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Issue 12 Brings Us Back to the 1830S When the Textile Mills Along the River Systemsof Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusettscreated the First Factory System

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Issue 12 Brings Us Back to the 1830S When the Textile Mills Along the River Systemsof Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusettscreated the First Factory System ISSUE12 Did the Industrial Revolution Pro More Economic Opportunities for Women in the 183Os? YES: Thomas Dublin, from "Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: 'The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us'," Labor History (Winter 1975) NO: Gerda Lerner, from "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson," American Studies (Spring 1969) ISSUE SUMMARY YES: Professor Thomas Dublin argues that the women who worked in the Lowell mills in the 1830s were a close-knit commu- nity who developed bonds of mutual dependence in both their boarding houses and the factory. NO: According to Professor Gerda Lerner, while Jacksonian democracy provided political and economic opportunities for men, both the "lady" and the "mill girl,, were equally disenfran- chised and isolated from vital centers of economic opportunity ln 1961 PresidentJohn F. Kennedy established the commission on the Status of women to examine "the prejudice and outmoded customs that act as barriers to the full realization of women's basic rights." The roots of Friedan's "feminine mystique" go back much earlier than the post-World War ll ,,baby boom,, gen- eration of suburban America. women historians have traced the origins of the modern family to the early nineteenth century. fu the nation became more stable politically, the roles of men, women, and children became segmented in ways that still exist today. In nineteenth-century America, most middle-class white women stayed home. Those who entered the workforce as teachers or became reformers were usually extending the values of the cult of True womanhood to the outside world. This was true of the women reformers in the Second Great Awakening and the peace, temperance, and abolitionist movements before the civil war. The first real challenge to the traditional values system occurred when a handful 258 of women showed up at seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 to sign the women's Declaration of Rights. It soon became clear that if they were going to pass reform laws, women would have to obtain the right to vote. After an intense struggle the Nine- teenth Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920. Once the women's move- ment obtained the vote, there was no agreement on future goals. The" problems of the Great Depression and World War II overrode women's issues. world war II brought about major changes for working women. six million women entered the labor force for the first time, many of whom wele ,,The married. proportion of women in the labor force," writes Lois Banner, "increased from 25 percent in 1940 to 36 percent in 1945." Many women moved into high-paying, traditionally men's lobs as policewomen, firefight- ers, and precision toolmakers. The federal government also erected federal child-care facilities, but when the war ended in 1945 many working women lost their nontraditional lobs. The federal day-care program was eliminated, and the government told women to go home even though a L944 study by the Women's Bureau concluded that 80 percent of working women wanted to continue in their jobs after the war. Most history texts emphasized that women did return home, moved to the suburbs, and created a baby boom generation, which revelsed the downward size of families between 1946 and 1964. What is lost in this description is the fact that after 7947 the number of working women again began to rise. By 1951 the proportion had reached 31 percent. Twenty-two yeals later, at the height of the women's liberation movement, it reached 42 Percent. Ironically modern feminists were unaware of their past. But the situation changed rapidly. The women's movement brought a new wave of female schofirs into the profession who were interested in researching and writing about their past. Issue 12 brings us back to the 1830s when the textile mills along the river systemsof Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusettscreated the first factory system. Did this "market revolution," a term now favored by current historians, help or hinder the economic opportunities for women? In the first selection, Professor Thomas Dublin sees positive changes taking place in the lives of the mill girls. He maintains that the girls who worteA in the Lowell, Massachusetts factories in the 1830s were a close-knit community of young women who developed bonds of mutual dependence in both their boarding houses and the factory. But Professor Gerda Lerner dis- oppor- agrees.The Jacksonian era may have provided political and economic tunities for men, but it was different for women. By the 1850s, immigrant women from lreland had replaced the native-born Lowell females in the low- wage factories while middle-class women were excluded from the medical, legal, and businessprofessions. 259 YES @ Thomas Dublin Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: '/The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave fls" In the years before 1850 the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts were a celebrated economic and cultural attraction. Foreign visitors invariably included them on their American tours. Interest was prompted by the massive scale of these mills, the astonishing productivity of the power-driven machin- ery, and the fact that women comprised most of the workforce. Visitors were struck by the newness of both mills and city as well as by the culture of the female operatives. The scene stood in sharp contrast to the gloomy mill towns of the English industrial revolution. Lowell, was, in fact, an impressive accomplishment. In 1820, there had been no city at all--only a dozen family farms along the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford. ln 1821, however, a group of Boston capitalists purchased land and water rights along the river and a nearby canal, and began to build a major tex- tile manufacturing center. Opening two years later, the first factory employed Yankee women recruited from the nearby countryside. Additional mills were constructed until, by 1840, ten textile corporations with thirty-two mills valued at more than ten million dollars lined the banks of the river and nearby canals. Adjacent to the mills were rows of company boarding houses and tenements which accommodated most of the eight thousand factory operatives. As Lowell expanded, and became the nation's largest textile manufactur- ing center, the experiences of women operatives changed as well. The increas- ing number of firms in Lowell and in the other mill towns brought the pressure of competition. Overproduction became a problem and the prices of finished cloth decreased.The high profits of the early years declined and so, too, did conditions for the mill operatives. Wageswere reduced and the pace of work within the mills was stepped up. Women operatives did not accept these changes without protest. In 1834 and 1836 they went on strike to protest wage cuts, and between 1843 and 1848 they mounted petition campaigns aimed at reducing the hours of labor in the mills. FromHistoryLabor,Yol.16, no. 1, Winter 1975,pp.99-716. Copyright @ 7975byTaylor&Francis, Ltd. Reprintedby permission. 260 YES / Thomas Dublin 26'l' These labor plotests in early Lowell contribute to our understanding of the response of workers to the growth of industrial capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. They indicate the importance of values and atti- tudes dating back to an earlier period and also the transformation of these values in a new setting. The maior factor in the rise of a new consciousness among operatives in . Lowell was the development of a close-knit community among women wolk- ing in the mills. The structure of work and the nature of housing contributed to the growth of this community. The existence of community among woman, in turn, was an important element in the repeated labor protests of the period. The organization of this paper derives from the logic of the above argu- ment. It will examine the basis of community in the expeliences of women operatives and then the contribution that the community of women made to the labor protests in these years as well as the nature of the new consciousness expressedby these Protests. The pre-conditions for the labor unrest in Lowell before 1850 may be found in the study of the daily worklife of its operatives. In their everyday, relatively conflict-free lives, mill women created the mutual bonds which made possible united action in times of crisis. The existence of a tight-knit community among them was the most important element in determining the collective, as opposed to individual, nature of this response. Before examining the basis of community among women operatives in /'community" early Lowell, it may be helpful to indicate in what sense is being used, The women are considered a "community" because of the devel- opment of bonds of mutual dependence among them. In this period they .i*" to depend upon one anothel and upon the larger group of operatives in very impoltant ways. Their experienceswere not simply similar or parallel to one another, but were inextricably intertwined. Furthermore, they were con- scious of the existence of community, expressing it very clearly in their writ- ings and in labor protests. "community" fot them had objective and subiective dimensions and both were important in their experience of women in the mills. The mutual dependence among women in early Lowell was rooted in the structure of mill work itself. Newcomers to the mills were particularly dependent on their fellow operatives, but even experienced hands relied on one another for considerable support' New operatives generally found their first experiences difficult, even harrowing, though they may have already done considerable hand-spinning and weaving in their own homes.
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