For the past few years, the claim that Irish American slaves existed and even

outnumbered black slaves has gained popularity and legitimacy. Such a claim has been largely

disproved and condemned by 80 historians and scholars (Hogan). Despite it being false, the

claim has been used among white supremacists to “derail conversations about racism and

inequality” (Varner). The equation of poor working whites with slaves is not a new concept.

Published during the height of Industrialization, Rebecca Harding Davis’s ​Life in the Iron Mills

drew on comparisons to slavery to make her audience aware of the grueling reality that white

mill workers faced. However, Davis’s comparison does not serve to propagate the needs of poor

white people at the expense of the needs of black people. Instead, by equating wage slavery to

chattel slavery, Davis aligns the oppression of both communities as having commonality in a

shared oppressor: capitalism. Through its interrogation of the definition of whiteness and its

attention to the interactions of class and race, ​Life in the Iron Mills​ seeks to reveal how race is

used to prop up the beneficiaries of capitalism and what must be done to overcome it.