Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Entering the white-collar layer could be done on merit, not just through family ties and seven-year apprenticeships, as had been the case with the engineers and the spinners – and in certain industries, white-collar work was more open to women.

What nobody foresaw was that this reshaped working class would become educated, radicalized and political. Taylor’s ‘dumb oxen’ would teach themselves to read – not just dime novels but philosophy. The white-collar secretaries and telephonists would become agitators and educators in mass socialist parties.

Working-class towns became centres of a sophisticated culture – of clubs, libraries, choirs and nurseries, the separate working-class lifestyle and, above all, of resistance inside the factory.