Sweated work, weak bodies : anti-sweatshop campaigns and languages of labor / Daniel E. Bender.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bender, Daniel E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clothing workers--United States--History.

Clothing workers.

Sweatshops--United States--History.

Sweatshops.

Sweatshops--United States--Prevention--History.

Foreign workers--United States--History.

Foreign workers.

Anti-sweatshop movement.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (286 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Piscataway, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2004]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In the early 1900's, thousands of immigrants labored in New York's Lower East Side sweatshops, enduring work environments that came to be seen as among the worst examples of Progressive-Era American industrialization. Although reformers agreed that these unsafe workplaces must be abolished, their reasons have seldom been fully examined. Sweated Work, Weak Bodies is the first book on the origins of sweatshops, exploring how they came to represent the dangers of industrialization and the perils of immigration. It is an innovative study of the language used to define the sweatshop, how these definitions shaped the first anti-sweatshop campaign, and how they continue to influence our current understanding of the sweatshop.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Language and the Limits of Anti-Sweatshop Organizing

Introduction

One. Eastern European Jews and the Rise of a Transnational Garment Economy

Two. “The Great Jewish Métier”: Factory Inspectors, Jewish Workers, and Defining the Sweatshop, 1880–1910

Three. “A Race Ignorant, Miserable, and Immoral”: Sweatshop Danger and Labor in the Home, 1890–1910

Four. Workers Made Well: Home, Work, Homework, and the Model Shop, 1910–1930

Five. Gaunt Men, Gaunt Wives: Femininity, Masculinity, and the Worker Question, 1880–1909

Six. Inspecting Bodies: Sexual Difference and Strategies of Organizing, 1910–1930

Seven. “Swallowed Up in a Sea of Masculinity”: Factionalism and Gender Struggles in the ILGWU, 1909–1934

Conclusion: “Our Marching Orders . . . Advance toward the Goal of Industrial Decency”: Measuring the Burden of Language

Epilogue: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns in a New Century

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-252) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786613904430

9781283591980

1283591987

9780813542553

0813542553

OCLC:

804665150