The Mill Girls of "Spindle City"by Patricia L. Cummings Just imagine being a Yankee farm girl on an isolated New England farm during the early 1800s. Your main chore would be to help produce cloth for household use by spinning. By the 1830s, your task is becoming obsolete due to technological changes which have resulted in the availability of store-bought cloth. Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin has made it possible to easily separate cotton seeds from cotton fibers. An automated version of the spinning jenny, a machine that could wind more than one spool of thread at a time, has been adapted to be run by water power. These machines along with the “re-invention” of the British power loom, have contributed to the widespread establishment of New England textile factories on every available fast moving stream and river in this era which will eventually become known as the “Industrial Revolution.”
Changes Afoot One day, an agent from a new mill in Lowell, Massachusetts comes to visit the farm. He tells your Dad of the high wages that you could earn as a “mill girl.” He convinces him that both your health and your morals will be safeguarded. All of your activities will be overseen by a good woman, most likely a widow, at the factory-owned boardinghouse where you will live. Nutritious meals will be provided for you, including meat twice a day. The man promises to transport you to your destination. With great anticipation, you place all of your worldly belongings in a stack of bandboxes that will accompany you on your stagecoach journey from New Hampshire or Vermont to Massachusetts. You will become part of “the mill girl experiment,” the lucrative brainstorm of the Boston Associates, rich investors who have financed the community into which you will now be integrated. Although you will experience long hours and potentially life-threatening work conditions, you will have had a chance to earn the highest wages paid to any woman of your time. The first mill girl to have ever been hired at the Boott’s Cotton Mill in Lowell was Deborah Skinner who began work on October 8, 1823. She was the sole mill girl on the payroll until the nineteenth of that same month, at which time several additional girls were hired, thus starting the trend of hiring that would last until the Civil War.
Alternative Occupations At the time, there were few respectable ways for a girl to earn money. She could hire herself out as a domestic to work in someone else’s home for no more than fifty cents per week. She could set up her own business as a seamstress, or she could teach school, but only in the summer. During the regular school year, that position was reserved for men. She might also have worked as a book binder. Starting wages were $1.00 per week but increased to as much as $3.50 per week. Typically half that amount would be deducted for room and board. Even at that, the mill girls were able to save money. In 1833, The Lowell Institution for Savings* reported deposits of $100,000. which represented the savings of one thousand mill girls. These funds were sometimes sent home to help the family, some were kept for a dowry for marriage and their own household, and often all “extra” money helped to pay for a brother’s college education. (*The former bank site now houses the New England Quilt Museum, according to Jennifer Gilbert, the museum’s director). Dangers of Factory Life The practice of hiring young girls for mill work was a distinct change from the “Rhode Island System,” which hired entire families. There, children as young as nine, were employed in the same dangerous environment as their parents. The first cotton spinning mill, set up by entrepreneur Samuel Slater in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, had a high incidence of industrial accidents for children. Lowell had its share of problems, too. A rule stated that girls should contain their hair in a net. However, vanity prevailed and many girls were injured or killed when long hair caught in heavy machinery. Deafness, either partial or total was the price paid for listening to the overwhelming noise of the power looms. One of the girls described the aftermath of having worked there as hearing crickets chirping in her ears all the time. Poor air quality was by far the greatest risk of all of these mills. Windows were nailed shut and steam was regularly sprayed into the air to maintain humidity. This kept cotton threads from drying out and snapping in the looms. Free-floating cotton lint was inhaled, often causing extremely debilitating pulmonary ailments which resulted in girls leaving the mills, never to return. We can only imagine the darkness of the mill, illuminated only by air-polluting whale oil lamps which hung burning from a post at each loom. In spite of these issues, when one girl left, another was waiting to take her place. The high wages were just too compelling.
Life in Community Mill girls had to sign an agreement to abide by certain regulations. A minimum one year commitment was required (although most stayed for about three years). Supervisors had to approve any absences, and anyone not reporting to their station without good reason would be fired. Girls could also be discharged for immoral behavior, or for imbibing alcohol. If leaving on her own accord, a two week termination notice was necessary in order to receive an “honorable discharge.” Another requirement was mandatory church attendance on Sunday. In spite of a girl’s preferred denomination, she was expected to attend services at the company-built St. Anne’s Episcopal Church. However, this rule was not strictly enforced. Some of the girls felt that they could not afford to pay pew rent, or did not choose to spend their money on the fine clothes that they deemed necessary to participate at services. Eventually, the policy of charging pew rent was abandoned. All unmarried mill girls, if not living with family, were required to live in a company-owned boardinghouse, often sharing a bed with another girl. Sometimes there were as many as eight girls in a room, and boardinghouses typically housed twenty to forty people. There was virtually no privacy. Grueling Work Schedule At first, the working day was long, often fourteen hours each weekday, with an additional eight hours of work on Saturday. The length of the work day and the short amount of time in which to eat one’s meals were to become major issues of discontent. In 1845, Sarah G. Bagley, a Candia, New Hampshire native, who later became the editor of a mill girl publication, the Voice of Industry, published a petition that had been sent to the Massachusetts Legislature, asking for a ten hour work day on the behalf of more than two thousand mill girls. The measure was not passed at that time, but did result in a shortened work day of eleven hours. The great tower bell rang at many intervals during the
day and controlled every activity. The bell first rang at 4:30 a.m. (or 5
a.m. in the winter) as a wake up call. By the next bell, the girls had to be
at their place in the mill. After working for two hours, they were rung out
for breakfast, and rung in to resume work. The bell excused them for a
hurried dinner at noon, the big meal of the day. They had to be in their
places forty five minutes later. The bell announced quitting time at 6:30
p.m. (or 7:00 p.m.), depending on the season. The final bell ring of the day
announced curfew at 10 p.m., when girls were expected to be in their
residence and ready for “lights Leisure Activities Each mill girl knew that she was trading her work for newfound independence. Wages could be spent, in part, for self-enrichment. In the evenings, the girls could attend a Lyceum lecture presented by John Quincy Adams, Horace Greeley, or Ralph Waldo Emerson, who spoke on a variety of topics. Other leisure time activities included attending plays, musical events or spending time at the public library.
The girls enjoyed buying current magazines to guide them toward the latest trends in fashion. The most prominent fashion magazine of the day was Godey’s Lady's Book. The periodical’s editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, was critical of mill girls who she portrayed as donning expensive watches and dressing beyond their (low) social class rank in a concentrated attempt to emulate higher class women. The girls must have welcomed the opportunity to find more fashionable apparel than the outdated clothes they had brought from the farm. For the few mill girls who were “slaves to fashion,” most likely there were an equal number of them who preferred to save.
Many mill gills were educated and literary-minded. While books were banned from being brought into the mill itself, the girls often taped newspaper clippings or torn out pages from books to any vertical space near their work area. Reading or memorizing stanzas of poetry, must have been an enchanting diversion from their repetitive, monotonous tasks. Among other tasks, the girls wove “negro cloth,” a coarse composite cloth containing wool. This “inferior” cloth was sent south for use in making slave’s clothing. In the midst of their weaving the girls reportedly circulated a poem written by abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier, which includes this stanza: Speed on the light to those who dwell In Slavery’s land of woe and sin, And through the blackness of that Hell Let Heaven’s own light break in. Mill Girls Find a “Voice”
Soon girls were meeting in small “Improvement Circles” to share their writings and to critique each other’s work. In Lowell, there were seven such self-improvement clubs, two of which were under the auspices of the Universalist and Congregational Churches. In 1840, the first edition of Lowell Offering, a collection of mill girl essays, letters, and poetry, was published under the guidance of their mentor, Reverend Abel C. Thomas. By 1841, subscriptions were being offered for 6 ¼ cents per issue. Things were going well until Reverend Thomas was re-assigned to another congregation. In his absence, the magazine that he had worked so hard to encourage merged with The Operative Magazine. Soon there were accusations that Lowell Offering did not truly reflect the difficult working conditions of the mill, and that it sided with management. In 1845, the publication changed its names to New England Offering which was last published in 1849. In the meantime, the magazine had catapulted Lucy Larcom into the spotlight where she remains today as the most famous mill girl. Lowell Offering provided a venue for mill girls to express their thoughts and to record first-hand accounts that might otherwise have been lost to history. Excerpts from this landmark publication were compiled into a book entitled: The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845), edited by Benita Eisler, Norton, 1998). In the 1830s, mill workers had begun to be agitated over working conditions. In 1834, this resulted in a short-lived and rather ineffective walk out. In 1836, Harriet Robinson organized a strike. Without a union in place, both events had little effect on working conditions. New Wave of Immigrants Replaces Yankee Mill Girls As greed increased among the mill owners, so did the pressure to make each girl more productive. Now, each girl was required to take care of three or four looms instead of one. When the Yankee mill girls became unwilling to continue working under these conditions, tides of immigrants stood ready to take their places. Irish workers flooded into the country especially during the potato famine years of 1846-1848. Other immigrants from Greece, Poland, Russia, Portugal, and Colombia, and Canada soon followed. Between 1828 and 1850, the population of Lowell had increased from 3,500 to 35,000. In 1860, 61.8% of Lowell’s textile workers were immigrants, half of them Irish. By the Civil War, active Yankee mill girl recruitment was a thing of the past. The “Vision” of Francis Cabot Lowell This “mill girl experiment” had been the vision of Francis Cabot Lowell, who died in 1817 before he could see his dreams come to fruition. His ideas were carried out by a group of his friends, wealthy investors who sought to create a more paternalistic and caring mill environment than that which Lowell had seen during his 1810 trip to England. At that time, Lowell had memorized the working structure of power looms in British textile factories well enough to come home and re-invent a working model with the help of mechanic, Paul Moody. The first mill that Lowell established was located on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. However, the water flow there was more sluggish than he desired, so he decided to build a mill on the more quickly running Merrimack River. His plan to establish the textile mills at Lowell have been far-reaching, providing employment for many, even into the middle of the twentieth century when the last one closed. In the interim, Lowell, nicknamed, “Spindle City” had become truly an international city. Looking back almost two centuries, we applaud the mill girls for striving to make a difference. They were unafraid to speak out to protest unjust labor conditions, and they made the best of all of their experiences away from home. They enjoyed their independence and sometimes established lifelong friendships with co-workers. They also proved that they were both intelligent and morally straight. With a certain innocence, the mill girls upset the social order for those ladies who considered themselves to be of higher social class and who superficially judged others by clothing or jewelry.
After spending a few years at Lowell, each mill girl in turn left to either return to the farm, seek other employment, or to marry and join the westward migration, perhaps leaving New England forever. Most any other occupation would have seemed more pleasing than confining factory labor.
The Mill Girl statue at the Millyard Museum of
Manchester, New An invaluable reference on this subject is: The Belles of New England: The Women of the Textile Mills And The Families Whose Wealth They Wove, William Moran, Thomas Dunne Books, 2002. Copyright 2003, Patricia and James Cummings, Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, New Hampshire. See lesson plan that utilizes this file to teach a unit on American History at: |
