In the minds of most people, the home has stood apart from the world of work. By bringing the factory or office into the home, homework challenges this division. Homework has been vigorously debated by employers, trade unionists, male and female reformers, and government administrators. This book restores the voices of homeworking women to the century-long struggle over their labor.

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.