City of Women

1. Poverty Transformed: From Inability to Unstable Wage Work

By the early nineteenth century, poverty was becoming connected to the changing structure of work itself -to the difficulties laboring people had in supporting themselves in manufacturing employments that paid insufficient wages and gave insufficient work.

Shifting causes. Poverty in New York evolved from being primarily associated with those unable to work (aged, sick, disabled) to being a consequence of the very structure of work itself. The rise of merchant capitalism and early manufacturing led to the casualization of labor, where even able-bodied men faced intermittent employment and insufficient wages. This economic insecurity pushed more families to rely on women's earnings.

Influx of poor. The city's growth as a port and manufacturing center attracted waves of immigrants and rural migrants, many arriving with little or no resources. These newcomers, along with native-born artisans facing declining livelihoods, swelled the ranks of the working poor. Seasonal unemployment, high prices, and the lack of savings made families vulnerable to disaster from illness or injury.

Strained relief. The traditional municipal relief system, designed for a smaller, less transient population, buckled under the pressure. The number of people needing public assistance, particularly outdoor relief for the working poor, soared. This crisis prompted a shift in elite attitudes, viewing poverty less as a condition of divine providence and more as a result of the poor's own perceived vices like idleness and intemperance.

2. Republicanism and Dependency: Reinforcing Male Authority, Challenging Female Status

In a republican culture which placed the independence of the male citizen at its zenith, the dependent status of all women put them in the same lowly category as servants, children, apprentices, slaves and the poor...

Ideological hierarchy. Republican ideals, emphasizing the independent male citizen, reinforced existing notions of female dependence. Women, regardless of class, were often grouped with other dependents lacking full civic virtue and reason, seen as needing male supervision. This popular misogyny was evident in legal arguments and public discourse.

Elite women's strategy. Women of the propertied classes navigated this by promoting "republican motherhood," casting themselves as moral guardians educating future citizens. This strategy helped elevate their status and laid groundwork for the cult of domesticity, asserting women's virtue and authority within the home.

Laboring women's burden. Laboring women, however, remained caught at the intersection of contempt for the poor and disdain for dependent women. They faced heightened sexual antagonism, as seen in cases like Bedlow/Sawyer, where class and gender were used to discredit women's testimony and justify male aggression. Their struggles for economic survival outside traditional household structures challenged, yet were often judged by, prevailing norms of female subservience.

3. Neighborhoods as Female Spheres: Mutual Aid, Conflict, and Blurred Boundaries

It was in the urban neighborhoods, not the home, that the identity of working-class wives and mothers was rooted.

Beyond the bourgeois home. Unlike the emerging middle-class ideal of the private, self-contained home, working-class domestic life in tenements spilled into shared hallways, adjoining apartments, and the streets. Overcrowding and lack of utilities made housekeeping arduous, requiring constant trips outside for water, fuel, and supplies.

Networks of survival. This public nature of domestic labor fostered dense neighborhood ties. Women relied on each other for:

• Borrowing and lending goods
• Childcare and nursing the sick
• Emotional support and gossip
• Intervention in domestic disputes

Conflict and informal justice. While providing crucial mutual aid, close quarters and economic pressures also fueled conflict. Quarrels over shared resources or perceived slights were common, often spilling into public shouting matches or physical fights. These disputes, and the community's involvement in mediating or cheering them on, formed a system of informal neighborhood justice, sometimes challenging male authority.

4. Reformers' Gaze: Mapping Vice onto Working-Class Life and Homes

"The city has been made the grand lurking-place of vice," a speaker at an evangelical meeting announced in 1835.

Moral geography. Evangelical reformers, spurred by revivals, began systematic home visiting in poor neighborhoods, viewing them as concentrations of sin and moral decay. This perspective translated the physical reality of crowded tenements into a moral geography of vice, contrasting sharply with their own ideals of piety and decorum.

Domesticity as a lens. Encounters with working-class family life, which differed from bourgeois norms (e.g., public sociability, different child-rearing practices), were interpreted through the lens of domestic ideology. Reformers saw a lack of "proper" homes and "true" womanhood, reinforcing their sense of cultural superiority and the need for intervention.

Sentimentalism and control. While some female reformers showed empathy, they often favored the "worthy" poor who conformed to sentimental ideals of the meek, solitary victim. This sentimentalism, while highlighting women's plight, also reinforced bourgeois biases and provided a framework for imposing moral and domestic standards on working-class women, often overlooking the complex realities of their lives and communities.

5. Marriage Under Strain: Economic Precarity Fuels Domestic Conflict

Men's violence toward their wives was not only a displacement of the anger generated by unemployment or the loss of status in the work force... but was also an attempt to recapture and enforce older kinds of masculine authority.

Precarious bargain. Working-class marriages were often practical arrangements based on reciprocal obligations: men providing wages, women managing households and contributing labor. However, the instability of male employment in the industrial city strained this bargain, making men unreliable providers and challenging their traditional authority.

Violence and control. Male violence against wives, while potentially stemming from economic frustration, also served as a means to enforce older patriarchal control over women's labor, sexuality, and household management. Conflicts over money, domestic services, and female drunkenness were common triggers for abuse.

Neighborhood intervention. Unlike the privacy of the bourgeois home, domestic disputes in tenements were often public affairs. Neighbors, particularly women, frequently intervened, sometimes protecting victims, sometimes judging behavior based on community norms. This collective involvement provided women with a degree of support and informal recourse against male abuse, challenging the notion of absolute patriarchal power within the household.

6. Single Women's Rise: Wage Work and Youth Culture Foster New Independence

In this new social space, single women helped to create a youth culture of sexual and commercial pleasures, purchased with wages and time freed up from domestic obligations and family discipline.

Migration and autonomy. Increased immigration and the expansion of female wage work outside the home (beyond domestic service) allowed many young women to live independently of patriarchal families for the first time. While still facing economic hardship, this provided a degree of freedom from familial discipline and domestic labor obligations.

Urban youth culture. Single young women played a key role in developing a vibrant urban youth culture, particularly on the Bowery. This milieu offered opportunities for social mixing, entertainment (dance halls, theaters, oyster shops), and courting, often purchased with their own earnings.

Sexual bargaining and risk. Courting in this context involved sexual bargaining, where women might exchange sexual favors for male generosity or companionship. While offering potential autonomy, this also carried risks of exploitation, abandonment, and illegitimate pregnancy, especially in the mobile and anonymous city environment, blurring lines between courtship and casual sex or prostitution.

7. Manufacturing's Double Bind: Outwork Exploits Household Ties, Factories Offer New Freedoms

"The outside system," precursor to New York's sweatshops and notorious for its starvation wages and appalling working conditions, grew directly from the sex-divided labor market and further institutionalized it."

Exploiting domesticity. The outside system (outwork), prevalent in female-dominated trades like garment making, capitalized on women's ties to the household. By dispersing work to women's homes, employers avoided overhead costs and paid piece rates often below subsistence, forcing women to rely on family labor (children, kin) to survive. This system reinforced women's economic dependence and limited their ability to organize.

Hardships of outwork. Outworkers faced extreme underpayment, frequent unemployment, and grueling overwork (15-18 hour days) just to make ends meet. The work itself was physically taxing, leading to health problems. Employers often engaged in unscrupulous practices like withholding wages, exploiting the oversupply of female labor.

Inside work's possibilities. While still facing exploitation, women in factories and workshops (inside work) often earned better wages and had steadier employment. Working outside the home fostered a workroom culture and sociability, offering women a degree of independence and opportunities to resist employer control, though they still faced challenges like foreman authority and the "factory girl" stereotype.

8. Labor's Paternalism: Men's Unions Embrace Family Wage, Marginalize Women's Organizing

"It needs no small share of courage for us who have been used to impositions and oppression from our youth up to the present day, to come before the public in the defence of our own rights," one Sarah Monroe stressed to her sisters.

Early female militance. Despite facing dismissal and hostility from some workingmen, early women's labor organizations (like the Tailoresses Society) asserted female self-reliance and republican rights, arguing women must defend their own interests. They recognized the unique oppressions they faced as women workers.

Men's paternalist turn. The National Trades' Union (NTU) in the 1830s, while acknowledging women's plight, adopted a paternalist stance. They argued women were naturally unfit to organize and should be removed from wage labor to perform domestic duties, supported by a male family wage. This vision of a male-headed "family of labor" marginalized women's independent organizing efforts.

Reformers' influence. By the 1840s and 50s, workingwomen's organizing (like the Ladies' Industrial Association) increasingly sought support from bourgeois reformers. This led to a focus on sentimental imagery of the victimized seamstress, diluting the women's initial assertions of rights and shifting the narrative from class struggle to charitable benevolence, further sidelining women's autonomous voice in the labor movement.

9. Prostitution's Complex Reality: Beyond Ruin, a Choice for Survival and Autonomy

Prostitution was neither a tragic fate, as moralists viewed it (and continue to view it), nor an act of defiance, but a way of getting by, of making the best of bad luck.

A growing "problem". Prostitution became a major focus for reformers in the mid-19th century, seen as a sign of moral decay and urban disorder. While numbers increased with population growth, reformers were particularly alarmed by the rise of casual prostitution and its visibility in public spaces.

Beyond destitution. While economic hardship (low wages, unemployment, loss of male support) was a primary driver, prostitution was not solely a last resort. Sanger's study revealed many women cited "inclination," suggesting elements of choice. Prostitution offered significantly higher earnings than most female trades, providing a means for survival and even a degree of financial autonomy.

Sexual bargaining. Prostitution existed within a broader culture of sexual exchange, where women might trade sexual favors for money, goods, or companionship. For some, it was a way to escape difficult family situations or assert independence. While fraught with risks (disease, abuse, pregnancy), it could be seen as a strategic, albeit dangerous, way to navigate heterosexual relations and gain resources in a system where women were economically dependent.

10. The Streets Criminalized: Children's Labor Becomes a Symbol of Parental Depravity

"I allude to the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares."

Children's workplace. As traditional apprenticeships and service jobs declined, the streets became a primary workplace for poor children (huckstering, scavenging, petty theft). This increased visibility of children outside the home, often unsupervised, became a major concern for reformers.

Streets as pathology. Reformers like Chief Matsell and Charles Loring Brace used sensational rhetoric to portray street children as inherently criminal and a source of moral and physical contagion. Their presence was seen as proof of the pathology of the "tenement classes" and the failure of working-class families to provide proper domestic environments.

Blaming mothers. While condemning both parents, reformers' focus on domesticity led them to particularly blame working-class mothers for allowing children on the streets. This was seen as a failure of "womanly" nature and a justification for state intervention, such as the Children's Aid Society's "placing out" program to remove children to rural homes.

11. Domesticity as Policy: Reformers Use Law to Impose Bourgeois Gender Norms

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Last updated: May 20, 2025