The Lords and the Mill Girls

Onegroup ofMassachusetts businessmen tried to avoid the ugly factory towns and hom- ble working conditions that Korngold describes in his proJile of Caniron (selection 16). Theyformed the Associates, an organization financiers who buib a model in called Lowell. 7lestory ofLowel1- America'sjrst planned in- dustrial community -tells us a great deal about the dreams and realities ofa nation al- ready undetgoing considerable industrial and urban growth. Maury Klein relates that story with a vivid pen -the landscaped town on the banks 4 the Concord and Merri- muck Rivers that commanded worldwide attention, the healthy farmgirls who worked its looms. In 1833, President Andrew Jackson and Vice President Martin Van Buren vis- ited edll and watched transjxed as 2,500 mill girls, dad in blue sashes and white dresses, with parasols above their heads, marched by two abreast. "Very pretty women, by the Eternal!" exclaimed the president. Although they loathed Jackson, the members 4 the Boston Associates were pleased with his observation, for they were proud o/ their working girls -the showpieres 4 what they believed was the model of enlightened in- dustrial management. To their delight, Lowell became a famous international attraction. English visitors were especially impressed, berausejmale workers in England's coal mines toiled in in- mdible misery: naked, covered withjlth, they had to pull carts ofcoal on their hands and knees through dark, narrow tunnels. By conhast, as one historian has said, Lowd seemed a "jemale paradise. " Equally impressive was the remarkable productivity of Lowell's 'power-driven machineb." Bejore long, Lowell became (in historian Linda Evans's words) "the heart ofthe American textile industry and ojthe industrial rrvolu-

lion itselJ " Lowell's relatively well-disciplined and well-treated work force seemed to demonstrate that industrial capitalism need not be exploitive. Even so, the Lowell system was pater- nalistic and strict. Sensitive to criticism that it was immoralfor women to work, the mill bosses maintained close supervision over their female operatives, imposing curfews and compulsory church attendance. Neveriheless, the mill girls, as they were called, were transjomed by their work experience. As Linda Evans says, "Most of these workers saw their mill work as a way to reestablish their value to the family," buause they were no longer a burden to their parents (indeed, they could send money home now) and because they could savejor their own dowries. "Soon," writes Evans, "it was hard to separate their sense ojdutyjom their sense ojindependence. " They felt a group solidarity, too,

and in their boarding houses created "a working-classfemale culture. " They also became aware ofthemselves as a working class with specialproblems,for they were powerless and hadfew options. They could notJinn otherjobs, as could their male counterparts, could not become sailors or dockhands or work on constructiongangs. For most ofthe women, mill work was their only option. As others have said, their very powerlessness led to the eventual demise ojthe pater- nalistic factory system. As more and more textile fim moved to Lowell and other towns, the pressure ofwmpetition led to overproduction, to the same cycles ojboom and bust that plagued the entire national economy. Thanks to overproduction, many mills fell into decline; wages dropped, and working conditions deteriorated. In a display ojsol- idarity, the millgirls oganized a union and went on strikes to protest wage cuts and ris- ing rents. In 1844, organized as the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, they campaigned for a ten-hour workday and wen took their grievances to the state legisla- ture. As Maury Klein points out in the selection that/ollows, "their efirts were dogged, impressive, and ultimately futile" because they lacked political leverage. The union failed, and the textile bosses eventually replaced most ojtheir once-prized millgirls with another labor jorce- desperate immigrants, most from Ireland, who worked for lower wages and were jar less demanding. By 1860, Lowell had bewme another grim and crowded mill town, another "squalid slum." As you ponder LoweII's story, consider what it suggests about the nature of American industrialization and about the special problems of women and labor in an industrializing society. Do you agree with Klein, that what happened in Lowell reveals some harsh truths about the incompatibility ojde- mocratic ideals and the profit motive? THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY

GLOSSARY

APPLETON, NATHAN One of the largest stockholders in the Merrimack Manubcturing Conlpany. hey flocked to the village of Lowell, these BAGLEY, SARAH One of sevenl wonlen leaders visitors fiom abroad, as if it were a compul- of the Lowell Female Labor Refoml Association and sory stop on the grand tour, eager to verify the ten-hour workday movement. T rumors of a utopian system of manufacturers. Their BOOTT, KIRK Planned and supervised the skepticism was natural, based as it was on the Euro- building of the Lowell mill village, which Klein calls pean experience where industry had degraded work- "the nation's first planned industrial conmlunity." ers and blighted the landscape. In Enghsh manufac- turing centers such as Manchester, observers had BOSTON ASSOCIATES Founders of Lowell and stared into the pits of hell and shrank in horror &om the Memmack Manufacturing Co., their textile empire eventually comprised eight major firms, the sight. Charles Dickens used this gloonly, pumd twenty mills, and more than six thousand cesspool of misery as a model in Hard Times, while enlployees. Alexis de Tocqueville wrinkled his nose at the "heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid, stag- LOWELL, FRANCIS CABOT "Farsighted nant pools" amid the "huge palaces of industry" that nlerchant" who formed the Boston Associates and pioneered a unique textile mill at Waltham; after kept "air and light out of the human habitations his death, the associates established another null which they donunate.. . . A sort of black smoke village on the Meninlack River and named it covers the city. . . . Under this half daylight 300,000 Lowell. human beings are ceaselessly at work. A thousand noises disturb this damp, dark labyrinth, but they are LOWELL FEMALE LABOR REFORM ASSOCIATION Formed by the null girls in 1844 not at all the ordinary sounds one hears in great to protest falling wages, this women's labor union cities." campaigned for a ten-hour workday and other Was it possible that America could produce an reforms during its short existence. alternative to this hideous scene? It seemed so to the visitors who gaped in wonderment at the vil- LOWELL OFFERING Monthly magazine edited and published by the Lowell mill girls. lage above the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack rivers. What they saw was a planned MERRIMACK MANUFACTURING community with mills five to seven stories high COMPANY The new corporation that ran the flanked by dormitories for the workers, not Lowell null and turned it into largest and most "the jammed together but surrounded by open space unique nlill town in the nation." filled with trees and tlower gardens set against a WALTHAM SYSTEM Unique production backdrop of the river and hills beyond. Dwelling methods at Francis Lowell's mill.

Ma~iry Klein. "Thc Lor& and the Mill Girls." from "Fmm Utopia to Mill TOWII"by Maiiry Klein in At~rericat~History 1llti~- trared, October and Novenlber 1981. Reprinted by permission of Cowln Magazines. publisher of Attaricnn History Pistrared. 19 THE LORDS AND THE MILL GIRLS

Lowell, Massachiaetts, was a nrodel nrill .,,.. .,.,.... ,...... buildings stwd in groups separated by trees, shnrbs, and strips 4 banks 4th~Cotlord and Mcm'rnack Rivers. 7he community at- lawn that wpre attractively landscaped awd rc~trinisct~tcc.,rt 4acollege rraued worldwide aaetttion ~JCCAUS~it presented a shntp contrast to cmpus. (Corbis-Bertmann) lhc squalor ojmarrufactrrring centers in England and Europe. 77rc

houses, shops, hotels, churches, banks, even a li- swear," he added "that every 'Bakery,' 'Grocery' and brary lined the streets in orderly, uncrowded rows. 'Bookbindery' and every other kind of store, took its Taken whole, the scene bore a flavor of meticulous shutters down for the first time, and started in busi- composition, as if a painting had sprung to life. ness yesterday." The contrast between so pristine a vision and the If Lowell and its social engineering impressed visi- nightmare of Manchester startled the most jaded of tors, the mill workers dazzled them. Here was noth- foreigners. "It was new and &esh, like a setting at the ing resembling Europe's Untemrencchen, that doomed opera," proclaimed Michel Chevalier, a Frenchman whose brief, wretched lives were squeezed who visited Lowell in 1834. The Reverend William between child labor and a pauper's grave. These Scoresby, an Enghshman, marveled at how the were not men or children or even families as found buildings seemed "as fiesh-looking as if built within in the Rhode Island mills. Instead Lowell employed a year." The indefatigable Haniet Martineau agreed, young women, most ofthem fresh off as did J. S. Buckingham, who pronounced Lowell to farms, paid them higher wages than females earned be "one of the most remarkable places under the anywhere else (but still only half of what men sun." Even Dickens, whose tour of America ren- earned), and installed them in dormitories under dered him immune to most of its charms, was strict supervision. They were young and industrious, moved to lavish praise on the town. "One would intelligent, and entirely respectable. Like model citi- THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY zens of a burgeoning republic they saved their poorhouses, a source lacking in America. Both the money, went to church, and spent their leisure hours family system and use of apprentices had been tried in self-improvement. in Rhode Island with little success. Most men pre- More than one visitor hurried home to announce ferred farming their own land to working in a fac- the arrival of a new industrial order, one capable of tory for someone else. producing goods in abundance without breaking its But what about women? They were familiar with working class on the rack of poverty. Time proved spinning and weaving, and would make obedient them wrong, or at best premature. The Lowell ex- workers. Rural New England had a surplus of periment lasted barely a generation before sliding daughters who were considered little more than back into the grinding bleakness of a conventional drains on the family larder. To obtain their services mill town. It had survived long enough to tantalize Lowell need only pay decent wages and overcome admirers with its unhlhlled promise and to reveal parental reservations about permitting girls to live some harsh truths about the incompatibility of cer- away hmhome. This could be done by providing tain democratic ideals and the profit motive. boarding houses where the girls would be subject to The founding fathers of Lowell were a group the strict supervision of older women acting as chap- known as the Boston Associates, all of whom be- erones. There would be religious and moral insauc- longed to that tight knit elite whose dominance of tion enough to satisfy the most scrupulous of parents. Boston society was exceeded only by their strangle- It was an ingenious concept, one that cloaked eco- hold on in financial institutions. The seed had been nomic necessity in the appealing garb of republican planted by , a shrewd, far- ideals. sighted merchant who took up the manufacture of Lowell added yet another wrinkle. Instead of cloth late in life. A trip abroad in 1810 intro- forming a partnership like most larger businesses, he duced him to the cotton mills of Lancashire and to a obtained a charter for a corporation named the fellow Boston merchant named Nathan Appleton. Boston Manufacturing Company. Capitalized at Blessed with a superb memory and trained in mathe- $300,000 the firm started with $100,000 subscribed matics, Lowell packed his mind with details about by Lowell and a circle of his caste and kin: Patrick the machinery shown him by unsuspecting mill Tracy Jackson and his two brothers, Nathan Apple- owners. The Manchester owners jealously hoarded ton, Israel Thorndike and his son, two brothers-in- their secrets and patents, but none regarded the law, and two other merchants. Jackson agreed to wealthy American living abroad for his health as a manage the new company, which chose a site at the rival. falls on the at Waltham. By late 1814 Once back in America, Lowell recruited a me- the tirst large integrated cotton factory in America chanical genius named Paul Moody to help replicate stood complete, along with its machine shop where the machines he had seen in Manchester. After much Lowell and Moody reinvented the power loom and tinkering they designed a power loom, cottonspin- spinner. ning frame, and some other machines that in fact im- Production began in 1815, just as the war with proved upon the English versions. As a hedge against England drew to a close. The mill not only sur- inexperience Lowell decided to produce only cheap, vived the return of British competition but pros- unbleached cotton sheeting. The choice also enabled pered in spectacular fashion: during the years him to use unskilled labor, but where was he to find 1817-1824 dividends averaged more than nineteen even that? Manchester drew its workers &om the percent. Moody's fertile mind devised one new in- 19 THE LORDS AND THE MILL GIRLS vention after another, including a warp-yarn dresser life. The memory of Francis Cabot Lowell was hon- and double speeder. His innovations made the firm's ored by giving the new village his name. production methods so unique that they soon be- The task of planning and overseeing construction came known as the "Waltham system." As Gilman was entrusted to Kirk Boott. The son of a wealthy Ostrander observed, "The Waltham method was Boston Anglophile, Boott's disposition and educa- characterized by an overriding emphasis upon stan- tion straddled the Atlantic. He obtained a comrnis- dardization, integration, and mechanization." The sion in the British army and fought under Welling- shop began to build machinery for sale to other ton until the forced his resignation. For mills. Even more, the company's management tech- several years he studied engineering before returning niques became the prototype on which virtually the home in 1817 to take up his Eather's business. A bril- entire textile industry of New England would later liant, energetic, imperious martinet, Boott leaped at model itself. the opportunity to take charge of the new enterprise. Lowell did not live to witness this mumph. He As Hannah Josephson observed, he became "its died in 1817 at the age of forty-two, having pro- town planner, its architect, its engineer, its agent in vided his associates with the ingredients of success. charge of production, and the leading citizen of the During the next three yean they showed their grati- new community." tude by constructing two more mills and a bleach- The immensity of the challenge appealed to Boott's ery, which exhausted the available water power at ordered mind. He recruited an army of 500 Irish la- Waltham. Eager to expand, the Associates scoured borers, installed them in a tent city, and began trans- the rivers of New England for new sites. In 1821 forming a pastoral landscape into a mill town. A dam Moody found a spot on the Menimack River at East was put across the river, the old canal was widened, Chelmsford that seemed ideal. The river fell thirty- new locks were added, and two more canals were two feet in a series of rapids and there were two started. The mills bordered the river but not with the canals, one belonging to the Pawtucket Canal Com- monotony of a wall. Three buildings stood parallel to pany and another connecting to Boston. For about the water and three at right angles in a grouping that $70,000 the Associates purchased control of the reminded some of Harvard College. Trees and shrubs Canal Company and much of the farmland along the Wed the space between them. The boarding houses, banks. semi-detached dwellings two-and-a-half stories high separated by strips of lawn, were set on nearby streets From that transaction arose the largest and most along with the superintendents' houses and long brick unique mill town in the nation. In this novel enter- tenements for male mechanics and their findies. It prise the Associates seemed to depart &om all prece- was a standard of housing unknown to working peo- dent, but in reality they borrowed much from ple anywhere in the country or in Europe. Eor him- Waltham. A new corporation, the Menimack Man- self Boott designed a Georgian mansion ornamented ufacturing Company, was formed with Nathan Ap- with a formidable Ionic portico. pleton and Jackson as its largest stockholdea. The Lowell emerged as the nation's first planned in- circle of inventors was widened to include other dustrial community largely because of Boott's care in members of the Boston elite such as realizing the overall concept. At Waltham the board- and the Boott brothers, Kirk and John. Moody took ing houses had evolved piecemeal rather than as an some shares but his ambitions went no further; he integral part of the design. The Associates took care was content to remain a mechanic for the rest of his to avoid competition between the sites by conlining THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY

Lowell's production to printed calicoes for the so interlocked as to avoid any con~petitionbetween higher priced market. While Waltham remained them. In effect the Associates had created industrial profitable, it quickly took a back seat to the new harmony of the sort J. P. Morgan would later pro- works. The machine shop provided a true barometer mote under the rubric "community of interest." of change. It not only produced machinery and water wheels for Lowell but also oversaw the con- By 1836 the Associates had invested $6.2 million struction of mills and housing. Shortly before Lowell in eight major firms controlling twenty five-story began production in 1823, the Associates, in Nathan mills with more than 6,000 employees. Lowell had Appleton's words, "arranged to equalize the interest grown into a town of 18,000 and acquired a city of all the stockholders in both companies" by for- charter. It boasted ten churches, several banks to ac- mally purchasing Waltham's patterns and patent commodate the virtue of thrifi on the part of the rights and securing Moody's transfer to Lowell. A workers, long rows of shops, a brewery, taverns, year later the entire machine shop was moved to schools, and other appurtenances of progress. Lowell, leaving WaJtham with only a maintenance Worldwide attention had transformed it into a facility. showcase. Apart fioni the influx of foreigners and The success of the Lowell plant prompted the As- other dignitaries, it had already been visited by a sociates to unfold ambitious new plans. East Cheln~s- president the Associates despised (Andrew Jackson), ford offered abundant water power for an expanding and by a man who would try three times to become industry; the sites were themselves a priceless asset. president (Henry Clay). To use them profitably the Associates revived the old The Associates basked in this attention because Canal Company under a new name, the Locks and they viewed themselves as benevolent, far-seeing Canals Company. and transferred to it all the land men whose sense of duty extended far beyond and water rights owned by the Merrimack Com- wealth. To be sure the life blood of the New Eng- pany. The latter then bought back its own mill sites land economy flowed through their counting houses and leased the water power it required. Thereafier from their domination of banks, insurance compa- the Locks and Canals Company sold land to other nies, railroads, shipping, and mills elsewhere in New mill companies, leased water power to them at fixed England. Yet such were the rigors of their stem Pu- rates per spindle, and built machinery, mills, and ritan consciences that for them acquisition was all housing for them. consuming without being all hlfilling. Duty taught This organizational arrangement was as far ad- that no fortune was so ample that more was not re- vanced for the times as the rest of the Lowell con- quired. Economist Thorstein Veblen later marveled cept. It brought the Associates handsome returns at the "steadfast cupidity" that drove these men Gom the mills and enormous profits &om the Locks "under pain of moral turpitude, to acquire a 'con~pe- and Canals Company, which averaged twenty-four tence,' and then unremittingly to augment any com- percent in dividends between 1825 and 1845. As petence acquired." new companies like the Hamilton, Appleton, and Not content with being an economic and social Lowell corporations were fonned, the Associates dis- aristocracy, the Associates extended their influence persed part of their stock anlong a widening network to politics, religion, education, and morality. Lowell of fellow Brahmins. New partners entered their ex- fit their raison d'ltre so ideally because it filled their clusive circle, including the Lawrence brothers, Ab- coffers while at the same time reflecting their notion bott and Amos. Directories of the companies were of an orderly, paternal community imbued with the I9 THE LOI1DS AND THE MILL C;II\LS proper values. The operatives knew their place, de- was better and the work gave the111 a sense of inde- ferred to the leadership of the Associates, shared their pendence. , one of the most talented values. . . . and articulate of the mill girls, observed that:

Country girls were naturally independent, and the feeling that at this new work the few hours they had of everyday leisure were entirely their own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred it to going out as "hired help." It was like In pronloting their mills as an industrial utopia [the a young man's pleasure in entering upon business for Associates] were quick to realize that the girls were himself. the prime attraction, the trunlp card in their game of benevolent paternalism. As early as 1827 Captain Leisure hours were a scarce cotnnlodity. The mill Basil Hall, an Englishman, marveled at the girls on tower bells tolled the girls to work before the light their way to work at six in the morning, "nicely of day and released them at dusk six days a week, dressed, and glittering with bright shawls and showy- with the Sabbath reserved for solemn observance. colored gowns and gay bonnets . . . with an air of The work day averaged twelve-and-a-half hours, lightness, and an elasticity of step, implying an obvi- depending on the season, and there were only three ous desire to get to their work." holidays a year, all unpaid: Fast Day, the Fourth of Observers who went home to rhapsodize about July, and Thanksgiving. Wages ranged between 62 Lowell and its operatives as a model for what the fac- and $4 a week, about half what men earned. Of this tory system should become trapped themselves in an amount 61.25 was deducted for board, to which unwitting irony. While there was tnuch about the the conlpany contributed another twenty-five cena. Lowell corporations that served later firms as model, Meager as these sums appear, they exceeded the pay the same did not hold true for their labor force. The offered by most other nlills. young wornen who filled the mills, regarded by The work rooms were clean and bright for a fac- many as the heart of the Lowell system, were in fact tory, the walls whitewashed and windows often gar- its rnost unique elernent and ultimately its rnost tran- nished with potted flowers. Bot the air was clogged sient feature. They were of the same stock and with lint and fumes from the whale-oil lamps hung shared much the same culture as the men who em- above every loon^. Since threads would snap unless ployed them. This relative homogeneity gave then1 a the humidity was kept high, windows were nailed kinship of values absent in later generations of work- shut even in the sumnler's heat, and the air was ers. Benita Eisler has called then1 "the last WASP sprayed with water. Delicate lungs were vulnerable labor force in An~erica." to the ravages of tuberculosis and other respiratory The women who flocked to Lowell's nlills catne ailments. More than one critic attributed the high mostly from New England fanns. Sorne came to turnover rate to the nunlber of girls "going home to augment the incomes of poor families, others to earn die." money for gowns and finery, to escape the bleak The machines terrified newconlers with their monotony of rural life, or sample the adventure of a thunderous clatter that shook the floor. Belts and fresh start in a new village. Although their tnotives wheels, pulleys and rollers, spindles and flyers, were mixed, they chose the mills over such alterna- twisted and whirled, hissing and buzzing, always in tives as teaching or donlestic service because the pay nlotion, a cacophonous jungle alien to rural ears. At THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY first the machines looked too formidable to master. bread, butter, coffee or tea." English novelist An- One girl, in the story recalling her first days at Low- thony Trollope was both impressed and repulsed by ell, noted that: the discovery that meat was served twice a day, de- claring that for Americans "to live a day without she felt ahid to touch the loom, and she was almost sure meat would be as great a privation as to pass a night she could never learn to weave; the harness puzzled and without a bed." the reed perplexed her; the shuttle flew out and made a new bump on her head; and the first time she aied to The corporations usually painted each house once spring the lathe she broke a quarter of the threads. It a year, an act attributed by some to benevolence and seemed as if the girls all stared at her, and the overseen others to a shrewd eye for public relations and prop- watched every motion, and the day appeared as long as a erty values. Their zeal for cleanliness did not extend month had at home.. . . At last it was night. . . . There was to bathing facilities, which were minimal at best. a dull pain in her head, and a sharp pain in her ankles; More than one visitor spread tales of dia and vermin every bone was aching, and there was in her ears a strange in the boarding houses, but these too were no noise, as of crickets, hg and jews-harps, all minghng strangers to rural homes. Like the mills, later board- together. ing houses were built as long dormitory rows un- leavened by strips of lawn or shrubbery, but the ear- Once the novelty wore off, the strangeness of it all lier versions retained a quaint charm for visitors and gave way to a more serious menace: monotony. inhabitants. The boarding houses provided welcome havens Above all the boarding houses were, as Hannah Gom such trials. These were dwellings of different Josephson stressed, "a woman's world." In these sizes, leased to respectable high-toned widows who cluttered cloisters the operatives chatted, read, served as housemothers for fifteen to thirty girls. sewed, wrote letters, or dreamed about the day They kept the place clean and enforced the company when marriage or some better opportunity would rules, which were as strict as any parent might want. take them Gom the mills. They stayed in Lowell Among other things they regulated conduct, im- about four years on the average, and most married posed a ten o'clock curfew, and required church at- after leaving. The mill experience was, in Thomas tendance. The girls were packed six to a bedroom, Dublin's phrase, simply "a stage in a woman's life with three beds. One visitor described the small cycle before marriage." For many girls the strange- rooms as "absolutely choked with beds, uunks, ness of it all was mitigated by the presence of sisters, band-boxes, clothes, umbrellas and people," with lit- cousins, or friends who had undertaken the same tle space for other furniture. The dining room dou- adventure. bled as sitting room, but in early evening it was often Outside the boarding house the girls strolled and besieged by peddlers of all sorts. picnicked in the nearby countryside, attended This cramped arrangement suited the Associates church socials, paid calls, and shopped for the things nicely because it was economical and reinforced a they had never had. Dozens of shops vied with the sense of group standards and conformity. Lack of savings banks for their hard-earned dollars and won privacy was old hat to most rural girls, though a few more than their share of them. Those eager to im- complained. Most housemothers set a good table and prove their minds, and there were many, patronized did not cater to dainty appetites. One girl reported the library and the Lyceum, which for fitly cents of- dinner as consisting of "meat and potatoes, with veg- fered a season ticket for twenty-five lectures by such etables, tomatoes and pickles, pudding or pie, with luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, 19 THE LORDS AND THE MILL GIRLS

John Quincy Adams, Horace Greeley, Robert Owen, and Edward Everett. Some were ambitious enough to attend evening classes or form study groups of their own in everything from art to German.

Above all the girls read. Their appetite for litera- ture was voracious and often indiscriminate. So strong was this ardor that many slipped their books into the nulls, where such distractions were strictly forbidden. It must have pained overseers to confis- cate even Bibles from transgressors, but the large number that filled their drawers revealed clearly the Associates' determination to preserve the sharp dis- tinction between the Lord's business and their own. No one knows how many of the girls were avid readers, but the number probably exceeded the norm for any comparable group. Where so many read, it was inevitable that some would uy their hand at writing. By the early 1840s Lowell boasted seven Mutual Self-lmproven~entClubs. These were the first women's literary clubs in America, and the members consisted entirely of operatives. From two of these groups emerged a monthly magazine known as the Lowell OJeting which in its brief life span (1841-1845) achieved a notoriety and reputation far in excess of its literary merits. The banner on its cover described the contents as A Repository 4 Origi- nal Articles, Wtiften Exrlusively by Females Actively Em- Womanfkfory workers at the Lolvell mills were avid readers. nrey ployed in the Mills. alsojormed selJimpruvement clubs and published thetrowti monthly No other aspect of Lowell rivaled the Ofering as a magazine, the Lowell Offering, 7kOffering became a symW symbol for the heights to which an industrial utopia )r the hcighrs to which on industrial utopia mi& aspirr. As Matrry might aspire. Observers at home and abroad were as- Kleirt con~ments,"Obscwcrs at home and abroad were astounded at tounded at the spectacle of factory workers- the spectacle of&ctory worken- wmen no less- capable ojpm women no less-capable of producing a literary ducing a literary rsaxazine. " (Lowell Historical Sm'ety) magazine. Even Charles Dickens, that harsh critic of both English industrialism and American foibles, hurried this revelation to his readers: boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies I am now going to state three facu, which will startle a subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly. they have got up large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic very much. among thenlselves a periodical . . . which is duly printed, First, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the published, and sold; and whereof I brought away &on] THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY

Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read ates dismantled utopia in favor of a Inore cost-efli- from beginning to end. cient system. The self-esteem of the Associates did not permit As the Ofirir~~q'sfame grew, the Associates were them to view their actions in this light, but the oper- not slow to appreciate its value. Nothing did more atives felt the change in obvious ways. Their work to elevate their esteetll on both sides of the Atlantic. week increased to seventy-five hours with four an- Contrary to the belief of some, the nlagazine never nual holidays compared to sixty-nine hours and six became a house organ. Both editors, Harriet Farley holidays for the much trlaligned British textile work- and Harriott Curtis, were veterans of the mills who en. To reduce unit costs, girls tended hermachines opened their colunlns to critics and reformers while and were paid lower wages for piecework. That was keeping their own editorial views within more dis- called speedup; in another practice known as stretch- creet and refined bounds. For their part the Associ- out, girls were given three or four looms where ear- ates were too shrewd not to recognize that the lier they had tended one or two. Overseen and sec- Ofiritrg's appeal, its effectiveness as a symbol of re- ond hands were offered bonuses for wringing rliore publican virtues, lay in its independence. To serve productivity out of the workers. then1 best it t~li~stnot smack of self-sewing, and it At heart the utopian image of Lowell, indeed the did not. system itself, rested on the assumptiorl that grateful, obedient workers would not bite the hand of their Although the magazine's prose and poetry seldom masters. When operatives declined to accept this rose above mediocre, the material offered revealing role, factory agents countered with dismissals and insights into every aspect of factory life. Inevitably it blacklists. The result was a growing sense of mili- attracted authors eager to voice grievances or pro- tancy among the girls and the first stirrings of a labor mote remedies. The editors trod a difficult path be- movement. In 1834 and 1836 there occurred spon- tween the genteel pretensions of a literary organ and taneous ''ti~rnouts" or strikes in Lowell, the first a growing nlilitancy aniong operatives concerned protesting wage cuts and the second an increase in with gut issues. Few of the girls subscribed to the Of- the board charge. Neither achieved much, although fcrirg anyway; most of the copies went to patrons in a large number of girls (800 and 2,500) took part. other states or overseas. Small wonder that critics The Associates showed their mettle in one instance charged the magazine had lost touch with actual by tunling a widow with four children out of her conditions in the nlills or the real concerns of their boarding house because her eleven-year-old daugh- operatives. ter, a bobbin girl, had followed the others out. "Mrs. The Offeritg folded in part because it reflected a Hanson, you could not prevent the older girls from system hurrying toward extinction. By the 1840s, tunling out," the corporate agent explained sternly, when Lowell's reputation as an industrial utopia was "but your daughter is a child, and her you could still at its peak, significant changes had already taken control." place. Hard times and swollen ranks of stockholders Between 1837 and 1842 a national depression clamoring for dividends had dulled the Associates' drove wages down and quieted labor unrest at Low- interest in benevolent paternalism. It had always ell. When conditions improved and wages still fell, been less a goal than a by-product and not likely to the disturbatlces began anew. In December 1844 five survive a direct conflict with the profit nlotive. The nlill girls met to fom~the Lowell Fenlale Labor Re- result was a period of several years during which fom~Association; within a year the organization had Lowell coasted on its earlier image while the Associ- grown to 600 menlbers in Lowell and had branches 19 THE LORDS AND THE MILL GIRLS elsewhere in New England. Since unions had no miU workers were Irish, part of the flood that nli- legal status or power to bargain directly, LFLRA grated after the famine years of 1845-46. The Irish could only appeal to public opinion and petition the girls were illiterate, docile, and desperate enough to General Court (state legislature) for redress. work for low wages. They preferred tenements with For three years the organization dispatched peti- their friends and family to boarding houses, which tions and testified before legislative commissions on relieved the Associates of that burden. It did not take behalf of one issue in particular; the ten-hour work- the Associates long to appreciate the virtues of so day. Led by and other women of re- helpless and undemanding a work force. In these im- markable energy and intelligence, LFLKA joined migrants they saw great promise for cheap labor hands with workingmen's groups in the push for comparable to that found in Enghsh mill towns lie shorter hours. Their efforts were dogged, impressive, Manchester. and ultin~atelyfutile. As their ranks swelled, they suf- The Associates had lost their bloom as models of fered the usual problems of divided aims and dis- propriety and benevolence. Some called them "lords agreement over tactics. More than that, the LFLRA of the loom" and consigned them to the same ter- failed in the end simply because it had determination race of Inferno as the South's "lords of the lash." but no leverage. Legislators and other officials did How ironic it was for Nathan Appleton, the most not take then1 seriously because they were women beloved of souls with an unmatched reputation for who had no business being involved in such matters philanthropy and civic virtue, that his mills were the and could not vote anyway. By 1847 LFLRA was first to be called "soulless corporations." little more than a memory. The ten-hour movement So it was that Lowell's utopian vision ended lived on, but did not succeed until 1874. where industrialism began. In time the Irish would During its brief life LFLRA did much to shatter rise up in protest as their predecessors had done, but the image of Lowell as an industrial utopia. The As- behind them came waves of Dutch, Greek, and sociates held aloof from controversy and allowed ed- French Canadian immigrants to take their places in itors, ministers, and distinguished visitors to make the mills. The native New England girls continued their case. There were those who preserved Lowell to tlee the mills or shy away from them in droves, as a syn~bolbecause they wanted to believe, needed until by 1860 they were but a small minority. Their to believe in what it represented. After several years departure marked the emergence of Lowell as a mill of constant labor strife, however, few could overlook town no different than any other mill town. One of the problenls pointed up by LFLRA: more work for the girls, peering from her boarding house window, less pay, deteriorating conditions in the mills and watched the growing stories of a new mill snuff out boarding houses, blacklists, and more repressive reg- her view of the scenery beyond and caught the sig- ulations. Lowell had lost n111ch of what had made it nificance of her loss. In her lament could be found special and was on the verge of beconling another an epitaph for Lowell itselE bleak and stifling mill town. Then I began to measure . . . and to calculate how long 1 Gradually the river and countryside disappeared wor~ldretain this or that beauty. I hoped that the brow of behind unbroken walls of factory or dormitory. Na- the hill would remain when the suucture was complete. ture approached extinction in Lowell, and so did the But no! I had not calculated wisely. It began to recede girls who had always been the core of its system. In from me . . . for the building rose still higher and higher. 1845 about ninety percent of the operatives were One hope after another is gone . . . one image after an- native Americans, mostly farn~girls; by 1850 half the other, that has been beautiful to our eye, and dear to our THE GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGY heart has forever disappeared. How has the scene changed! 3 Why did the Boston Associates choose young How is our window darkened! women tiom rural parts of New England to be oper- atives in their Lowell textile mills? What were the advantages of a female labor force? 4 Examine boarding-house life at Lowell from the 1 , an agrarian idealist, hated the perspective of the female mill workers. What were idea of America's becoming an industrial nation, bas- the advantages and drawbacks to living in the board- ing his feelings on the evils of European cities. How ing houses? In what way, if any, was boarding-house did the city of Lowell, at least in in early years, es- life conducive to the development of a positive fe- cape the evils Jefferson believed inherent in urban male subculture? industrial life? 5 By the 1840s, changes taking place in the Lowell 2 Klein says that what happened at Lowell reveals boarding house and in the factories indicated the that the profit motive and certain democratic ideals breakdown of that model factory town. Describe are incompatible. Do you agree? Was the Lowell ex- these changes and the reasons for growing labor mil- periment doomed from its inception because of con- itancy among the once "docile" female work force. tlicting goals?