Document Set 1 - Life at the Mills
Lowell Docs:
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An Account of a Visitor to Lowell (1836)
We have lately visited the cities of Lowell [Massachusetts] … and have had an opportunity of examining the factory system more closely than before. We had … the statements [by the Lowell factory workers] made in relation to the exhausting nature of the labor in the mills, and to the manner in which the young women…lived in their boardinghouses, six sleeping in a room, poorly ventilated.
We went through many of the mills, talked particularly to a large number of the operatives [i.e. women], and ate at their boardinghouses, on purpose to ascertain [learn] by personal inspection the facts of the case…
In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are generally daughters of farmers of the different states of New England. Some of them are members of families that were rich in the generation before. . . . The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills. A clerk, placed as a watch, observes those who are a few minutes behind the time, and effectual means are taken to stimulate to punctuality [i.e. face punishment or lost pay if late]. This is the morning commencement of the industrial discipline (should we not rather say industrial tyranny?) which is established …
At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for breakfast, and at noon thirty minutes more for dinner…within this time they must hurry to their boardinghouses and return to the factory, and that through the hot sun or the rain or the cold. A meal eaten under such circumstances must be quite unfavorable to digestion and health, as any medical man will inform us. At seven o'clock in the evening the factory bell sounds the close of the day's work.
Thus thirteen hours per day of close attention and monotonous labor are exacted from the young women in these manufactories. . . . So fatigued--we should say, exhausted and worn out, but we wish to speak of the system in the simplest language--are numbers of girls that they go to bed soon after their evening meal, and endeavor by a … long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toil of the coming day.
When capital [i.e. the factory owners] has got thirteen hours of labor daily out of a being, it can get nothing more. It would be …[unprofitable] to own the operative [i.e. as a slave]; for the … expense of providing for times of sickness and old age would more than counterbalance the difference between the price of wages and the expense of board and clothing [provided to a slave]. The far greater number of fortunes accumulated by the North in comparison with the South shows that hireling labor is more profitable for capital than slave labor.
Now let us examine the nature of the labor itself, and the conditions under which it is performed. Enter with us into the large rooms, when the looms are at work. . . . The din and clatter of these five hundred looms, under full operation, struck us on first entering as something frightful and infernal, for it seemed such an atrocious violation of one of the faculties of the human soul, the sense of hearing. After a while we became somewhat inured to it [used to something very unpleasant], and by speaking quite close to the ear of an operative and quite loud, we could hold a conversation …
The girls attend upon an average three looms; many attend four, but this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care. However, a great many do it. Attention to two is as much as should be demanded of an operative. This gives us some idea of the application required during the thirteen hours of daily labor. The atmosphere of such a room … is charged with cotton filaments and dust, which, we are told, are very injurious to the lungs.
On entering the room, although the day was warm, we remarked that the windows were down. We asked the reason, and a young woman answered very naïvely, and without seeming to be in the least aware that this privation of fresh air was anything else than perfectly natural, that "when the wind blew, the threads did not work well." After we had been in the room for fifteen or twenty minutes, we found ourselves, as did the persons who accompanied us, in quite perspiration, produced by certain moisture which we observed in the air, as well as by the heat. . . .
The young women sleep upon an average six in a room, three beds to a room. There is no privacy, no retirement, here. It is almost impossible to read or write alone, as … so many sleep in the same chamber. A young woman remarked to us that if she had a letter to write, she did it on the head of a bandbox, sitting on a trunk, as there was no space for a table.
So live and toil the young women of our country in the boardinghouses and manufactories which the rich and influential of our land have built for them.
SOURCE: The Harbinger, November 14, 1836
Document Set 2 - The Rumblings of Discontent!
You will present at the 16:00 mark of the video
Article from the Harbinger –
Orestes A. Brownson -- preacher, magazine editor, lecturer, reformer, socialist, Transcendentalist, and writer -- was an avid labor reformer in the 1830s and 1840s. Here he argues that so-called "free labor" is far more oppressed than slave labor.
In regard to labor, two systems …: one that of slave labor, the other that of free labor. Of the two, the first is… the least oppressive. If the slave has never been a free man… his sufferings are less than those of the free laborer at wages. As to actual freedom, one has just about as much as the other. The laborer at wages has all the disadvantages of freedom and none of its blessings, while the slave…is freed from the disadvantages [of freedom].
We are no advocates of slavery. We are as heartily opposed to it as any modern abolitionist can be. But we say frankly that, if there must always be a laboring population distinct from proprietors [owners] and employers, we regard the slave system as decidedly preferable to the system at wages.
It is no pleasant thing to go days without food; to lie idle for weeks, seeking work and finding none; to rise in the morning with a wife and children you love, and know not where to procure them a breakfast; and to see constantly before you no brighter prospect than the almshouse [poorhouse, charity].
…And yet there is a man who employs them to make shirts, trousers, etc., and grows rich on their labors. He is one of our respectable citizens, perhaps is praised in the newspapers for his liberal donations to some charitable institution. He … is honored as a worthy Christian. And why should he not be, since our … clergy [church leaders] would not dare question his piety [goodness] lest they should … lose their standing and their salaries? . . .
The average life--working life, we mean--of the girls that come to Lowell, for instance, from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, we have been assured, is only about three years. What becomes of them then? Few of them ever marry; fewer still ever return to their native places with reputations unimpaired. "She has worked in a factory" is almost enough to damn to infamy the most worthy and virtuous girl. . . .
Where go the proceeds of their labors? The man who employs them, and for whom they are toiling as so many slaves, is one of our city nabobs [wealthy], reveling in luxury; or he is a member of our legislature, enacting laws to put money in his own pocket; or he is a member of Congress, contending for a high tariff to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich; or in these times he is shedding crocodile tears over the deplorable condition of the poor laborer, while he docks … wages 25 percent. . . . …He shouts for liberty, stickles for equality, and is horrified at a Southern planter who keeps slaves.
One thing is certain: that, of the amount actually produced by the operative, he retains a less proportion than it costs the [southern] master to feed, clothe, and lodge his slave. Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences who would retain all the advantages of the slave system without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slaveholders.
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SOURCE: Boston Quarterly Review 3 (1840): 368-370.
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Document set 3 - The Lowell Girls Strike Back!
The Lowell Mill Girls Go on Strike, 1836
The industrial production of textiles was highly profitable, and the number of factories in Lowell and other mill towns increased. More mills led to overproduction, which led to a drop in prices and profits. Mill owners reduced wages and speeded up the pace of work. The young female operatives organized to protest these wage cuts in 1834 and 1836. Harriet Hanson Robinson was one of those factory operatives; she began work in Lowell at the age of ten, later becoming an author and advocate of women’s suffrage.
One of the first strikes of cotton-factory operatives that ever took place in this country was that in Lowell, in October, 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike, en masse. This was done. The mills were shut down, and the girls went in procession from their several corporations to the ―grove‖ on Chapel Hill, and listened to ―incendiary‖[fiery, passionate] speeches from early labor reformers.
One of the girls stood on a pump, and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience.
Cutting down the wages was not their only grievance, nor the only cause of this strike. Hitherto [until now] the corporations had paid twenty—five cents a week towards the board [rent] of each operative, and now … the girls pay the sum; and this, in addition to the cut in the wages, would make a difference of at least one dollar a week. It was estimated that as many as twelve or fifteen hundred girls turned out [phrase meaning to go on strike], and walked in procession through the streets. They had neither flags nor music, but sang songs, a favorite (but rather inappropriate) one being…:
"Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I- Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? Oh ! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave, For I’m so fond of liberty That I cannot be a slave."
My own recollection of this first strike (or ―turn out‖ as it was called) is very vivid. I worked in a lower room, where I had heard the proposed strike fully, if not vehemently, discussed; I had been an ardent listener to what was said against this attempt at ―oppression‖ on the part of the corporation, and naturally I took sides with the strikers. When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute [motionless], uncertain what to do, asking each other, ―Would you? ‖ or ―Shall we turn out?‖ and not one of them having the courage to lead off, I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk, became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado, "I don‘t care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether anyone else does or not;‗‘ and I marched out, and was followed by the others.
As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud than I have ever been since at any success I may have achieved, and more proud than I shall ever be again until my own beloved State gives to its women citizens the right of suffrage.
The agent of the corporation where I then worked took some small revenges on the supposed ringleaders; …my mother was turned away from her …[job], …[they were] saying,―Mrs. Hanson, you could not prevent the older girls from turning out, but your daughter is a child, and her you could control.‖…
Source: Harriet Hanson Robinson, Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls (New York, T. Y. Crowell, 1898), 83–86.
Document Set 4
1834 Boston Transcript reports on the Strike of the Lowell Girls
"The number soon increased to nearly 800. A procession was formed, and they [the Lowell strikers] marched about the town, to the amusement of a mob of idlers and boys, and we are sorry to add, not altogether to the credit of Yankee girls....We are told that one of the leaders mounted a stump and made a flaming speech on the rights of women and the iniquities of the 'monied aristocracy,' which produced a powerful effect on her …[audience] and they determined to 'have their way if they died for it.'"
Poem that Concluded Lowell Women Workers' 1834 Petition to the Manufacturers
Let oppression shrug her shoulders, And a haughty** tyrant frown, And little upstart Ignorance, In mockery look down. Yet I value not the feeble threats Of Tories* in disguise, While the flag of Independence O'er our noble nation flies.
*mocking those against the strike and the factory owners as being anti-republic, anti-freedom.
**arrogant, overly proud
1836 Song Lyrics Sung by Protesting Workers at Lowell
Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave, For I'm so fond of liberty, That I cannot be a slave.