As the industrialization progressed in the North United States, the social classes began to change, forming a new idea for social status and the place of women in it. Gerda Lerner argues that during the colonial period farm wives had more power. She says that even though they were still a patriarchy, colonial women in the subsistence farming society had not necessarily formal power but still were essential to labor and reproducing children, she organized the household, providing socially necessary household labor, which empowered her in the community. Lerner infers very strongly that as the 19th century progresses women in American society begin to lose some of those traditional advantages in terms of their inherent power. Photographs, shown in class, from that period show that the world came a long way from subsistence farming and transformed into a new world of female employees and a new community of women. .
Photographs of tunnel diggers show how the intensity of work increases in this period, which is also mentioned by Alan Dawley when he talks about the wage labor shoe makers. At the same time they are paid much less than the skilled artisans like coopers or latch makers, since the wage workers positions are low skilled. Consequently this led to a division in the community of working class people to ones who perform low-skilled labor and those with higher skill individuals. The high-skill workers had more social and political power. Dawley argues that the shoemakers had to do much of their labor by hand which demanded some skill, but in order for the process to be more efficient the sewing machines take the skill out of the production of shoes. Therefore skilled shoemakers have less work and start losing social power and status. They had no power to challenge their employer to maintain living wages and good lifestyle. But the manufacturers are pressured to mechanize the process by their competitors who lower the prices of merchandize because of the use of technology themselves.
