Ladies Aid as Labor History

In the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women’s philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment of “ladies aid” politics exploring the intersections of women’s relief with proletarian mutual aid strategies. Founded in 1917, the Syrian Ladies Aid Society (SLAS) of Boston provided food, shelter, education, and employment to Syrian workers. SLAS volunteers understood their efforts as mitigating the precarities imposed on Syrian workers by the global capitalist labor system. Theirs was both a women’s organization and a proletarian movement led by Syrian women. Drawing from SLAS records and the Syrian American press, the article centers Syrian American women within processes of working-class formation and concludes that labor history of the interwar mahjar requires focus on spaces of social reproduction beyond the factory floor.

The birth of American press: Historical experience and development problems

The article reviews the origin of American press as an essential idea in genesis of the state power. The author demonstrates a strong correlation between domestic policy and evolutionary changes in local press, also analyzes the key events in chronicle order: printing the first paper “Publick Occurrences”, the Trial of Zenger, consequences of the Stamp Act and the acting of “Sons of Liberty”. The conclusion is made that American press is one of the most influential moments in organizing the national democratic liberation movement over the British Empire, which could not stop or assume control of expansion in the number of printing offices. The article states that the most important factor which leads colonies to unite is the fight against the Stamp Act. It is gone through in attempts to regulate the press and overcome the budget deficit, generated by The Seven Years’ War. As a result American press becomes the main attribute in the American Revolution.