THEIR OWN SPHERE: WOMEN'S WORK, THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CARPET TRADE, 1870-1890.
Item
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Title
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THEIR OWN SPHERE: WOMEN'S WORK, THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CARPET TRADE, 1870-1890.
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Identifier
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AAI8014974
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identifier
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8014974
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Creator
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LEVINE, SUSAN BETH.
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Contributor
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Herbert Gutman
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Date
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1979
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States
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Abstract
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This is a study of labor and women's history during a critical period of American economic growth and development. The work focuses on the carpet industry, one of the few branches of American textiles to undergo the entire transformation from small hand-craft shops to large factory operations and from a skilled male workforce to unskilled female operatives. The study highlights four important aspects of Gilded Age industrial transformation and the response to it of both men and women. First, the carpet industry's shift from hand loom shops to large-scale power loom production affords a closer look at the motives and actions of Gilded Age management. Pressed by the constantly falling prices of the 1870's, carpet manufacturers sought lower production costs particularly in the supply of labor. Second, an examination of the carpet weavers' communities reveals characteristic changes in Gilded Age working-class neighborhoods and towns. The largely immigrant carpet workforce became split between an older Philadelphia community and a newer factory workforce located in New York State. Women in the Philadelphia mills were linked by famliy and neighborhood ties to the older hand-craft traditions of the trade. Women in Amsterdam and Yonkers, on the other hand, drew strength from a common work experience and a surrounding immigrant community. Third, the economic crisis which surfaced in the carpet industry during the late 1870's was part of a general crisis developing in American industry. Carpet weavers in both sections of the industry engaged in militant and prolonged, if unsuccessful, strikes during 1878-1879 and 1884-1885.;Finally, the transformation and conflict in the carpet industry coincided with the rise of the Knights of Labor. Consequently the response of carpet weavers not only reflects the industrial conflict in the period but also reveals the nature and motivation of the contemporary labor movement. The Knights of Labor defined a working-class community and culture that opposed emergent corporate values. During the Gilded Age, wage-earning women as well as housewives joined the Knights' movement and demanded equal rights at work and equality for women in the working-class community. Female power loom carpet weavers constituted large ladies' assemblies within the Order and like other working-class women found in the Knights an important source of support for their workplace struggles. The Order also offered young women a vision of their own futures as the wives of workingmen. By extending their vision to include women not directly engaged in the labor market, the Knights accepted work in the home as a crucial part of the community toil. The Order's ideal of community combined with its commitment to defend women's rights at the workplace defined a sphere of action and influence for working-class women which went beyond the bounds of traditional nineteenth-century "true womanhood." It was a role which disappeared with the rise of craft unionism and which differed in important respects from middle-class feminism.;The experience of the carpet weavers marks an important juncture in both the American labor movement and the social role of American women. The working-class movement of the 1880's helped shape the changing social order. Indeed, late nineteenth-century American industrial communities and culture can best be understood by studying the contradictory processes by which they were created and redefined.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
