Poverty and Fiery Death: Female Factory Workers in Cincinnati, 1877–1885
- Poverty and Fiery DeathFemale Factory Workers in Cincinnati, 1877–1885
A former logistics manager at Procter and Gamble. Upon retirement she earned an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Northern Kentucky University and began researching and writing about nineteenth-century Cincinnati. Her first article, “Irish Filibusters and Know Nothings in Cincinnati,” appeared in the fall 2010 issue of Ohio Valley History.
Footnotes
1. Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 4, 1877, Sept. 4, 1883, May 24, 1885. Five men died in the four fires, four of them—John Spangenberg, Henry Maag, and Frank Studer (Pelstringfire), and John Sullivan (Sullivan fire)—while attempting to rescue women who could not escape. The other male victim, Chris Friedrich Buermann, worked for Dreman and survivors last saw him running for his coat on the second floor. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States (1983; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7, 48, 53, 63.
2. Bruce Levine, “Community Divided: German Immigrants, Social Class, and Political Conflict in Antebellum Cincinnati,” in Ethnic Diversity and Civic Identity: Patterns of Conflict and Cohesion in Cincinnati Since 1820, Henry D. Shapiro and Jonathon D. Sarna, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 47; Philip Scranton, “Diversifed Industrialization and Economic Success: Understanding Cincinnati’s Manufacturing Development, 1850–1925,” Ohio Valley History 5 (Spring 2005), 13; Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (1985; Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2003), 72, 77, 78.
3. Herbert L. Venable and James D. McGlothlin, “The Quality of Housing and Working Conditions in the Development of Public Health in Cincinnati, 1798–1900,” Queen City Heritage 49 (Summer 1991), 38; Vincent P. De Santis, The Shaping of Modern America, 1877–1920 (1973; Wheeling, Il.: Harlan Davidson, 2000), 4, 5; Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Era (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 117; Alan I. Marcus, Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincinnati (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1991), 73, 123; Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 240; Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Wheeling, Il.: Harlan Davidson, 1983), 12, 13, 15; Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 38; Zane L. Miller, Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 18, 57.
4. Ross, Workers on the Edge, 220, 230, 241–44; Venable and McGlothlin, “Quality of Housing,” 32, 33, 44; Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era (1987; New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), xvi; Link and McCormick, Progressivism, 12–15.
5. Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (1986; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 220; Painter, Standing at Armageddon, xxxiv; James Matthew Morris, “The Road to Trade Unionism: Organized Labor in Cincinnati to 1893” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1969), 154; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 161, 194; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 76, 95, 142; Nancy E. Bertaux, “‘Women’s Work’ vs. ‘Men’s Work’ in Nineteenth Century Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage 47 (Winter 1989), 25–26; Barbara J. Musselman, “The Quest for Collective Improvement: Cincinnati Workers, 1893 to 1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1975), 53, 61; Musselman, “The Shackles of Class and Gender: Cincinnati Working Women, 1890–1920,” Queen City Heritage 41 (Winter 1983), 37.
6. Morris, Road to Trade Unionism, 209; Link and McCormick, Progressivism, 79; Wiebe, Search for Order, 166; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 88–90; Kathleen Waters Sander, “‘Brave Hearts They Were’: The Woman’s Exchange of Cincinnati, 1883–1900,” Queen City Heritage 57 (Winter 1999), 21, 24, 30.
7. Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 (Cincinnati: William H. Moore & Co., 1851), 83. Cist reported that less than 30 percent of Cincinnati church members belonged to the Catholic Church. Philip Sheldon Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From the First Trade Unions to the...
