Limited Options. As various goods, especially textiles, became cheaper to buy than to produce at home, many farm women looked for alternative ways to contribute to their families' economic well-being. One possibility had been doing outwork, assembling pieces that had been prepared in a shop and sent out to workers' homes to be completed or sewn together, for a small amount of money per piece. Mechanization of the textile industry made outwork obsolete but created jobs for young, unmarried, middle-class women who hoped to gain some independence and save some money before marriage. In the 1830s and 1840s these women, America's first force of factory workers, were gradually replaced by immigrant men and women who were willing to accept lower wages and harsher conditions, and factory work became less and less respectable for middle-class women. For immigrants, free black women, and others with...