BiblioVault - Books by Kleinberg, S. J.

The Practice of U.S. Women's History

Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues

Edited by S. Jay Kleinberg, Eileen Boris, and Vicki L. Ruiz

Rutgers University Press, 2008

In the last several decades, U.S. women’s history has come of age. Not only have historians challenged the national narrative on the basis of their rich explorations of the personal, the social, the economic, and the political, but they have also entered into dialogues with each other over the meaning of women’s history itself.

In this collection of seventeen original essays on women’s lives from the colonial period to the present, contributors take the competing forces of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and region into account. Among many other examples, they examine how conceptions of gender shaped government officials’ attitudes towards East Asian immigrants; how race and gender inequality pervaded the welfare state; and how color and class shaped Mexican American women’s mobilization for civil and labor rights.

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The Shadow Of The Mills

Working-Class Families in Pittsburgh, 1870–1907

S. J. Kleinberg

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991

The profound disruption of family relationships caused by industrialization found its most dramatic expression in the steel mills of Pittsburgh in the 1880s. The work day was twelve hours, and the work week was seven days - with every other Sunday for rest.

In this major work, S. J. Kleinberg focuses on the private side of industrialization, on how the mills structured the everyday existence of the women, men, and children who lived in their shadows. What did industrialization and urbanization really mean to the people who lived through the these processes? What solutions did they find to the problems of low wages, poor housing, inadequate sanitation, and high mortality rates?

Through imaginative use of census data, the records of municipal, charitable, and fraternal organizations, and the voices of workers themselves in local newspapers, Kleinberg builds a detailed picture of the working-class life cycle: marital relationships, the interaction between parents and children, the education and employment prospects of the young, and the lives if the elderly.

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Widows and Orphans First

The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939

S. J. Kleinberg

University of Illinois Press, 2005

The experiences of widows and their children during the Progressive Era and the New Deal depended on differences in local economies and values. How did these widely varied experiences impact the origins of the welfare state?

S. J. Kleinberg delves into the question by comparing widows' lives in three industrial cities with differing economic, ethnic, and racial bases. Government in Fall River, Massachusetts, saw employment as a solution to widows' poverty and as a result drastically limited public charity. In Pittsburgh, widows received sympathetic treatment. Few jobs existed for them or their children; indeed, the jobs for men were concentrated in "widowmaking" industries like steel and railroading. With a large African American population and a diverse economy that relied on inexpensive child and female labor, Baltimore limited funds for public services. African Americans adapted by establishing their own charitable institutions.

A fascinating comparative study, Widows and Orphans First offers a one-of-a-kind look at social welfare policy for widows and the role of children in society during a pivotal time in American history.

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Women in the United States, 1830-1945

S.J. Kleinberg

Rutgers University Press

This work investigates women's economic, social, political and cultural history, encompassing all ethnic and racial groups and religions. It provides a general introduction to the history of women in industrializing America. Both a history of women and a history of the United States, its chronology is shaped by economic stages and political events.

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