Customer Reviews (1)

women have always worked for pay
This book is a real eye-opener. Pinchbeck presents a detailed, thorough, fabulous review of the changing working lives of women in England during the transition from an agricultural to industrial society.The economics of that era--whether pre- or post-industrial-- forced most women to work for pay if families were to be kept alive. Housecleaning and child-rearing were not enough. The grueling labor of cottage industry, whether it was making pins, buttons, or lace for sale--seemed as arduous as that carried on later in factories. Babies were kept quiet with opium so their mothers could work uninterrupted. Before mechanisation, it was women who carried coal out of the mines on their backs, or walked an estimated 5 miles per day to and from a spinning wheel (the "walking wheel"). A great deal is revealed as well about the living conditions of men and children. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first detailed political and social history in English of Stalin's industrial revolution during the first Five-Year Plan.The diversion of vast resources into industrialization severely squeezed national consumption, imposing a heavy burden and sacrifice on the entire nation. ... Read more

Product Description
The response of American workers to the advance of the Industrial Revolution, showing how labor suffered severe losses and sought to hold on to its economic status. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The reaction of American industrial society to the advance of the industrial revolution

Although historians of the two decades preceding the Civil War have focused on the slavery issue, one of the major notes of American life during the period was created by the Industrial Revolution.The social and industrial upheavals that followed from it were remarkable for their vitality and resource.While the results of this revolution largely please us today, then it was repugnant to an astonishingly large number of Americans.The loses of status and independence among industrial workers were severe and troubling, but they lost ground also as consumers and producers - and in the face of national prosperity.In protests grounded in religion and politics, the workers sought first to preserve those freedoms they feared they were losing, later to win material gains.What remained of the moral force of this reform agitation was, as Mr. Ware writes, swept into the slavery struggle.His illuminating book analyzes the conditions which brought on the Industrial Revolution, and traces and interprets the labor movements and experiments that developed in response to the factory system.


Mr. Ware "writes with vigor and with refreshing freedom from traditional viewpoints...He raises real problems and throws light upon them."
New Republic

Noam Chomsky recommends
Noam Chomsky: "Actually one of the most interesting books I know, and if you haven't read I'd urge you to, is the first modern book on labor history I know of. ... It's mostly quotes from the labor press, which are just fascinating. ... It's very interesting, it's very eloquent, very well-written." ... Read more