Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920 (review)

Sparks' Capital Intentions, the first monograph to be published about businesswomen in a single location in the United States, makes an important contribution to women's history, labor history, and urban history. Using a set of uniquely rich sources, including personal papers (letters and diaries) and bankruptcy records, as well as such standard sources as city directories and credit records, Sparks covers many aspects of businesswomen's careers. In addition to analyzing the types of women who went into business and the trades that they entered, she also discusses their motivations, business strategies, and the multiple reasons behind their entrepreneurial failures. The book conveys a vivid sense of place, especially during the Gold Rush years when women enjoyed extraordinary business opportunities. Sparks makes a strong case for change over time, arguing that by the 1870s, business conditions on the West Coast had become similar to those in the rest of the nation, limiting prospects for female proprietors.

The opening of the book is particularly intriguing: Sparks' imaginary walking tour of the city (complete with a map) in the first chapter, "Female Proprietors and the Businesses They Started," provides an excellent overview of her topic. In Chapter 6, "When Women Went out of Business," bankruptcy records provide a fascinating glimpse into cyclical financial depressions, fires, personal illness, and overextending, among other travails. Overall, the use of historical photographs, newspaper advertisements, receipts, and trade cards enhances the narrative.

No book is perfect. This one has two trouble spots. First, the decision to use the printed census reports rather than grappling with the manuscript census leaves Sparks' statistics resting on slightly shaky assumptions, forcing her to speculate about the demographic profiles of individual businesswomen. As a case in point, she could not say for sure whether Mrs. Ann Hudson, a used-clothing merchant, was an immigrant or whether "she lived in a room or small apartment located above or behind her store" (23). Such questions could have been answered through the manuscript census. Second, Sparks sometimes has to rely on the findings of other scholars about women in locations other than San Francisco for certain details, hazarding the guess that businesswomen in San Francisco "must have" had similar experiences. Whether they did or not is impossible to know on the basis of the evidence presented.

Nonetheless, Capital Instincts offers fascinating glimpses of many female proprietors. Mary Ann Magnin, for one, went from a home-based lingerie business to opening a large department store named after her husband—Issac (or I.) Magnin—between 1876 and 1880. Sparks also introduces Antoinetta Alessandro, who managed "multiple theater businesses" between 1905 and 1914, while her husband Giuseppi ran a grocery stand, leaving all financial decisions and arrangements to her.

Such stories reinforce recent studies for other locations, demonstrating that women across the United States flourished in business enterprises long before the late twentieth century. Capital Instincts provides an important link in a chain of histories that is just beginning to emerge and will eventually enable scholars to discover how women proprietors' opportunities and limitations varied across the nation and over time. The first chapter, in particular, can stand alone as a challenge to the still-pervasive stereotype that, until recently, business was a man's world.