“Corporation tools and time‐serving slaves”;: Class and gender in the rhetoric of antebellum labor reform

This article analyzes the rhetoric of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, one of the more radical examples of antebellum American women's public activism. Members of the group, among the first generation of workers, exhibited strong class and gender consciousness in their persuasion. Not only did they speak out as women during a period when such behavior was proscribed, but they spoke as workers, an identification that proved essential to their rhetoric. The workers created an identity in opposition to the middle‐class ideology of femininity, freeing them to engage in public activism. Analysis of extant texts demonstrates that the rhetoric reflects a strategic combination of early feminism infused with the working‐class language of “come‐outerism.”;

Key terms:

• Labor reform
• Lowell Female Labor Reform Association
• gender
• class
• antebellum reform.