Customer Reviews

Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880--1940 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a delightful and readable work of primary-source research on a topic that has essentially never been written up. As someone who found it when (successfully) landmarking a steam laundry in Seattle, it was useful as well as fascinating. Although it covers the East Coast and midWest and contrasts them to England, it is extremely well-researched and detailed. The role of gender in this now-forgotten industry was a lynchpin of its success and this is very well analysed in a vivid style. At the time, the industry was distinguished by both its quirks and its social isolation (which applied equally to its workers and its magnates). But these also made it a métier in which both those with little resources or those new to a community could triumph. One of the foremost local industries of its time, the steam or power laundry is now almost forgotten and, as I can personally testify, its fascinating history is not one valued by the mainstream of "preservationists". For labour historians, women's historians, and anyone interested in the historical side of women's studies, however, it is a must-read. Hopefully some day, it will be followed by a proper history of "Chinese" and "Oriental" laundries on the West Coast of the US. Cynthia Rose