Drawing from workers' applications, testimonies, and other primary documents, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service recreates the white-collar world of middle-class workers from the Civil War to 1900. It reveals how men who worked in federal agencies moved from being self-employed to salaried workers, in the process placing at risk the independence that lay at the core of middle-class male values; while women assumed the kind of independence that threatened their positions as delicate, middle-class ladies deserving the protection and care of men. Introducing a cast of characters...

In Working at Play, Cindy Aron offers the first full length history of how Americans have vacationed--from eighteenth-century planters who summered in Newport to twentieth-century urban workers who headed for camps in the hills. In the early nineteenth century, vacations were taken for health more than for fun, as the wealthy traveled to watering places, seeking cures for everything from consumption to rheumatism. But starting in the 1850s, the growth of a white- collar middle class and the expansion of railroads made vacationing a mainstream activity. Aron charts this growth with...

The Long Day is a wonderfully readable personal narrative of the trials and tribulations of an unskilled, friendless, almost penniless girl of eighteen, utterly alone in the world who arrives in New York City in 1905 to earn her livelihood.The book reveals much about the lives of working women in early twentieth-century urban America- the sort of jobs available to women, the ethnic and demographic makeup of the female labor force, the harshness of the conditions, the less-than-satisfactory living arrangements, the physically demanding nature of the work, and the long working hours.