Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present

Abstract

IOWAfathers who periodically carried out "purity raids" on the brothels, while simultaneously making money from the illegal business.Although relatively few members of the ranking establishment drew direct revenues from the vice trade, prominent businessmen, office holders, and civic leaders indirectly profited because the prostitutes brought dollars and clients into the broader marketplace.Sizable towns which might have attempted to eliminate these illegal activities certainly would have invited an economic setback from which they may never have recovered.Both of these studies stand as important additions to frontier and women's history.Perhaps the conclusions seem more of the commonsense variety than of the earth-shaking type, but the corrections of popular stereotypes needed to be made.While Butler assumed the historian's approach and Goldman pursued the discipline of sociology, both authors complemented and reinforced each other's efforts.The "oldest profession" has now been properly moved from the gossip parlor to the dissecting microscope of the social scientist.