“Money is the Only Advantage”: Reconsidering the History of Gender, Labor, and Emigration among US Teachers in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

AbstractLacking the power to improve the terms and conditions of school teaching at home, more than seventy US women migrated to work for the Argentine government in the last third of the nineteenth century. Only a few studies have researched this episode in the history of teachers, interpreting it as an uplifting, civilizing mission and characterizing the teachers as valiant, benevolent, and occasionally misguided reformers. Yet these migrant teachers' own words suggest that the desire to uplift played little part in their migration decisions, whereas low pay and limited employment opportunities for women figured prominently. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, newspapers, and census records, this study explores how these migrant teachers understood themselves, their work, and their social location. The analysis offers new insight into these teachers' identities as workers both at home and abroad. While acknowledging how teachers' labor served reform objectives, the essay argues that the long history of teaching in the United States needs to be reconsidered as a labor history.