UI Press | Carole Turbin | Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1864-86

Working Women of Collar City

Gender, Class, and Community in Troy, 1864-86

Why have some working women succeeded at organizing in spite of obstacles to labor activity? Under what circumstances were they able to form alliances with male workers? Carole Turbin explores these and other questions by examining the case of Troy, New York, which in the 1860s produced nearly all the nation's detachable shirt collars and cuffs. Troy's collar laundresses were largely Irish immigrants; their union was officially the nation's first women's labor organization, and one of the best organized. Turbin's study develops new perspectives on gender and shows that women's family ties are not necessarily a conservative influence but may encourage women's and men's collective action.

"By going 'beyond the conventional wisdom' about gender, class, and ethnicity, [Turbin] has found ways to tell us more about the nineteenth-century collar workers of Troy than we possibly could have imagined discovering a decade ago."
-- Choice