Women and Children First: Appropriated Fiction in the Ten Hours’ Advocate

This article examines interclass strategies to bring about reform in mid-nineteenth century England. It specifically explores the way the Ten Hours’ Advocate, a paper written for the working classes, looked to present itself as a middle-class periodical in order to further the argument for factory reform. In reproducing fiction filched from middle-class periodicals, the Advocate performed its argument for the Factory Bill: that the Bill would ease social tensions, dissipate the Chartist or radical threat, and ensure a “return” to traditional gender roles. The appropriated fiction is mild, rather bland; the non-fictional argument for reform is direct and unapologetic. That the Advocate was opportunistic in the way it made the case for reform is an example of the advantages provided to reformers by the absence of strict copyright laws and by Victorian periodical culture in general. But it also contextualises the debate over the family-wage argument and the working-class role in hardening the Victorian sexual division of labour.

Reclaiming Manhood

This chapter shows that, after mass production undermined and assailed their manhood, auto workers attempted to reassert or to reclaim it in numerous ways, some positive and some negative. They relied on shop traditions, some old and some new, to regain control over their working lives. They looked to and worked to build unions that would provide dignity, a structure to resist hated changes, and a family wage to enhance their personal and economic situations. They reveled in the sexual dimension of manhood in their ribald conversations on the shop floor and in the commercialized and sexual venues of the bachelor culture. As the Great Depression arrived and deepened, they would return to industrial unionism to mitigate the worst of the managerial abuses and would build a dense white and male culture at the workplace.