This collection assembles a rich cache of documentary materials—letters, account books, diaries, reminiscences, testimony, eyewitness reports—that illuminate women's involvement in the industrialization of the northeastern United States. It focuses on the shoemaking industry of eastern Massachusetts to illustrate the development of pre-industrial household production; the rise of the factory system; and the parallel operation of outwork and factory stitching in the late nineteenth century.

Mary H. Blewett examines the interplay of class and gender: the changes in the organization of work and the composition of the work force as well as changes in women's consciousness of womanhood. the documents she selects reveal the significance of gender institutions. The articulate voices of these contentious New England working women testify to their interest in antislavery and temperance, as well as women's rights and woman suffrage. they air their disagreements with each other and with working-class men about labor protest, partisan politics, family obligations, and notions of moral respectability. In this splendidly varied chorus of voices, Blewett identifies a hitherto unknown feminism that developed from the everyday experience of ordinary workers.