Homestead

The Households of a Mill Town

A classic in American urban and social history. One of the earliest and certainly one of the most elaborate descriptions of urban social conditions, it provides a remarkably extensive view of life and work in the city of Pittsburgh in the early 20th century. . . . If you had a family who lived and worked here, you must read this volume—you will be living back then, with them and experience their everyday trials and tribulations to survive.
Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Quarterly

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Forward by Tom Waseleski

First published in 1910 in the classic Pittsburgh Survey, this pioneering work of American social history, reproduced in its entirety, describes daily life in a community that was dominated economically and physically by the giant Homestead Works of the United States Steel Corporation. The town of Homestead, just across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh, developed as a completely separate city—a true mill town settled by newer immigrants and shaped in its attitudes by the infamous Homestead Strike of 1892, which significantly set back unionization efforts in the steel industry. Homestead:The Households of a Mill Town not only focuses on the plight of the American steel worker in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it also explores the domestic and community aspects of life in that time period.

about the author

Margaret Byington

Margaret F. Byington (1877–1952) wrote a number of books about public welfare, social work, and community building throughout her lifetime.

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Margaret Byington