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This article is the second Mill Girls were paid half of the rate paid to men, $3-$4 per week,
installment of a series by and from that, they had to pay room and board (75¢ to $1.25) and
mill girl Josephine L. Baker were provided with three square meals a day. Each “house” had a
and printed in the widow or a couple who would run a strict lifestyle that included a
January1845 edition of the 10 p.m. curfew and mandatory church attendance for all the girls. As
Lowell Offering. The piece their numbers grew, the women formed book clubs and published their
details an imaginary trip
through the daily workings own journal, The Lowell Offering, where they would share stories about
of a mill and the atmos- life at the mills.
phere of its workers. On the factory floor, there were typically two men to oversee the
This article provides us work of 80 women as they worked through the day from 5 a.m. to
with not only a firsthand 7p.m. By 1840, Francis Lowell's associates were expanding the mills to
account of a mill, but also the point that they had 8,000 employees, and the nickname “City of
how it would have Spindles” was attributed to the city of Lowell. By 1860, the number of
appeared to an outsider, spindles in the city had jumped from 2.25 million to 5.25 million, and
anticipating his or her the number of workers
reactions. It captures the jumped to 122,000.
pace of work, the immense
size yet cramped conditions
of the mill, the varied kinds Organizing
:
of work conducted on each Women The
floor, and the women’s Foundation
exhaustion at the end for Women s
’
of the day. While Baker
praises the opportunities Rights
for self-improvement, Who were all these work-
such as lectures or classes, ers supplying goods for? It Members of
she bemoans the lack could be said for the the LFLRA go
of time available for investors, who were reaping a on strike
such pursuits. great return of 14% per year.
photo:
americanantiquarian.org The corporations were raking
in high profits as well. And yet the women working in the factories were
Charles Dickens’ take on factory life in books such as Oliver Twist of going through pay cut after pay cut in order for the company to keep
David Copperfield, or from Dickens’ own life when he was forced at upgrading their equipment and still take a profit.
the age of 12 to work at a boot black factory in order to help pay off his At the same time, another publication had gained traction – The
father’s debts. Voice of Industry. Here, the story of a good life at the woolen mills was
Lowell invited Dickens to come and visit his woolen factories after presented in a different way. One of the employees named Juliana put
which Dickens noted that the Mill Girls were “well-dressed” and wore it this way, "[There is a] very pretty picture, but we who work in the
“serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks, and shawls.” He also remarked factory know the sober reality to be quite another thing altogether."
the women were “healthy in appearance and had the manners and The 12-14 hour days left little room for partaking in the educational
deportment of young women, classes and left women so exhausted it became difficult to keep
not of degrading brutes.” up their own lifestyle as well as those they supported. The
Dickens was also pleased by room and board did not change despite paying a lower wage.
the Mill Girls' high level of lit- Another worker described her living quarters as “a small,
eracy, especially in The Lowell comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing some half a
Offering, a published journal. dozen occupants.”
However, this was just a por- Over the years, The Offering also shared
tion of his four-month trip to stories of labor unrest in the factories, and an
the U.S. His resulting work article on Mill Girls suicides.
from this trip, called American
Notes, is “infamous for its Timeline of Organized
criticisms of America and Labor and Strikes
Americans, but less noted is In the early 1830s, the Board of Directors
the fact that Dickens found proposed reducing the wages for women.
America’s factories laudable in When they suggested a 15% reduction in pay,
many respects, including the This engraving of the Merrimack Mills and Boarding- the Mill Girls would met to discuss their
treatment of workers.” Houses depicts the everyday scene of the street situation. In February 1834, they produced a
on which Merrimack Mill was located.
Within the image the boardinghouses are lined up in a run on the area banks as they withdrew their
Who Were the neat row leading to the Merrimack Mill located at the end savings and organized their first strike. While
of the street. These boardinghouses were solely occupied by the strike failed and the workers either went
Mill Girls? mill girls during their employment with Merrimack Mill. back to work or left town, some people felt
Of the thousands of It was crucial to keep the boardinghouses close to the mills the strike was a “betrayal of femininity.”
women working in the mills at to ensure the safety of the girls, and also to better regulate Later, in January 1836, the company’s
that time, most were girls who their environments and routines. Board indicated they wanted to increase the
left the family farm. According price of rent to offset the economic calamity
to The Worcester Journal, “74% of the workforce in the Hamilton caused by the boarding of housekeepers. In October,
Manufacturing Company was female, native-born, and their average they wanted yet another rent hike. Protests were ram-
age was 24. pant and the girls formed the Factory Girls’ Association
“The residents were strongly encouraged to read, learn, and and organized another strike.
worship regularly, no matter what their denomination. Popular Harriet Hanson Robenson was just 11 and working
literary choices included novels, newspapers, bibles, and periodicals, as a doffer when the strike occurred. In her memoir
and many of these works were provided by a lending library for a she wrote, “One of the girls stood on a pump and
small fee. These books would be the basis of learning for many of gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat
the women working in the mills.” speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all

22 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles