Nickless on Greenlees, _Female Labour Power: Women Workers' Influence on Business Practices in the British and American Cotton Industries, 1780-1860_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (June 2008)

Janet Greenlees, _Female Labour Power: Women Workers' Influence on 
Business Practices in the British and American Cotton Industries, 
1780-1860_. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007. xx + 244 pp. 
?55/$100 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-7546-4050-9.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Pamela J. Nickless, Department of Economics, 
University of North Carolina-Asheville.


Janet Greenlees' goal in this very fine study is to provide a more 
complicated and nuanced view of the role of women workers in 
industry. In particular she seeks to highlight "women's agency as 
operatives and workers in the process of industrialization and 
developing perceptions of women's work." Her comparative approach 
emphasizes the unifying theme of that gender mattered but so did firm 
location and size. In particular, technological choice was influenced 
by local variations in transport, natural resources, and cultural as 
well as economic considerations. The influence of women workers on 
conditions of work and their experiences as workers varied by 
locality as well as by country. Although Greenlees does not put it 
quite this way, it seems to this reader that the variation within 
country was greater than the variation among "best practice" firms in 
Britain and the United States.

Chapters 2 through 5 are an analysis of the development of the cotton 
industry and how women's roles developed over time. Chapters 6 and 7 
look at women's responses to industrialization and their role in the 
negotiation of the gendered nature of work. Greenlees uses a variety 
of sources and types of analysis -- indeed one of the strengths of 
this book is the variety of secondary sources used in her summary of 
the work on women and industrialization. So often the work economic 
historians or social historians is missing or inaccurately 
represented in the work of the other, but Greenlees has done a 
wonderful job integrating the analysis of economists and historians 
in her historiography and throughout the study.

The best and most valuable chapters are those on the choice of 
business organization and technology by firms. Most readers of this 
review will be familiar with the development of Lowell's integrated 
mills and the interactive role of the availability of female labor 
and choice of technology. Greenlees uses firm-level data from a 
variety of firms located throughout New England and the Middle 
Atlantic area to argue persuasively that this is far too simple a 
story. Location, firm size and culture and tradition mattered as 
well. The "gender" of a job varied based on location and firm size as 
well as over time in both Britain and the United States. Greenlees 
emphasizes the role of labor market constraints and culture in the 
assignment of jobs by gender and in the proportions of men and women 
working in the mills. As might be expected, where men had more 
lucrative opportunities, women had more job choices available. Yet, 
local restrictions on women's work, by trade union rules and/or by 
manufacturers' adoption of gendered notions of work and skill, could 
reduce the numbers of women and the jobs they performed. Local 
economic and social conditions were key in the choice of organization 
and technology. Greenlees also emphasizes that firms had different 
goals -- while all might fit the "profit-maximizing" model from Econ 
100 not all firms had the same time-horizon in mind and all were 
embedded in communities. Over time, as the notion of factory labor 
was developed and as transportation networks changed, firms' choices 
of organization and technique changed. Students of technological 
change in textiles will find much to chew over in Greenlees' analysis.

Of interest to students of wage change over time is Chapter 4, 
"Millwork: Pay, Work and Equity." Greenlees finds the wage patterns 
and comparative performance defy easy generalization. Local 
circumstances loom large in determining men's and women's wages and 
productivity quite overshadowing the international differences. 
Greenlees finds that firm-level data on wages often contradicts or 
complicates national wage date from the U.S. Censuses, British 
Parliamentary Reports or other contemporary observers. Greenlees is 
careful to point out that, even at the firm level, you cannot always 
distinguish between women and children, introducing all sorts of 
problems with data comparisons. This chapter adds detail and nuance 
to Greenlees previously published work in this field.

The closing chapters on women's response to industrial work are less 
satisfying, in part because direct testimony of women workers is 
scarce. Nevertheless, the same broad theme is well-supported -- local 
conditions and traditions mattered. Greenlees calls for a broader 
framework for analyzing the actions of women workers rather than 
trying to place them only in the context of a women's labor movement. 
I found the analysis of the United States less unconvincing, resting 
as it does on an interpretation of differences between British and 
American work culture that are overstated.

This is a valuable addition to the literature on the cotton industry, 
but I fear it will not attract the wider audience it deserves. Too 
much knowledge of the industry is assumed to make the work appeal to 
a non-specialist. Some of this could be solved with more detailed 
explanatory notes for some of the tables. The text also suffers from 
some bibliographical glitches and typos in footnotes. Since one of 
the book's real pluses is Greenlees' excellent and intriguing 
historiography, this may make the bibliography less useful. I should 
add that I might have missed these errors but for the luxury of 
footnotes at the bottom of the page. In conclusion, I think this is 
must read for cotton textile scholars and scholars of women's role in 
early industry. They will find much to admire and, probably, much 
with which to argue.

Pamela J. Nickless recently published "Scarlett's Sisters: Spinsters, 
Widows, Wives, and Free-Traders in Nineteenth Century North 
Carolina," in _Famine and Fashion: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth 
Century_, edited by Beth Harris (Ashgate, 2005) and has recently 
started a study on nineteenth-century female proprietors in 
Charleston, SC.

Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator (administrator at eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (June 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived at 
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.