From Sellers to Spinners. Women’s Work and the Moral Economy in a Swedish Mining Town, 1710–1770

This article uses moral economy as a framework to explain why women publicans and street sellers were made to spin yarn for manufactories and spinning houses in eighteenth-century Sweden. As a case study it compares two textile manufactories established in Falun in the 1720s and 1740s, looking at how the plans and aims differed over time and what effects this had on the economic outcomes for both institutions. The article refers to the legal discourse concerning the women who were subject to spinning houses and finds similarities with the women in Falun who were supposed to spin at manufactories. Finally, the article analyses how the ideology of moral economy changed there in the 1740s, as selling women disappeared from the discussion and the manufactories became more commercial.