"This book tells the story of girls and women who helped support the families of coal miners, mine laborers, and industrial workers in the anthracite region and nearby communities. These girls emulated their fathers by going out to work, bringing home wages, and standing up for their rights as workers. Because many of them were coal miners' daughters, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) often stepped in to help resolve their disputes with management.

Social reformers of the early twentieth century drew attention to the tender age of many of the silk workers. Through the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, these female workers struggled to establish themselves, not as childlike victims, but as independent women, capable of finding their own way in the world and standing up for their own rights."--BOOK JACKET.