Female Labour Power: Women Workers’ Influence on Business Practices in the British and American Cotton Industries, 1780–1860 (review)

In this volume, Janet Greenlees demonstrates the effects that waged women workers had on the development of cotton textile firms in Great Britain and the United States from 1780 to 1860. Whether British or American, they had agency and made their own choices and independent decisions. Greenlees aims to show the extent of their self-determination. She views them as individuals as well as part of a diverse group, demonstrating how they actively participated in shaping their employment and their individual relationships with management. This novel tack enables the reader to gain a new perspective on this group of workers.

Greenlees has turned toward the numerous monographs written during the 1980s and 1990s regarding industrialization in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Delaware, and in various parts of Britain. These familiar monographs provided her with a tremendous amount of data to use in analyzing a larger population of workers than would be possible otherwise. For those who have read these works, seeing their data interpreted differently is both enlightening and energizing. Greenlees does an excellent job of showing the relationship between the worker and the machine. While her discussion does not take a material culture approach, she demonstrates how the manager and the worker together established the means and methods of interacting with the technology as well as how worker agency is involved in job definition and skill. Numerous tables charting the comparative variables cross-culturally help buttress her argument. The way they are embedded in the text is disruptive, however, and it might have been better to separate the mentirely from the text and allow the narrative to flow evenly across the pages. On amore positive note, there are ten pages of illustrations, all nice additions to the work.

Chapters center on factory organization, manufacturers’ labor choices, types of mill work, the gendering of labor, time and work discipline, worker response to changing labor requirements, and working conditions and health—each chapter looking at both American and British factories. Greenlees also reviews the literature and compares standard interpretations with the analyses developed using her own criteria. Her thesis is well-developed and the writing is clear, concise, and varied. Because of her examination of a broad range of mills in both the United States and Great Britain and because of the fresh look it takes, this volume is definitely a valuable addition to the literature regarding labor, technology, and mill work during the period of early industrialization.