Their Lives and Numbers

In late nineteenth-century America, the social and economic changes that accompanied industrialization aroused intense public debate. Gathering information from workers, families, and employers, the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor undertook the first state-sponsored investigations of living and working conditions in America. Introduced in 1870, the bureau's annual reports were widely read and often cited in discussions of problems collectively known as the labor question. Their Lives and Numbers brings together narrative and statistical documents from the bureau's first thirty years, providing a detailed picture of the experience of working families in an industrial society.In selecting documents for inclusion, Henry F. Bedford has focused on the topics of housing, income distribution, women in the workforce, alcohol use, ethnicity, child labor, education, legislation, and labor disputes. Accompanied by Bedford's extensive historical commentary, the documents provide a rich context for our understanding of life in factories and mills, kitchens and communities.The directors of the MBSL frequently began their research with the testimony of individuals for whom industrial change was immediate and personal. Their idea of relevant statistics included not only the wages of hundreds of categories of textile operatives, but also family budgets, birth rates, numbers of convictions for alcohol-related offenses, even the cost of boots manufactured in prisons.