The Luther H. Hodges Jr. and Luther H. Hodges Sr. Business, Entrepreneurship, and Public P

Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920

By: Edith Sparks

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Paperback | 27 November 2006 | Edition Number 1

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348 Pages

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23.5 x 15.6

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Late nineteenth-century San Francisco was an ethnically diverse but male-dominated society bustling from a rowdy gold rush, earthquakes, and explosive economic growth. Within this booming marketplace, some women stepped beyond their roles as wives, caregivers, and homemakers to start businesses that combined family concerns with money-making activities. Edith Sparks traces the experiences of these women entrepreneurs, exploring who they were, why they started businesses, how they attracted customers and managed finances, and how they dealt with failure.

Using a unique sample of bankruptcy records, credit reports, advertisements, city directories, census reports, and other sources, Sparks argues that women were competitive, economic actors, strategizing how best to capitalize on their skills in the marketplace. Their boardinghouses, restaurants, saloons, beauty shops, laundries, and clothing stores dotted the city’s landscape. By the early twentieth century, however, technological advances, new preferences for name-brand goods, and competition from large-scale retailers constricted opportunities for women entrepreneurs at the same time that new opportunities for women with families drew them into other occupations. Sparks’s analysis demonstrates that these businesswomen were intimately tied to the fortunes of the city over its first seventy years.

Industry Reviews

"A lively, engaging, and far-ranging look at women entrepreneurs. . . . Sparks fills a large gap in historians' understanding of women's role in the development of the West. . . . There is much to glean from Sparks's investigation."
-- "Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"
"Study makes an undeniably significant contribution to the fields of women's, business, and San Francisco history."
-- "Western Historical Quarterly"

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Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Female Proprietors and the Businesses They Started	p. 22
Why San Francisco Women Started Businesses	p. 56
How Women Started Businesses	p. 83
What It Took to Draw Customers	p. 115
Women as Financial Managers	p. 148
When Women Went Out of Business	p. 183
Conclusion	p. 203
Note on Sources	p. 209
Figures and Tables	p. 213
Percentage of All Gainfully Occupied Women in the Hospitality Industry	p. 213
Number of San Francisco Female Proprietors in the Hospitality Industry	p. 214
Female Proprietors in San Francisco as a Percentage of All Gainfully Occupied Women	p. 215
San Francisco Male and Female Populations	p. 216
Women in the San Francisco Directory Employed in Hospitality	p. 217
Retail Dealers in San Francisco in 1920	p. 218
Race and Nativity of Female Proprietors and of Total San Francisco Female Population, 1890	p. 220
San Francisco Female Proprietors in Types of Businesses as Percentage of All Proprietors from Racial/Ethnic Background, 1890	p. 221
San Francisco Female Proprietors in Types of Businesses as Percentage of All Proprietors in Each Category, 1890	p. 222
San Francisco Foreign-Born White Female Proprietors by Origin and Type of Business, 1890	p. 223
Race and Nativity of Male Proprietors and of Total San Francisco Male Population, 1890	p. 224
San Francisco Male Proprietors in Types of Businesses as Percentage of All Proprietors in Each Category, 1890	p. 225
San Francisco Foreign-Born White Male Proprietors by Origin and Type of Business, 1890	p. 226
Percentage of Women's Businesses Located on Kearny, Montgomery, Second, Third, and Market Streets	p. 227
Business Failure among San Francisco Female Proprietors	p. 227
Notes	p. 229
Selected Bibliography	p. 297
Index	p. 313
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

The Luther H. Hodges Jr. and Luther H. Hodges Sr. Business, Entrepreneurship, and Public P

Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850-1920

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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