Aspirations and Anxieties

Aspirations and Anxieties presents the thoughts and actions of the first generation of factory workers in New England. It shows the various ways in which different kinds of factory workers handled their new experiences in numerous settings - in the factories themselves, in the surrounding factory towns, in strikes and political campaigns. The diversity of these workers' thoughts is related by Zonderman to the larger changes in American culture occurring in the decades before the Civil War.