In 1919, a general strike carried out by Winnipeg’s largely immigrant working class paralyzed the city. The town’s wealthiest men swiftly assembled into a shadowy ad-hoc formation called the Committee of One Thousand, which plotted to break the strike by any means necessary. Their wives, meanwhile, were busy attempting to remedy the crisis caused by the absence of their domestic workers.

“‘Milady’ was touring the alien district in limousine and taxi,” read a local labor newspaper at the time, “begging, pleading, imploring and bribing the ‘female of the alien species’ to come to her aid and replace the female workers who were on strike.” The newspaper reported that the immigrant women “declined the tempting offers made them and they stuck tight as a postage stamp.” That is, they refused to cross the picket line to clean a rich woman’s home.

But a general strike was an exceptional occasion. At most other times and places in the modern history of North America, poor women have been plentiful and unorganized, and therefore easy to hire for domestic work. No matter how low the pay or how dangerous the conditions, there have nearly always been women willing to perform it, including now, during the coronavirus pandemic.