This project would not have been possible without extensive financial and intellectual support from many people. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Gayl Ness and the University of Michigan Sociology Department and the National Institute of Mental Health, who provided me with the funds for a trip to London to locate archival materials for a potential dissertation. Had this initial trip not been provided, I never would have discovered the Great Western Railway and Post Office archives, and this research design never would have been developed. Not enough can be said for the importance of providing graduate students early in their careers with funds for the investigation of archives; historical work in particular is entirely dependent on the discovery of new archives with new bodies of material.
The Russell Sage Foundation very generously provided an entire year of fellowship support, research assistance, and computer support to allow for the analysis and writing of this manuscript. This project required an extensive re-analysis and fresh conceptualization that could only have been accomplished with the leisure that a year of freedom from teaching could provide. The Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies also provided a year of fellowship support that allowed for a rapid completion of the dissertation on which this book is based.
I owe a special intellectual debt to W. B. Creighton, Alberto Palloni, and R. W. Jones. W. B. Creighton, an Australian legal scholar, provided a historical summary of the British protectionist laws relevant to female employment and nightwork that became essential to the chapter on the legitimation of exclusion. Alberto Palloni, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin, developed the modifications of the stable population equations that are used to estimate the relations between organizational growth and the viability of boy labor. R. W. Jones, the former archivist at the General Post Office archives, provided a wealth of information on postal history and the location of sources. He was indispensable both in providing documentary material on the most recondite matters and in providing interpretations and explanations of postal esoterica.
The number of individuals who have offered helpful advice on various aspects of this project is enormous. Among the people who have read earlier drafts of this research or who have provided substantial assistance on problems encountered in writing and execution are Julia Adams, Robert Cole, Roberto Franzosi, Warren Hagstrom, Charles Halaby, Robert Mare, Ruth Milkman, Jeffery Paige, Richard Roehl, Aage Sorensen, Charles Tilly, and Louise Tilly. My sincere gratitude to them all. I have endeavored to follow their suggestions whenever possible; whatever errors remain in this text are my own responsibility. The last debt is to my wife, Lynn Wallisch, for editing, commentary, and infinite patience.