Lowell Mill Girls - Wikipedia. Tintype of two young women in Lowell, Massachusetts. The . The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, between the ages of 1. While their wages were only half of what men were paid, many were able to attain economic independence for the first time, free from controlling fathers and husbands. As a result, while factory life would soon come to be experienced as oppressive, it enabled these women to challenge assumptions of female inferiority and dependence. As the nature of the new . While they decried the deteriorating factory conditions, worker unrest in the 1. This loss of control, which came with the dependence on the corporations for a wage, was experienced as an attack on their dignity and independence. In 1. 84. 5, after a number of protests and strikes, many operatives came together to form the first union of working women in the United States, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. The Association adopted a newspaper called the Voice of Industry, in which workers published sharp critiques of the new industrialism. Mill Village and Factory 'When southern farmers left the land and took a cotton mill job, they called it The Voice stood in sharp contrast to other literary magazines published by female operatives, such as the Lowell Offering, which painted a sanguine picture of life in the mills. Industrialization of Lowell. Differing from the earlier Rhode Island System, where only carding and spinning were done in a factory while the weaving was often put out to neighboring farms to be done by hand, the Waltham mill was the first integrated mill in the United States, transforming raw cotton into cotton cloth in one mill building. In 1. 82. 1, Francis C. Lowell's business associates, looking to expand the Waltham textile operations, purchased land around the Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Incorporated as the Town of Lowell in 1. New, large scale machinery, which had come to dominate the production of cloth by 1. Together, these mutually reinforcing technological and social changes produced staggering increases: between 1. This tremendous growth translated directly into large profits for the textile corporations: between 1. Boston- based investors, the group of textile companies that founded Lowell, averaged 1. Lowell Mill Girls Tintype of two young women in Lowell. Mill Life in Lowell Website University of Massachusetts Lowell, Center for Lowell History. Overview of Mill of Life, The, 1914, with Maurice Costello, at Turner Classic Movies. The Steel Business: The Lot of a Steel Worker The life of a 19th-century steel worker was grueling. Twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week. John Stuart Mill: Life & times. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). The British Empire reached its height on the eve of WWI (1914). Most corporations recorded similarly high profits during this period. Work and living environment. In her autobiography, Harriet Hanson Robinson (who worked in the Lowell mills from 1. A few girls who came with their mothers or older sisters were as young as ten years old, some were middle- aged, but the average age was about 2. They were paired with more experienced women, who trained them in the ways of the factory. Employees worked from 5: 0. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as . The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth. A curfew of 1. 0: 0. About 2. 6 women lived in each boarding house, with up to six sharing a bedroom. However, half- days and short paid vacations were possible due to the nature of the piece- work; one girl would work the machines of another in addition to her own such that no wages would be lost. These close quarters fostered community as well as resentment. Newcomers were mentored by older women in areas such as dress, speech, behavior, and the general ways of the community. Workers often recruited their friends or relatives to the factories, creating a familial atmosphere among many of the rank and file. The 1. 84. 8 Handbook to Lowell proclaimed that . Most had already completed some measure of formal education and were resolutely bent on self- improvement. Upon their arrival, they found a vibrant, lively working class intellectual culture: workers read voraciously in Lowell. Many even pursued literary composition. Defying factory rules, operatives would affix verses to their spinning frames, . In the evenings, many enrolled in courses offered by the mills and attended public lectures at the Lyceum, a theatre built at company expense (offering 2. The Voice of Industry is alive with notices for upcoming lectures, courses, and meetings on topics ranging from astronomy to music. But this masked the bitter opposition of many workers to the twelve to fourteen hours of monotonous, exhausting work, which they saw was corrosive to their desire to learn and educate themselves. As the magazine grew in popularity, women contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction . In a letter in the first issue, . This, in turn, led to organized . After a series of meetings, the female textile workers organized a . The women involved in . This dismayed the agents of the factories, who portrayed the turnout as a betrayal of femininity. William Austin, agent of the Lawrence Manufacturing Company, wrote to his Board of Directors, . As the economic calamity continued in October 1. Directors proposed an additional rent hike to be paid by the textile workers living in the company boarding houses. Harriet Hanson Robinson, an eleven- year- old doffer at the time of the strike, recalled in her memoirs: . This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience. The proposed rent hike was seen as a violation of the written contract between the employers and the employees. Started by twelve operatives in January 1. The Association was run completely by the women themselves: they elected their own officers and held their own meetings; they helped organize the city. They organized fairs, parties, and social gatherings. Unlike many middle- class women activists, the operatives found considerable support from working- class men who welcomed them into their reform organizations and advocated for their treatment as equals. One of its first actions was to send petitions signed by thousands of textile workers to the Massachusetts General Court demanding a ten- hour work day. In response, the Massachusetts Legislature established a committee chaired by William Schouler, Representative from Lowell, to investigate and hold public hearings, during which workers testified about conditions in the factories and the physical demands of their twelve- hour days. These were the first investigations into labor conditions by a governmental body in the United States. The LFLRA called its chairman, William Schouler, a . The impact of working men . The next year Schouler was re- elected to the State Legislature. Although the initial push for a ten- hour workday was unsuccessful, the LFLRA continued to grow, affiliating with the New England Workingmen's Association and publishing articles in that organization's Voice of Industry, a pro- labor newspaper. The FLRA's organizing efforts spilled over into other nearby towns. By 1. 84. 8, the LFLRA dissolved as a labor reform organization. Lowell textile workers continued to petition and pressure for improved working conditions. Unable to recruit enough Yankee women to fill all the new jobs, to supplement the workforce textile managers turned to survivors of the Great Irish Famine who had recently immigrated to the United States in large numbers. During the Civil War, many of Lowell's cotton mills closed, unable to acquire bales of raw cotton from the South. After the war, the textile mills reopened, recruiting French Canadian men and women. Although large numbers of Irish and French Canadian immigrants moved to Lowell to work in the textile mills, Yankee women still dominated the workforce until the mid- 1. Framing their struggle for shorter work days and better pay as a matter of rights and personal dignity, they sought to place themselves in the larger context of the American Revolution. I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave,For I'm so fond of liberty. That I cannot be a slave. In the first of these, subtitled . But when you sell your labour, you sell yourself, losing the rights of free men and becoming vassals of mammoth establishments of a monied aristocracy that threatens annihilation to anyone who questions their right to enslave and oppress. Online at Whole Cloth: Discovering Science and Technology through American History. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved on August 2. Robinson, Harriet (1. Retrieved on August 2. Online at the Illinois Labor History Society. Retrieved on August 2. Dickens, Charles (1. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0- 6. 79- 6. Factory Life As It Is, Number One. Online at the Center for History and New Media. Retrieved on August 2. Hamilton Manufacturing Company (1. Online at the Illinois Labor History Society. Retrieved on March 1. Online at the On- Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics. Retrieved on August 2. Farley, Harriet (1. Online at Primary Sources: Workshops in American History. Retrieved on August 2. Boston Transcript (1. Retrieved on August 2. Faragher, John Mack, et al. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Pearson Hall, 2. Pg 3. 46^Zinn, Howard (1. A People's History of the United States, p. New York: Harper. Perennial. ISBN 0- 0. Se. 3CBAAAQBAJ& pg=PA2& lpg=PA2& dq=%2. HJ1. WAEe. Mg. E& sig=Dk. Vgr. GXq. Qk. Lcko. VKC4. Rdcd. ZS3as& hl=en& sa=X& ved=0. CFIQ6. AEw. CGo. VCh. MI. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1. Robert G. Layer, Earnings of Cotton Mill Operatives, 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1. Quoted in . Retrieved on August 2. See, for example, Activism, Anarchy, and Power. Interview by Harry Kreisler. March 2. 00. 2.^Chomsky quoting Lowell Mill Girls from p. Available online through Lemelson Center, Smithsonian. Mrozowski, Stephen A. Living on the Boott: Historical Archeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 1. Ranta, Judith A. Women and Children of the Mills: An Annotated Guide to Nineteenth- Century American Textile Factory Literature (Greenwood Press, 1. Zonderman, David A. Aspirations and Anxieties: New England Workers and the Mechanized Factory System, 1. Oxford University Press, 1. Primary sources. The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1.
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