Analyzing disjunctions between middle-class and working-class womens ideas of independence, Vapnek highlights the agendas for change advanced by leaders such as Jennie Collins, Leonora OReilly, and Helen Campbell and organizations such as the National Consumers League, the Womens Educational and Industrial Union, and the Womens Trade Union League. Locating households as important sites of class conflict, Breadwinners recovers the class and gender politics behind the marginalization of domestic workers from labor reform while documenting the ways in which working-class women raised their voices on their own behalf.
