“In the 1840s, girls from New England farms flocked to Lowell, Massachusetts to work in the textile mills. They operated dangerous, noisy machines, worked long hours for little pay, lived in crowded boarding houses, and profoundly changed how American women perceived themselves.

One hundred years later Luthera Burton Dawson, great niece of a Lowell mill girl, joined the stream of young women headed to Washington D.C. to government jobs as typists and stenographers. The salary of $1,440 per year, earned by these young women after their first promotion, was a powerful incentive in those Depression years.

The author recalls the fun and camaraderie, the boarding houses and cafeterias, and, when war came in 1942, the sacrifices. They were Uncle Sam’s nieces, the greatest generation gals who kept government moving at home while battle raged abroad. ”

– from the publisher