Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service: Middle-Class Workers in Victorian America

Drawing from workers' applications, testimonies, and other primary documents, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service recreates the white-collar world of middle-class workers from the Civil War to 1900. It reveals how men who worked in federal agencies moved from being self-employed to salaried workers, in the process placing at risk the independence that lay at the core of middle-class male values; while women assumed the kind of independence that threatened their positions as delicate, middle-class ladies deserving the protection and care of men. Introducing a cast of characters who worked as federal clerks in Washington, Arons examines the nature of being a civil servant--from the hiring, firing, and promotion procedures, the motivations for joining the federal workforce, and the impact of feminization on the workplace to the interpersonal aspects of office life such as attitude towards sex, manners, and money-lending--and provides an imaginative look at what it meant to be among the ladies and gentlemen who formed part of the first white-collar bureaucracy in the United States.

"The author's consideration of both male and female workers together provides a unique and valuable perspective on the history of white collar labor and late Victorian society..."--Journal of Social History

"Fascinating....A superb example of a comparative study of the experiences and values of men and women. It is a model history of male and female interaction. It is not only good women's history, labor history, and men's history, but it makes good History."--Reviews in American History

"A perceptive and engaging case study....Deserves a wide audience among students of large-scale organizations and should be required reading for anyone attempting to refine the 'organizational synthesis' of the American past."--Business History Review

"A carefully documented, well-organized, original and convincing book....She has brilliantly portrayed late-nineteenth-century workers in the Washington offices of the Treasury and Interior departments."--The Historian

"Full, intelligent, and...on the cutting edge of current interest."--Michael H. Frisch, State University of New York at Buffalo

"Fascinating reading about the feminization of a key occupational category."--Kathryn Kish Sklar, UCLA

"This study frontally attacks the twin problems of class identity and class formation in the last half of the 19th century."--Daniel Walkowitz, New York University