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“Hard Work To Make Ends Meet”: Voices Of Maine’S Working-Class Women In The Late Nineteenth Century, Carol Toner
“Hard Work To Make Ends Meet”: Voices Of Maine’S Working-Class Women In The Late Nineteenth Century, Carol Toner
Maine History
In 1887 the Maine legislature responded to pressures from the Knights of Labor and an increasingly agitated industrial labor force by instituting the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. The bureau’s job was to examine the state's workplaces and provide information to guide the legislature in making labor law. Reflecting the ideals of the popular Knights of Labor, the bureau initially focused its investigations on female as well as male workers. When the bureau requested that workers fill out questionnaires about their work, hundreds of women responded, leaving a rare first-hand account of women’s attitudes toward their working and living …