The study of the place of sexuality in working-class culture is still in its infancy. The most noteworthy investigations stop short at the threshold of the twentieth century, on the eve of full-fledged industrialization. The sparseness of data on all periods has made sexuality a particularly intractable subject. The reticence of both memoirists and oral history subjects to reveal the most intimate aspects of their private sphere has forced historians to work with very fragmentary evidence and to rely on inference and contextual reconstructions. If this is so, then why study the subject at all? Because our understanding of working-class culture would be very incomplete without some glimpses of intimate life. There, at the core of the workers' private sphere, lie the emotional resources that have made it possible for them to express their selfhood at the workplace and to respond to the most oppressive aspects of wage labor. There, also, are embedded a variety of subcultural forms and associations which, acting both as disabilities and strengths, have made it possible for workers to resist exploitative manipulation and reformist schemes for self-improvement.