Lowell mill girls

2 Young Women (Tintype), from the Lowell Historical Society

"Lowell girls" is the colloquial name used collectively to refer to young female employees in the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 19th century. The textile mills of the area employed a workforce which was nearly all-female; this characteristic (unique at the time) caused two particular social effects: A close examination of the women's moral behavior, and a particular form of labor agitation.

In addition to striking and forming a pair of unions (one in 1836, the other in 1844), the Lowell girls produced a monthly magazine, the Lowell Offering, which featured essays, poetry and fiction written by the workers.

Industrialization of Lowell

Main article: History of Lowell, Massachusetts

In 1814, businessman Francis Cabot Lowell and his company, the Boston Manufacturing Company, built a textile mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. The Waltham mill was the first in the United States to produce cloth from raw cotton in one location. Lowell died three years later, and in the 1820s his partners named their mill town "Lowell" in his honor.

Starting in 1821, the town of Lowell went from being a sparse collection of family farms to a factory powerhouse in just twenty years. In that time, ten textile corporations opened 32 mills in the city. Women were "collected" by men telling tales of high wages available to "all classes of people". In 1840 the factories employed almost 8,000 workers – mostly women between the ages of 16—25.

The city became world-renowned as a center of efficient industry. French economist Michel Chevalier visited in 1834, and English novelist Charles Dickens visited in 1842, remarking favorably on the conditions. The Industrial Revolution was changing the face of commerce, and Lowell was central to this transformation in the United States.

Work and living environment

The social position of "the factory girl" had been degraded considerably in France and England. In her autobiography, Harriet Robinson (who worked in the Lowell mills from 1834-1848) suggests that "It was to overcome this prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become mill­girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading occupation.…"

Factory conditions

The Lowell system combined large-scale mechanization with an attempt to improve the stature of its female workforce. Some of the girls were as young as ten years old, and others were middle-aged; but these were exceptions. Usually hired for contracts of one year (the average total stay was four), new employees were given assorted tasks as "sparehands" and paid a fixed daily wage. They were paired with more experienced women, who trained them in the ways of the factory.

Conditions in the Lowell mills were severe by modern American standards. Employees worked from five am until seven pm, for an average 73 hours per week. Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two men overseeing the operation. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as "something frightful and infernal", and although the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed during the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth.

Living quarters

Factory owners established a series of boarding houses beside the mills, where employees lived year-round. A curfew of ten pm was common, and men were generally not allowed inside. Each building housed 25 women, with up to eight sharing a bedroom. One worker described her quarters as "a small, comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing some half a dozen occupants". Trips away from the boarding house were uncommon; the Lowell girls worked, ate, and did most other things together.

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 Lowell girls were expected to attend church and demonstrate morals befitting proper society. The 1848 Handbook to Lowell proclaimed that "The company will not employ anyone who is habitually absent from public worship on the Sabbath, or known to be guilty of immorality."

Women were also given opportunities to attend concerts and lectures, in addition to experiencing city life. Still, at least one observer reported that most women worked so that a male relative could obtain an education. "I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages," she writes, "month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession." The Lowell girls were instrumental to the flourishing economy of the northeastern United States in more ways than one.

Cover of the Lowell Offering, Series 1, No. 1

The Lowell Offering

Main article: Lowell Offering

In October 1840, the Reverend Abel Charles Thomas of the First Universalist Church organized a monthly publication by and for the Lowell girls. As the magazine grew in popularity, women contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction – often using their characters to report on conditions and situations in their lives.

The Offering's contents were by turns serious and farcical. A letter in the first issue, "A Letter about Old Maids," the author suggested that "sisters, spinsters, lay-nuns, &c" were an essential component of God's "wise design". Later issues – particularly in the wake of labor unrest in the factories – included an article about the value of organizing and an essay about suicide among the Lowell girls.

Strikes of 1834 and 1836

The initial effort of factory owners to recruit workers brought generous wages for the time (two dollars per week), but before long the abundance of workers and the rise of competition led owners to propose lower wages. This, in turn, led to strikes and union organizing.

In February 1834, factory owners proposed a 15% reduction in wages, to go into effect on March 1st. After a series of meetings, one woman suggested the workers "make a run" on two local banks, which they did. The inciting figure was fired, but as she left, she gave a signal to other workers to walk off the job. 800 women "turned out" from the factories, demanding that the owners reverse their wage proposal.

The strikers failed in their efforts (within days they had all returned to work at reduced pay or left town), but the strike was an indication of the determination among the Lowell girls to take labor action. This dismayed the agents of the factories, who portrayed the turn-out as a betrayal of femininity. William Austin, an agent of the Lawrence Company, wrote, "notwithstanding the friendly and disinterested advice which has been on all proper occassions [sic] communicated to the girls of the Lawrence mills a spirit of evil omen … has prevailed, and overcome the judgment and discretion of too many…."

In October 1836, another proposed wage cut was followed by another strike. Robinson recalled: "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.…" This second turn-out was also unsuccessful, but it attracted over 1,500 workers – nearly twice the number two years previous. It also caused the mills to run far below capacity for months.

Constitution of the Factory Girls' Association

Factory Girls' Association

Soon after the second strike, in late 1836, the Lowell girls formed the Factory Girls' Association, which at its height listed over 2,500 members. This allowed for more effective job actions, such as the targeted striking of certain rooms. Such activities could bring an entire factory to a halt.

The FGA did not last long; a depression in the late 1830s gave weight to owners' insistence that cutbacks were necessary, and between 1837 and 1843, wages were cut twice without incident.

Lowell Female Labor Reform Association

As the Ten Hours Movement made progress toward a less grueling work day in England, the Lowell girls started a new organization in 1845 called the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. One of its first actions was to send thousands of petitions to the Massachusetts General Court demanding a ten-hour day. In response, the legislature held public hearings, in which workers testified about conditions in the factories and the physical demands of their fourteen-hour days. These were the first investigations into labor conditions by a governmental body in the United States. When the committee recommended that the state not change its labor laws, the FLRA called its chairman, William Schouler, a "tool" and worked – successfully – to defeat his next campaign for office.

Although the initial push for a ten-hour work day was unsuccessful, the FLRA continued to grow, affiliating with the New England Workingmen's Association and publishing articles in that organization's Voice of Industry weekly newspaper. Still advocating for the ten-hour day, the Lowell girls worked in concert with a men's organization at the factories. Eventually their organizing efforts spilled over into other nearby towns. In 1847 New Hampshire became the first state to pass a law enforcing a ten-hour work day; other states quickly followed suit.

Political character of labor activity

The Lowell girls' organizing efforts were notable not only for the "unfeminine" participation of women, but also for the political framework used to appeal to the public. 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. When first presenting their petition to the owners during the 1834 strike – in which they warned that "the oppressing hand of avarice would enslave us", the women included a poem which read:

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.

In the 1836 strike, this theme returned in a protest song:

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.

The most striking example of this political overtone can be found in a series of tracts produced by the FLRA entitled Factory Tracts. In the first of these, subtitled "Factory Life As It Is", the author proclaims "that our rights cannot be trampled upon with impunity; that we WILL not longer submit to that arbitrary power which has for the last ten years been so abundantly exercised over us."

This conceptualization of labor activity as philosophically linked with the American project in democracy has been instrumental for other labor organizing campaigns, as noted frequently by MIT professor and social critic Noam Chomsky.

External links

• Lowell Offering archive. From the Center for Lowell History.
• Documents from Lowell, 1845-1848. From the Illinois Labor History Society.
• Mill Life in Lowell: 1820–1880. From the Center for Lowell History.
• Lowell Mill Girl Letters. From the Center for Lowell History.
• Voice of Industry archive