50 Shades of Chambray

Source

Down East

Date

6-2015

Pages

70-73, 108-111

Abstract

A play on words of the title, “50 Shades of Grey,” the author gives an account of how the Saco-Biddeford cotton industry gave rise to a 19th century pulp fiction craze that featured hard-working, docile, white farm girls seeking their fortunes in the textile industry only to be ruined by cads looking to take advantage of them. The Saco-Biddeford factory girl tales were eventually condemned and phased out as a new wave of workers who were primarily immigrants took over the jobs and the middle-class lost interest in the factory-girl fiction. [illustrations, photographs]

Subjects

Textile industry--Maine, Fiction

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