Figured Tapestry
Figured Tapestry

Author: Philip Scranton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-08-22

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9780521521369

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Figured Tapestry is a study of industrial maturity and decline, focused on the Philadelphia textile trades from the era of the Knights of Labor through World War II. Unlike the bulk fabric enterprises of New England and the South, Quaker City textile firms were 'flexible specialists,' combining skilled labor, versatile technologies, and quick responsiveness to demand shifts to create a vast array of seasonal goods. Scranton assesses the significance and limits of industrial versatility, owner-operated businesses, craft labor and its organizations, and the agglomeration of specialist mills in urban districts. An interdisciplinary blend of business, labor, urban, and economic history, industrial geography, and the history of technology, Figured Tapestry illuminates the hidden world of batch production, the 'other side' of American industrialization, and highlights both the benefits and the hazards of flexibility, a matter of moment to those who seek to reorient current manufacturing away from the rigidities of mass production.

The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh
The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh

Author: James L. Flannery

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0822943778

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An original examination of legislative clashes over the singular issue of the glass house boys, who performed menial tasks, received low wages, and had little to say on their own behalf while toiling in glass bottle plants. Flannery reveals the many societal, economic, and political factors at work that allowed for the perpetuation of child labor in this industry and region.

Sons and Daughters of Labor
Sons and Daughters of Labor

Author: Ileen A. DeVault

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1501745700

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Between 1870 and 1920, the clerical sector of the U.S. economy grew more rapidly than any other. As the development of large corporations affected both the scale and the content of office work, the accompanying sexual stratification of the clerical workforce blurred the relationship between the new clerical work and earlier perceptions of white-collar status. Sons and Daughters of Labor reassesses the existence and significance of the "collar line" between white-collar and blue-collar occupations during this period of clerical work's greatest expansion and the beginning of its feminization.