Abstract
Women’s working-class histories in the United States have received historians’ attention mainly because of the archival documentation of their lives and work, such as the female workers in the garment factories of New England and the mid-Atlantic states during the 19th century. Rarely can a historian actively engage in the act of preserving untold histories of the female laboring class. Phyllis Wong’s We Kept Our Towns Going documents and contextualizes the working lives of the women employed in the now defunct undergarment factory called Gossard plant in North Michigan with the help of more than 200 oral histories of its former workers.
The book traces the history of the H. W. Gossard Company from its establishment in 1920 until its closure in 1976. The five decades of history span how the undergarment manufacturing factory came to be set up in a town known predominantly for mining and united the community by hiring women as its employees. The author delves into the expansion of the factory, the rise of labor consciousness in its employees, its eventual decline due to economic pressures both international and domestic, and how the factory remains alive in the pulse of its community today.
Wong lays out the history of the Gossard Company chronologically in nine chapters. Each chapter delves into a period during the development of the factory and ends with short profiles of its female employees. This method weaves the personal histories of the female workers into the history of the factory. Each chapter highlights a period in the development of the industrial town through the intergenerational relationships between mothers and daughters who worked in the same factory and a snapshot of their family histories.
In the first three chapters of the book, the author gives an overview of how a garment factory came to be established in a mining town in North Michigan. Using the combination of journalistic accounts and industrial policy documents during this period, Chapter 1 sketches how business policies encouraged the entrepreneur H. W. Gossard to explore the market for the production of a new type of female undergarment that he imported from Paris. Chapter 2 describes how the various parts of the factory, such as the raw material stock supply, the undergarment assembly line, and the post-production distribution, worked in tandem to make it profitable even during the Great Depression. Chapter 3 elucidates how the profitability of the plant led the business to expand its factories in the mid-1930s.
The book then pivots to the crises the factory confronted in the mid-1940s. One of the main challenges was World War II, which changed traditional employment roles. Women stepped up to meaningfully supplement family incomes and to take on a prominent role in the community. A second type of challenge was the unionization drive of the garment workers. Chapter 4 provides a detailed account of the process used to educate the workers through personal correspondence with the union leaders and factory workers; the internal politics that shifted the leadership among workers; and the radio shows and editorials in local newspapers that eventually led to picketing, protests, and strikes to demand worker rights. Chapter 5 delves into the transformation in the fashion industry that challenged the competitiveness of the factory, and Chapter 6 discusses its eventual closure.
One of the clear strengths of the book is Wong’s method of data collection. The detailed oral histories of female factory workers recount the workdays and the time spent in the community and at home. This type of historical account fills the gap of archival documentation available through journalistic accounts and other existing documents for this period.
Another positive aspect worth mentioning is how the oral narratives bring multiple generations of women together. Through their own accounts, the work lives of the factory workers in the 1920s can be contrasted with those in the later decades. Furthermore, women’s oral narratives include their family histories tangentially, describing how the Great Depression and the World Wars impacted the community.
The telling of this story also connects it to the larger historical landscape of the unionization of the industrial workers in the United States. The manner in which Chapter 4 discusses the political consciousness of the Gossard Girls and connects them with that of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in the mid-1940s shows how factory workers learned to organize, mobilize, and negotiate. Rich details portray how local chapters of unions operated at that time.
Although oral narratives fill the gap of other types of journalistic accounts, its limitations affect the inferences that could be drawn from the method. For example, in the Preface, Wong describes an incident in which the presentation of oral histories at an event raised the question of contradicting testimonials. This example illustrates both the problem of memory as a reliable tool and how to negotiate contradictory recollections. Working through these questions would have qualified the inferences drawn from this method without compromising its benefits; however, the book does not address this issue directly.
The narratives of the Gossard Girls will appeal to a wide range of readers. Students and practitioners of workplace democracy, such as union workers and leaders, will find the book interesting as it recounts how the associational power of the female garment worker was channeled by unions to revive greater political consciousness among the workforce. The detailed deliberation on collective bargaining and workplace rights in some sections of this book will resonate with those engaged in industrial relations, labor studies, and legal scholarship of work. The history of the female working class will be of interest to historians and labor sociologists.