This book traces the history of industrial homework and its regulation over the last century.

Abbreviations; List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction 'home, sweet home': gender, the state, and labor standards; Part I. Man's Freedom, Woman's Necessity: Jacobs and its Legacy: 1. 'A man's dwelling house is his castle': tenement house cigarmaking and the judicial imperative; 2. 'White slaves of the cities': campaigns against sweated clothing; 3. 'Women who work' and 'Women who spend': the family economy vs the family wage; Part II. Visions and Voices: 4. 'Soldiers of freedom', 'garments of slavery': patriotic homework; 5. 'To study their own conditions': states' rights to regulate; 6. 'Homework is a community question' the worlds of the homeworker; Part III. Engendering the New Deal: 7. 'To improve on business through law': homework under the NRA; 8. 'Strike while the iron is hot': the politics of enactment, the perils of enforcement; 9. 'Unknown to the common law': the fair labor standards act; Part IV. Homework Redux: 10. 'With a keyboard in one hand': white collars in the home; 11. Deregulating 'the rights of women'; Index.