TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN'S WORK.

Most examinations of working class women focus on wage earning women in textile towns and in mixed industrial and commercial centers. However, historians need to expand their examination of working class women to include those living in cities which had few employment opportunities for women such as Pittsburgh, and to study women's unpaid work in the home as well as paid labor outside it. A study of domestic and municipal technology, who benefited from it, and who could not afford it illustrates the deprivation of the working class vis-a-vis other groups in the city and shows how urbanization and technological innovation affected working class lives. Such a study provides a microcosm of governmental attitudes toward the working class and shows the ways in which urban government could improve or ignore the quality of life of different socioeconomic groups within the city. The lack of services in working class neighborhoods was all the more critical since these areas were precisely the ones which suffered most from the pollution of the mills and had the most traffic.