Sweated Work, Weak Bodies

Download or read book Sweated Work, Weak Bodies written by Daniel E. Bender and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1900s, thousands of immigrants labored in New Yorks Lower East Side sweatshops, enduring work environments that came to be seen as among the worst examples of Progressive-Era American industrialization. Although reformers agreed that these unsafe workplaces must be abolished, their reasons have seldom been fully examined. Sweated Work, Weak Bodies is the first book on the origins of sweatshops, exploring how they came to represent the dangers of industrialization and the perils of immigration. It is an innovative study of the language used to define the sweatshop, how these definitions shaped the first anti-sweatshop campaign, and how they continue to influence our current understanding of the sweatshop.