have some working women been successful at organizing in spite of obstacles to labor activity? Under what circumstances were they able to form alliances with male workers?" "Carole Turbin explores these questions by examining the case of Troy, New York, which in the 1860s produced nearly all the nation's popular detachable shirt collars and cuffs. Troy's collar laundresses were largely Irish immigrants who labored under harsh conditions, washing, starching, and ironing newly manufactured detachable collars for sale to retailers. The laundresses' union was officially the nation's first women's labor organization, and one of the best organized. In a period when many men were hostile to working women, they nevertheless formed close alliances with male labor activists." "Turbin's study of the collar workers develops new perspectives on gender. She demonstrates that women's family ties are not necessarily a conservative influence but may encourage women's and men's collective action. Her analysis of variations in collar women's employment patterns, family structure, and activism reveals new ways of conceptualizing differences in women's and men's work and family lives. Turbin's discussion of major labor struggles in 1864, 1869, and 1886, which were integral to nineteenth-century working-class movements, reveals variations in the gender ideologies of women of different ethnic and religious groups. This analysis reveals the subtlety and complexity of gender differences between women and men."--Jacket.

Series Statement

The Working class in American history
Women in American history

Uniform Title

Working class in American history
Women in American history

Subject

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: New Questions, New Answers -- Pt. 1. Work, Family, Community -- 1. Becoming Collar City: Diversity and Opportunity in a Nineteenth-Century City -- 2. Good Place to Work: Women's Economic Contribution to Immigrant Families' Place in the Community -- 3. Activist Leaders and Occasional Militants: Variations in Working Women's Living Arrangements and Labor Activism -- Pt. 2. Ideology, Consciousness, and Labor Activism -- 4. "The Mother of Our Success": Class Consciousness, Ethnic Identity, and Gender Consciousness -- 5. Woman's Work and Woman's Rights: Class, Gender and Political Consciousness -- 6. "Bona Fide" Trade Union: The Collar Laundresses' Strike and Lockout -- 7. Fighting Fire with Fire: The Joan of Arc Assembly of the Knights of Labor -- 8. Autonomy and Subservience: The Strike's Outcome. Conclusion: New Answers, New Questions.

ISBN

0252018362
9780252018367
0252064267
9780252064265

LCCN

91011900

OCLC

ocm23287260
23287260
SCSB-1967890

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library