Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor Highlight

By the 1830s, the American genocide against Indigenous people had been well underway for decades, and the few Indigenous women allowed into the workforce were treated abominably. As immigration ramped up during the middle of the nineteenth century, women workers from other ethnic groups—including, but not limited to, Irish immigrants fleeing a colonial famine and Russian Jews seeking to escape brutal repression—were also targeted by the ruling class’s white supremacist paternalism, attuned to uphold the privilege of its housebound Victorian angels. But that restrictive social fabric quickly began to fray as the Industrial Revolution took flight.