| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

City of Clerks: Office and Sales Workers in Philadelphia, 1870–1920. By Jerome P. Bjelopera. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. ix, 208p. Illustrations, notes, appendix, index. Cloth, $45; paper, $22.)

Between the Civil War and World War I, Philadelphia's businesses recruited an army of clerks to play vital roles in the city's burgeoning industrial economy. Many Americans believed that clerking in an office or store was a step toward enhanced social and economic status, though by the first decades of the twentieth century, clerks were finding it more difficult to advance in an economy dominated by the corporation. Nevertheless, skilled workers encouraged their children to obtain the education and connections that would propel them into a developing white-collar middle class, and the offspring of business proprietors continued to hope that clerkships would help them fulfill their ambitions. Jerome Bjelopera unearths new evidence that builds upon previous scholarly work tracing how ideological constructions of gender shaped the work and leisure experiences of these young men and women.

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