mill girls of lowell how working conditions affected the lives of the mill girls

Mill Girls of LowellHow Working Conditions Affected the Lives of the Mill Girls

Before the Industrial Revolution

• Before the Industrial Revolution, most Americans lived on farms or in rural villages and produced the goods that they needed for daily life. They also produced goods -- food, textiles, clothing, and shoes for local markets. Bartering was far more common than selling goods for cash. Bulk goods such as grain, tobacco, stone, and lumber were shipped to the small number of large cities for national or foreign markets.

Information from: http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/Curriculum_Materials/Curriculum_Packets/WOL.pdf

http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/Curriculum_Materials/Curriculum_Packets/WOL.pdf

• American villages and cities increasingly contained skilled craftsmen who worked in small workshops. Most of these craftsmen had trained for years as apprentices, then as journeymen, before becoming masters as blacksmiths, tailors, printers, shipwrights, or other skilled trades. Masters often owned their tools, and controlled the pace and quality of work.



• Within the textile crafts, the carding of wool or cotton and the spinning of yarn were mechanized in America beginning in the late 1700s. Yet weaving cloth continued in the rural home or remained the province of skilled urban weavers. Beginning in the 1810s with the development of the power loom, however, textile production shifted into factories. The textile industry soon emerged as one of the key enterprises that propelled America’s Industrial Revolution.



• Lowell was one of the most important industrial cities in early America. Wealthy Boston merchants financed the harnessing of waterpower from the Merrimack River and the construction of factories and machines to create the largest textile mills in the nation.


Lowell and the Beginning of American Industry


• They bought cotton produced in the slave south and hired primarily young women from New England villages to manufacture large amounts of cloth. Their investment was highly profitable. Moreover, Lowell’s "mile of mills" and its tidy rows of brick boardinghouses where many of the "mill girls" lived became an international attraction.



• Who were the “mill girls”? The term was used to describe young Yankee women, generally 15-30 years old, who worked in the large cotton factories. Despite the hardships of mill work, women remained an important part of the textile workforce for many years. In the late 19th century, women held nearly 2/3 of all textile jobs in Lowell, with many immigrant women joining Yankee mill girls in the textile industry.

Information from a brochure produced by the National Park Service and distributed at the Factory museum.

• The men who ran the corporations and managed the mills sought to regulate the moral conduct and social behavior of their workforce. In the bordinghouses, the keepers enforced curfews and strict codes of conduct. Male and female workers were expected to observe the Sabbath and temperance was strongly encouraged.


Factory Bells

• The factory bells dominated daily life in Lowell. They woke the workers at 4:30 a.m., called them into the mill at 4:50, rang them out for breakfast and back in, out and in for dinner, out again at 7 p.m. at the day's close. The whole city, it seemed, moved together and did the mills' bidding.

Information from: www.nps.gov/lowe

http://www.nps.gov/lowe

• Most textile workers toiled for 12 to 14 hours a day and half a day on Saturdays. Mills were closed on Sundays. They usually signed year-long contracts and were housed in boarding houses where they shared a room with 5 other ladies. The had a half hour for lunch and a half hour or sometimes 45 minutes for dinner.

Information from a brochure produced by the National Park Service and distributed at the Factory museum and from their website.

Voices of Protest

• The Mill Girls’ work was arduous and the conditions were frequently unhealthy. In February of 1845 some women testified before the Massachusetts Legislature about the poor working conditions in the mills. They complained of unhealthy air due to lamps for light and particles of fabric in the air. They wanted the number of hours worked in a day decreased to 10.

Information from a brochure produced by the National Park Service and distributed at the Factory museum and from http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html.

This machine is caked with the lint that would have been floating around in the air the workers breathed.

http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html

• Despite threats of firing or blacklisting, many mill girls protested wage cuts and working conditions. Workers struck twice in the 1830’s and banded together to promote a 10 hour day in the 1840’s. Lowell’s workforce remained largely unorganized so strikes were unsuccessful.


• One of Lowell’s early leading labor reformers was a mill girl named Sarah Bagley. She was born in New Hampshire and arrived in Lowell in 1836 and worked at a number of mills. She became a powerful speaker on behalf of male and female workers, promoted the 10-hour workday and edited the labor newspaper The Voice of Industry. She also promoted the publication of Factory Tracts.


Examples of Discontent• Discontent with the regimentation of Lowell factory life in the

Lowell Offering, 1841 (from Labor and the Rise of Industrialism in Lowell):• "I am going home where I shall not be obliged to...be dragged

about by the ringing of a bell, nor confined in a close noisy room from morning till night...We cannot have time to eat, drink, or sleep; we have only thirty minutes...to...partake of our food, and return to the noisy clatter of machinery. Up before day, at the clang of the bell—and out of the mill by the clang of the bell—into the mill, and at work, in obedience to that ding-dong of a bell—just as though we so many living machines."




Examples of Discontent con’t.• The stretch-out*, which Lowell’s female mill operatives faced,

Voice of Industry, 1844 (from Managing the Mills):• "It is a subject of... general complaint among the operatives, that

while they tend three or four looms, where they used to tend two, making nearly twice the number of yards of cloth, their pay is not increased to them, while the increase to owners is very great. Is this just?"

*Stretch Out: The assignment of additional pieces of machinery to each operative




Examples of Discontent con’t.• The premium system*, implemented in many of Lowell’s

textile mills in the 1840s (from Women at Work):• "The premium system is a curse to us...I have worked under this

plan, and know too well the base treatment of overseers in many instances.-Often have girls...been so afraid of the ‘Old Man’ they dare not ask to go out when sick; for they know he would have a great deal to say. ‘The work must not be stopped, and if you are not able to work you better stay out all the time.’“

*Premium System: The payment of cash bonuses to overseers whose workers produced the most goods




Group Activity

• In groups, read through the biography you have been assigned. •Report back to us about your person

including her name and what her job was at the mill. •How did she feel about the working

conditions at the mill?