the women who came to lowell for mill jobs were
Lowell mill girls


The Lowell mill girls were young female workers who came to work in industrial corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, typically between the ages of 15 and 35. By 1840, the height of the Industrial Revolution, the Lowell textile mills had recruited over 8,000 workers, mostly women, who came to make up nearly three-quarters of the mill workforce, at a very slow rate, most were forced to
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Lowell mills


to grapple with a small labor supply because the population was small and most preferred farming their own land and the economic independence that came with it. Additionally, many Americans viewed the European factory system as "inherently corrupt and abusive". In order to persuade these young women to work at a mill, they were paid in cash once "every week or two weeks". Additionally, Lowell devised a factory community: women were required to live in company-owned dormitories adjacent to the mill that were run by older women
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Lowell mill girls


work faster than they could. During the early period, women came to the mills of their own accord, for various reasons: to help a brother pay for college, for the educational opportunities offered in Lowell, or to earn supplementary income. Francis Cabot Lowell specifically emphasized the importance of providing housing and a form of education to mirror the boarding schools that were emerging in the 19th century. He also wanted to provide an environment that sharply contrasted the poor conditions of the British Mills. While their wages were only half of
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Lowell mill girls


survivors of the Great Irish Famine who had recently immigrated to the United States in large numbers. During the Civil War, many of Lowell's cotton mills closed, unable to acquire bales of raw cotton from the South. After the war, the textile mills reopened, recruiting French Canadian men and women. Although large numbers of Irish and French Canadian immigrants moved to Lowell to work in the textile mills, Yankee women still dominated the workforce until the mid-1880s. The Lowell girls' organizing efforts were notable not only for the "
5467431
History of Lowell, Massachusetts


In 1885 was founded the "Lowell Co-operative Bank", today Sage Bank, one of the oldest still functioning banks in Massachusetts. Being a booming city with many low-skilled jobs, waves of immigrants came into Lowell to work the mills. The original 30 Irish that came to help build the canals were led by Hugh Cummiskey along the Middlesex canal from Charleston to Pawtucket Falls on foot April 6, 1822. They were met by Kirk Boott and given a pittance. No allowance was made for housing or other
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New England Offering


The New England Offering was a collection of journal entries that was written by female mill workers in New England mills. Many of the women who were contributing to the magazine were working in mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. The “Lowell Offering” was a collection of narratives where women shared their works in a intellectual and cultural publication. The contributors took great pride in the magazine. The “Lowell Offering” gained a great deal amount of popularity. It was read by famous writers such as Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and
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Lowell mills


England textile mills, including the Lowell mills, had either closed or relocated to the south. By 1840, Lowell, Massachusetts, had 32 textile factories and had become a bustling city. Between 1820 and 1840 the number of people who worked in manufacturing increased eightfold. Although most of the original Lowell mill girls were laid off and replaced by immigrants by 1850, the grown, single women who had been used to earning their own money ended up using their education to become librarians, teachers, and social workers. In this
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Harriet Hanson Robinson


. Two of the first magazines written by women were published in the town, the "Lowell Offering" and "The New England Offering". Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (1797–1886), one of Harriet's companions in the mills, became a noted contributor of sketches and stories to the "Lowell Offering". Harriet said that "the fame of "The Lowell Offering" caused the mill girls to be considered very desirable for wives; and that young men came from near and far to pick and choose for themselves, and
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Lowell, Massachusetts


before its 1823 incorporation. As Lowell's population grew, it acquired land from neighboring towns, and diversified into a full-fledged urban center. Many of the men who composed the labor force for constructing the canals and factories had immigrated from Ireland, escaping the poverty and Potato Famines of the 1830s and 1840s. The mill workers, young single women called Mill Girls, generally came from the farm families of New England. By the 1850s, Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the United States. The textile industry wove
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Irish Americans


-wage workers. They took the jobs previously held by Yankee women known as Lowell girls. A large percentage of Irish Catholic women took jobs as maids in hotels and private households. Large numbers of unemployed or very poor Irish Catholics lived in squalid conditions in the new city slums and tenements. Single, Irish immigrant women quickly assumed jobs in high demand but for very low pay. The majority of them worked in mills, factories, and private households and were considered the bottommost group in the female job hierarchy, alongside African
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Lowell National Historical Park


dormitories, in a style that anticipated such later architectural trends as the City Beautiful movement in the 1890s. Lowell attracted both immigrants from abroad and migrants from within New England and Quebec (including a large proportion of young women, known as Lowell mill girls) who lived in the dormitories and worked in the mills. The textile industry in New England experienced a sharp decline after World War II and by the 1960s, many of the Lowell's textile mill buildings were abandoned. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several important
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Lowell mill girls


to pass a law for a ten-hour workday, although there was no enforcement and workers were often requested to work longer days. By 1848, the LFLRA dissolved as a labor reform organization. Lowell textile workers continued to petition and pressure for improved working conditions, and in 1853, the Lowell corporations reduced the workday to eleven hours. The New England textile industry was rapidly expanding in the 1850s and 1860s. Unable to recruit enough Yankee women to fill all the new jobs, to supplement the workforce textile managers turned to
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Lowell mill girls


in the United States, transforming raw cotton into cotton cloth in one building. In 1821, Francis C. Lowell's business associates, looking to expand the Waltham textile operations, purchased land around the Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford. Incorporated as the Town of Lowell in 1826, by 1840, the textile mills employed almost 8,000 workers — mostly women between the ages of 15 and 35. The "City of Spindles", as Lowell came to be known, quickly became the center of the Industrial Revolution in
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Lowell mills


to embrace...new investment opportunities". The Boston Manufacturing Company built its first mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814. Unlike the prevailing system of textile manufacturing at the time—the "Rhode Island System" established by Samuel Slater—Lowell decided to hire young women (usually single) between the ages of 15 and 35, who became known as "mill girls". They were called "operatives" because they operated the looms and other machinery. The Lowell system, also known as
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Walkout


a contributing part of the family. However, the majority of their earnings was saved in the bank for their own desires. Most women who made this change came from a modest farming backgrounds and made the move to areas of New England and Mid Atlantic States. In the early months of 1834, textile sales were slow and profits were not up to standard to provide sufficient wages for the women mill workers of Lowell, Massachusetts. As a result, wages were cut and the price of room and board went up. The
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Lowell mill girls


what men were paid, many women able to attain economic independence for the first time, free from controlling fathers and husbands. On average, the Lowell mill girls earned between three and four dollars per week. The cost of boarding ranged between seventy-five cents and $1.25, leaving a portion of their pay to themselves. As a result, while factory life would soon come to be viewed as oppressive, it enabled these women to challenge gender stereotypes. Women were also hired because some factory owners, such as Lowell
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Lowell mill girls


assorted tasks as spare hands and paid a fixed daily wage while more experienced loom operators would be paid by the piece. 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 5:00 am until 7:00 pm, for an average 73 hours per week. Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two male overseers managing the operation. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as "
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Sarah Bagley


of Factory Life”, in an 1840 issue of the "Lowell Offering", a literary magazine written, edited, and published by working women. These "pleasures", she wrote, were like angels' visits: "few and far between". In late November 1842, 70 weavers at the Middlesex Mills walked off their jobs, protesting the newly-introduced requirement to tend two looms instead of one. The workers were fired and blacklisted, and shortly afterwards, Bagley left the Hamilton Mills and went to work
12424891
Technological and industrial history of the United States


local farms. Lowell looms were managed by specialized employees, many of the employed were unmarried young women ("Lowell mill girls"), and owned by a corporation. Unlike the previous forms of labor (apprenticeship, family labor, slavery, and indenture), the Lowell system popularized the concept of wage laborer who sells his labor to an employer under contract—a socio-economic system which persists in many modern countries and industries. The corporation also looked out for the health and well being of the young women,
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Lowell mills


the mills into what they were trying to avoid—a system that exploited the lower classes and made them permanently dependent on the low-paying mill jobs. By the 1850s, the Lowell system was considered a failed experiment and the mills began using more and more immigrant and child labor. In the 1890s, the South emerged as the center of U.S. textile manufacturing; not only was cotton grown locally in the South, it had fewer labor unions and heating costs were cheaper. By the mid-20th century, all of the New
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Lowell mill girls


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" noted that the company would "not employ anyone who is habitually absent from public worship on the Sabbath, or known to be guilty of immorality". As for many young women, the allure of Lowell was in the opportunities afforded for further study and learning. Most had already completed some measure of formal education and were resolutely bent on self-improvement. Upon their arrival
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Lowell mill girls


they might be induced to become mill girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading occupation.…" The Lowell System combined large-scale mechanization with an attempt to improve the stature of its female workforce and workers. A few girls who came with their mothers or older sisters were as young as ten years old, some were middle-aged, but the average age was about 24. Usually hired for contracts of one year (the average stay was about four years), new employees were given
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Harriet Farley


. After working as a weaver in Lowell textile mills, Farley began contributing to the Lowell Offering. The "Lowell Offering" was a monthly magazine that was thirty-two pages long. It ran to five volumes, published from 1840 to 1845 with over fifty women contributors. The "Lowell Offering" emerged from a working women's writing circle held at the Second Universalist Church. Through publishing poetry, articles, and personal essays, this magazine provided an opportunity to share the writing of working women in Lowell textile mills.
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Harriet Hanson Robinson


and teaching, paid only about one-sixth as much as the mills However, working conditions were often poor and unsafe and wages low, leading to a strike in 1834. Mrs. Hanson obtained a job running a boarding house for a textile mill company in Lowell. At the age of ten, Harriet started to work in the Lowell mills. By her own account, she wanted to work so she could earn money for herself, and the experience was good for her. However, there may have been an element of
8735139
History of Lowell, Massachusetts


Know-Nothing Party) won elections in Lowell. By the 1850s, industry competition increased as more manufacturing centers were built elsewhere, Lowell's mills employed increasing numbers of immigrant families, and the early "Lowell System" of Yankee women workers living in company boardinghouses was transformed. In its place, large, densely populated ethnic neighborhoods grew around the city, their residents more rooted in their churches, organizations, and communities than the previous era's company boardinghouse dwellers. The American Civil War shut down many of the mills temporarily
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Lowell mill girls


profits for the textile corporations: between 1846 and 1850, for instance, the dividends of the Boston-based investors, the group of textile companies that founded Lowell, averaged 14% per year. Most corporations recorded similarly high profits during this period. The social position of the factory girls had been degraded considerably in France and England. In her autobiography, Harriet Hanson 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
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New England Offering


George Sand. The “Lowell Offering” lost momentum after the opinions of the writers moved towards areas that mill owners did not agree with. The “New England Offering” was established after controversy with the Lowell Offering erupted and the editors Harriet Farley and Harriott F. Curtis had to discontinue the “Lowell Offering” and start a new magazine. The magazine's first issue appeared in September 1847, and Farley ended publication with the March 1850 issue. The purpose of the magazine was to shed light on what women who were working
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University of Massachusetts Lowell


textile chemistry and dyeing. In 1903, the school moved from downtown to its permanent location just northwest of the Merrimack River. The yellow brick mill-like Southwick Hall was dedicated to Royal and Dierexa Southwick. Grandparents of the wealthy businessman Frederick Ayer, the Southwicks were Quakers and abolitionists who came to Lowell in the 1820s to help establish the Lowell Carpet Company. Ten years later, the school granted its first bachelor's degrees in textile dyeing and textile engineering. In 1953, President Martin Lydon expanded the curriculum to include programs
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Lowell mills


the Lowell mill girls formed the Female Labor Reform Association, which joined forces with other Massachusetts laborers to pass laws aimed at improving working conditions in the state, which the mills simply ignored. The women responded by going out on strike and published magazines and newsletters like the "Lowell Offering". They even petitioned the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a law limiting the workday to ten hours. The petition was unsuccessful but it mill owners that their employees had become too troublesome. By the mid-1840s, a "new generation of mill
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Lowell mills


managers was in charge", for whom "profits rather than people seemed their primary, even sole, concern". Furthermore, mill owners, who were convinced that their employees had become too troublesome, found a new source of labor in the Irish immigrants who were flocking to Massachusetts in 1846 to escape Ireland's Great Famine. These immigrant workers were mostly women with large families who were willing to work longer for cheaper wages. They also often forced their children to work as well. This reliance on immigrant workers slowly turned
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History of Lowell, Massachusetts


and towards a post-industrial economy. New groups have moved into Lowell's neighborhoods, including Brazilians and Africans, continuing Lowell's traditional role as a melting pot. A project that will redevelop land once held by the Saco-Lowell Shops and the Hamilton and Appleton Mills was underway in 2009. Numerous projects are being undertaken around the city, to beautify and redevelop decaying areas. The Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell and LeLacheur Park were constructed in 1998. Lowell Devils hockey and Lowell Spinners baseball farm teams came to the city
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Harriet Farley


Working together on contributing to the “Lowell Offering” was one of the ways that women could continue their education while working in the mills. The "Lowell Offering" wanted to show that working women could be intellectuals. This image went against what European social reforms and union supporters thought of the mills. As the publication grew, it became something in which the contributors took great pride. The Offering was applauded by many famous authors such as, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and George Sand. The "Lowell Offering"
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Walkout


mill women to join. This walkout was short lived and by the middle of the next week the women either returned to work or left town. Only about one-sixth of all women workers in Lowell walked out. In October 1836, the women workers in the Lowell, Massachusetts factory mills walked out once again for the same reasons as the strike in 1834. The young women saw the wage-cut and the increasing prices of housing board as a direct assault on their social and economic independence, and they wouldn't
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Dwight Manufacturing Company Housing District


River was dammed, with textile mills beginning to operate soon afterward. Funded largely by investors from Boston, including early investors in mills at Lowell, a number of mills were built between 1832 and 1841. Four separate firms were consolidated into the Dwight Manufacturing Company in 1856; Edmund Dwight, for whom it was named, was from a prominent local family who was a lawyer and businessman in Boston. Early mill owners built boarding houses to attract single young women from area farms, offering concerned parents the security of a supervised living
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Boott Mills


The Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were a part of an extensive group of cotton mills, built in 1835 alongside a power canal system in this important cotton town. Their founder was Kirk Boott, one of the early mill leaders in Lowell. Today, the Boott Mills complex is the most intact in Lowell and is part of Lowell National Historical Park. It houses the Boott Cotton Mills Museum. Lowell is north-west of Boston on the Merrimack River. Lowell was blessed with a river system that provided a drop over
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Lowell mill girls


Though they lost strike after strike, Labor historian Philip Foner noted, observed, “they succeeded in raising serious questions about woman’s so-called ‘place’.” In 1845, after a number of protests and strikes, many operatives came together to form the first union of working women in the United States, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. The Association adopted a newspaper called the "Voice of Industry", in which workers published sharp critiques of the new industrialism. The "Voice" stood in sharp contrast
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Samuel Addison Shute and Ruth Whittier Shute


, which led to collaborations between 1830 until 1833. Together they painted many portraits, some of which are now in notable collections, such as in the American Folk Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ralph Esmerian, a well-known collector and supporter for the American Folk Art Museum, donated several watercolor pieces made by Samuel Addison and Ruth Whittier Shute. The subjects were men, women, and children, primarily workers of local textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts and New Hampshire due to the influx of textile jobs
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Lowell mills


putting-out system" in favor of mass production of high-quality cloth. It completely revolutionized the textile industry and "eventually became the model for other manufacturing industries" in the United States. Lowell solved the problem of labor by employing young women (usually single) between the ages of 15 and 35, who became known as "mill girls". Unlike European industries, which had access to "large, landless, urban populations whose reliance on the wage system gave them few economic choices", American companies had
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Francis Cabot Lowell


of technologies that converted raw cotton all the way to finished cloth. Patrick Tracy Jackson was the first manager of the BMC with Paul Moody in charge of the machinery. The Waltham mill, where raw cotton was processed into finished cloth, was the forerunner of the 19th-century American factory. Lowell also pioneered the employment of women, from the age of 15-35 from New England farming families, as textile workers. He paid these "mill girls" (known as the Lowell mill girls) lower wages than men
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Lowell Offering


Old Maids" 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. Among its contributors: Eliza G. Cate, Betsey Guppy Chamberlain, Abba Goddard, Lucy Larcom, Harriet Hanson Robinson, and Augusta Harvey Worthen. Many women who worked in the mills, such as Ellen Collins
20239471
Lowell Offering


The Lowell Offering was a monthly periodical collected contributed works of poetry and non-fiction by the female textile workers (young women [age 15-35] known as the Lowell Mill Girls) of the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills of the early American industrial revolution. It began in 1840 and lasted until 1845. The "Offering" was initially organized in 1840 by the Reverend Abel Charles Thomas (1807-1880) pastor of the Second Universalist Church. From October 1840 to March 1841, it consisted of articles from many
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Lucy Larcom


served as a model for the change in women's roles in society. She was a friend of Harriet Hanson Robinson, who worked in the Lowell mills at the same time. Robinson also became a poet and author; later, she was prominent in the women's suffrage movement. Both contributed to the literary magazine "Lowell Offering". Larcom died at age 69 on April 17, 1893 in Boston and was buried in her hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts. Her influence is still felt in Beverly. A local literary magazine
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Lowell mill girls


, were less inclined to hire children for this lesser pay. As the nature of the new "factory system" became clear, however, many women joined the broader American labor movement, to protest the dramatic social changes of the Industrial Revolution. While they decried the deteriorating factory conditions, worker unrest in the 1840s was directed mainly against the loss of control over economic life. This loss of control, which came with the dependence on the corporations for a wage, was experienced as an attack on their dignity and independence.
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Lowell mill girls


as a violation of the written contract between the employers and the employees. The "turn-out" persisted for weeks and eventually the Board of Directors of Lowell's textile mills rescinded the rent hike. Although the "turn-out" was a success, the weakness of the system was evident, and worsened further in the Panic of 1837. The sense of community that arose from working and living together contributed directly to the energy and growth of the first union of women workers, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.
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Lowell mills


The Lowell mills were 19th-century textile mills that operated in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, which was named after Francis Cabot Lowell; he introduced a new manufacturing system called the "Lowell system", also known as the "Waltham-Lowell system". Francis Cabot Lowell sought to create an efficient manufacturing process in the United States that "differed from what he saw in Great Britain". His vision relied on his "great faith in the people of New England" and employees "would be housed and fed
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Lowell mills


the Waltham-Lowell system, was "unprecedented and revolutionary for its time". Not only was it faster and more efficient, it was considered more humane than the textile industry in Great Britain by "paying in cash, hiring young adults instead of children, and by offering employment for only a few years and providing educational opportunities to help workers move on to better jobs". For the first time in the United States, these mills combined the textile processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, essentially eliminating the "
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Charles Storer Storrow


Boston and Lowell Railroad and went on to become the railroad's business agent in 1836. In 1845 Storrow left the Boston and Lowell to become the chief engineer at the Essex Company, a company organized to harness the water power of the Merrimack River downstream from Lowell, Massachusetts. Storrow designed and built the Great Stone Dam across the Merrimack river, canals to distribute the water, several large textile mills, and a city, Lawrence, to house the mill workers. He came up with the idea to make roads that go
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Lyddie


jobs working on looms at mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. But she does not take the job, because her mother signed her up for the tavern job. When the mistress is away on a trip, Lyddie goes home. In her house, she finds a runaway slave named Ezekiel Freeman, an ex-preacher who educated himself by using the Bible. Before she leaves, she lends him the money she and Charlie received for a calf they sold. When she returns to the tavern, she is fired. Triphena gives
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Elizabeth Mahon


, and the girls who liked baseball could often be seen playing with the boys. Part of a modest and big family, Mahon decided to take a job in a cotton mill while completing her senior year in high school. Even though life at the mill meant 55-hour weeks for those who were considered full-time employers, girls' athletic teams usually were made up of employers who held jobs at their respective plants, as the games were played on weekends, though an occasional weekday game came (into the picture) from
18021449
William Ezra Worthen


He also designed and constructed a dam and mills for the Boston Manufacturing Company on the Charles River at Waltham, Massachusetts and the Suffolk, Tremont, Lawrence, Appleton, and Hamilton Mills at Lowell. He reported on the water supply of Lowell and for a time was in charge of the cotton mills and machine shops of the Boston Manufacturing Company as Acting Superintendent. After a visit to Europe in 1849, Worthen came to New York City and to some extent devoted himself to architectural work, building the structures at No 200 Broadway
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Lowell Offering


, were unhappy with the conditions and hours they were forced to work. They did not like the constant noise and bells that they heard during their shifts, and often had the desire to return to their homes to work on farms rather than in the factories. However, the appeal of education and self-sufficiency drew many young women in, and they used the opportunities they received at the Lowell Mills to learn. They learned to read and write, as well as practicing music and foreign languages. Harriet Farley, against
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Lowell National Historical Park


long system of power canals based around the falls. Unlike many other mill towns, however, Lowell's manufacturing facilities were built based on a "planned community" design. Specifically Lowell was planned as reaction to the mill communities in Great Britain, which were perceived as cramped and inhumane. Some called it the "Lowell Experiment," which was an attempt at creating a manufacturing center with a combination of production efficiency with democratic morals and social structure. Initially the factories of Lowell were built with ample green space and accompanying clean
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Women in telegraphy


Reform Association to support better working conditions for the women who worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Mathilde Fibiger (1830-1872) was a Danish feminist, novelist, and telegraphist who championed women's rights in her novels. Mary Macaulay, a strong supporter of women's suffrage in the U.S., served as secretary to Susan B. Anthony while working as a telegrapher in Rochester, New York. Leah Rosenfeld was a railroad telegraph operator and station agent whose 1968 lawsuit against the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of
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Sunfire (series)


Joanna bravely joins the growing number of girls working in the textile mills in 1836. With her she carries the painful memory of Jed, a young man who has left her, loving the sea more than her loves her.In the Lowell, Massachusetts mill Joanna is horrified to find the work both grueling and dangerous. Even a romance with the mill owner's roguish nephew, Theo, can’t keep the daily work from becoming terrifying drudgery. To strike with the other mill women seems Joanna's only way out of a
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Saco-Lowell Shops


Paul Moody, the shop also built machinery for the other mills in Lowell as they were set up. Including the Boott Mills in 1835 and others. The company soon gained a reputation for producing high-quality cotton machinery. The Lowell Machine Shop was located at the junction of the Merrimack and Pawtucket Canals, near the Swamp Locks, across from Dutton Street in Lowell. In 1834, the Lowell Machine Shop also began producing steam locomotives for the newly created Boston and Lowell Railroad. The Lowell Machine Shop was incorporated in 1845
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Lowell mill girls


Started by 12 operatives in January 1845, its membership grew to 500 within six months, and continued to expand rapidly. The Association was run completely by the women themselves: they elected their own officers and held their own meetings; they helped organize the city's female workers, and set up branches in other mill towns. They organized fairs, parties, and social gatherings. Unlike many middle-class women activists, the operatives found considerable support from working-class men who welcomed them into their reform organizations and advocated for
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Lowell mill girls


to other literary magazines published by female operatives, such as the "Lowell Offering", which painted a sanguine picture of life in the mills. In 1813, businessman Francis Cabot Lowell formed a company, the Boston Manufacturing Company, and built a textile mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. Unlike the earlier Rhode Island System, where only carding and spinning were done in a factory while the weaving was often put out to neighboring farms to be done by hand, the Waltham mill was the first integrated mill
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Lowell mill girls


three to five dollars per week), but with the economic depression of the early 1830s, the Board of Directors decided to and proposed a reduction in wages. This, in turn, led to organized "turn-outs" or strikes. In February 1834, the Board of Directors of Lowell's textile mills requested a 15% wage reduction, to go into effect on March 1. After a series of meetings, the female textile workers organized a "turn-out" or strike. The women involved in "
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Betsey Guppy Chamberlain


that church. The marriage does not seem to have lasted, and Betsey Chamberlain did not use the name "Wright" in later years. According to Harriet Hanson Robinson, who started work in the Lowell mills as a child of ten in 1835, "Mrs. Chamberlain was a widow, and came to Lowell with three children from some 'community' (probably the Shakers), where she had not been contented. She had inherited Indian blood, and was proud of it. She had long, straight black hair,
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Sarah Bagley


and the textile worker. In response, they campaigned to defeat Representative Schouler in the next election. Bagley and the LFLRA continued sending petitions to the state legislature for a ten-hour day; they gathered over 10,000 names from throughout Massachusetts, more than 2,000 of which were from working women and men of Lowell. Again hearings were held to investigate working conditions, and again the Massachusetts Legislature refused to take action. However, labor and political pressure on the Lowell textile corporations was so great that in 1847 the mills shortened the
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Harriet Farley


It was common for these women to form writing groups, and out of one of these grew a magazine called "The Lowell Offering" in 1840. Farley wrote articles and editorials for "The Lowell Offering" under a myriad of pseudonyms and eventually became editor in 1842; in 1843, Harriot Curtis, a fellow mill worker, became her co-editor. Since the magazine was written by and for the mill girls, it was received with both criticism and interest by the general public. Some, including labor organizer Orestes
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Harriet Hanson Robinson


that had a butcher's shop on the ground floor. The titles of two of her compositions have survived: "Poverty Not Disgraceful" and "Indolence and Industry", reflecting her opinion that there was nothing wrong with the honest labor of poor people. Harriet returned to the mills, working there until 1848, but in her spare time participated in literary groups in Lowell. Lowell was rich in educational and cultural opportunities for women at that time. There were libraries and bookstores, evening schools and lectures, concerts and balls
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Lowell mill girls


was the effect of the long hour system, that my chief delight was, after the evening meal, to place my aching feet in an easy position, and read a novel." 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
5467418
Middlesex Community College (Massachusetts)


. To establish a permanent Lowell campus, the college purchased a six-story corporate training center at Kearney Square from Wang Laboratories in 1990 and relocated its Lowell activities there in 1991. The Wannalancit Mills buildings then came under the management of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. In 2004, the college expanded into a former federal office building across the street from the MCC tower. In April 2008, the college acquired a former Boston & Maine railroad depot in Lowell, for future use by performing arts.programs. As of December 2008,
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Lowell mills


chaperones called "matrons". In addition to working 80 hours a week, the women had to adhere to strict moral codes (enforced by the matrons) as well as attend religious services and educational classes. Despite being "highly discriminatory and paternalistic compared to modern standards, it was seen as revolutionary in its day". Indeed, hiring women made good business sense; not only did women have experience weaving and spinning, they could be paid less than men, thereby increasing the profits of Lowell's Boston Manufacturing Company,
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Lowell, Massachusetts


New England's Merrimack Valley region. Incorporated in 1826 to serve as a mill town, Lowell was named after Francis Cabot Lowell, a local figure in the Industrial Revolution. The city became known as the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution, due to a large series of textile mills and factories. Many of the Lowell's historic manufacturing sites were later preserved by the National Park Service to create Lowell National Historical Park. During the Cambodian genocide, the city took in an influx of refugees, leading to a Cambodia Town and
61127
History of the United States (1849–1865)


people who mainly came to America for political rather than economic reasons. In the big cities such as New York, immigrants often lived in ethnic enclaves called “ghettos” that were often impoverished and crime-ridden. The most infamous of these immigrant neighborhoods was the Five Points in New York City. With increasing labor agitation for higher wages and better working conditions, such as by the Lowell mill girls in Massachusetts, many factory owners began to replace female workers with immigrants who would work cheaper and were less demanding about factory conditions
224200
Frederic Allen Whiting


from pursuing this career. Soon after, Frederic entered into business, following the lead of his father and brothers. Although the Whitings remained in Lowell for just five years before moving closer to Boston in 1895, the blue-collar mill town had a lasting impact on Frederic, who remained there until 1897. The textile mills in Lowell attracted both migrant workers and European immigrants who were largely exploited as unskilled laborers. Whiting's early exposure to the harsh realities of industrial America developed his strong sense of civic duty and commitment to
19016176
Sunfire (series)


job that threatens her very existence. But defying the mill owners will certainly mean losing her job and Theo. And if Jed ever returns from the sea, will he recognize – could he love – the new Joanna? Set in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills. (#6) Jessica by Mary Francis Shura "One man would love her, one man would lose her." Jessica had lived all her life on the flat Kansas prairie. It was there, the year she turned sixteen, that Jessica fell in
12791580
History of New England


Lawrence, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Lewiston, Maine, following models from Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. The textile manufacturing in New England was growing rapidly, which caused a shortage of workers. Recruiters were hired by mill agents to bring young women and children from the countryside to work in the factories, and thousands of farm girls left their rural homes in New England to work in the mills between 1830 and 1860, hoping to aid their families financially, save up for marriage
15809465
Proprietors of Locks and Canals


Lowell. In 1822 Patrick Tracy Jackson appointed himself as agent of Proprietors of Locks and Canals, gaining the ability to determine "who could start what mill and where in Lowell, and for how much". In 1825, the corporation was reorganized again and separated from the Merrimack Manufacturing Company under the leadership of Kirk Boott. This allowed the city of Lowell to grow quickly, as many other manufacturing corporations were founded in Lowell to take advantage of the waterpower sold by the Proprietors of Locks and Canals. Paul Moody was one
17096176
Francis Cabot Lowell


. Women lived in company run boarding houses with chaperones and were involved in religious and educational activities. The Waltham Machine Shop attached to the BMC made power looms for sale to other American cotton mills. Nathan Appleton established a region-wide system to sell the cloth manufactured by the BMC. Their success in Waltham motivated them to look for other locations. They found a site in East Chelmsford, renamed for Lowell after his death. The end of the War of 1812 was a severe threat to the budding domestic textile industry as
10453483
Lowell Amos


slightly soiled, although Roberta's body was very clean. Police lacked enough concrete evidence to bring charges against Lowell, so they began surveillance and investigated his background. Two days after Roberta’s death, Lowell spent over $1,000 on dinner and drinks with two women with whom he proceeded to have sex. After the story of Roberta's death had gained publicity, several women came forward and told investigators that they thought they had been drugged by Lowell before having sex. Investigators found out that Lowell's first wife Saundra died under
16866062
History of the MBTA


were more than twenty privately run rail lines. In order to regulate fares and reduce competition, the General Court of Massachusetts passed the West End Consolidation Act to consolidate the rail line operations. The steam locomotive became practical for mass transportation in the 1810s, and came to the United States in the 1820s. The private Boston and Lowell Railroad was chartered in 1830, connecting Boston to Lowell, a major northerly mill town (which was also connected via the Middlesex Canal). It was one of the oldest railroads in North America
14504866
Lowell, Massachusetts


continued to thrive as a major industrial center during the 19th century, attracting more migrant workers and immigrants to its mills. Next were the Catholic Germans, followed by a large influx of French Canadians during the 1870s and 1880s. Later waves of immigrants included Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanians, Swedes, Greeks, and eastern European Jews. They came to work in Lowell and settled in ethnic neighborhoods, with the city's population reaching almost 50% foreign-born by 1900. By the time World War I broke out in Europe
61131
Lowell National Historical Park


forces came together from which emerged the Lowell National Historical Park. Congressman F. Bradford Morse assisted in the city's selection for "Model Cities" status; Brendan Fleming, UMass Lowell (UML) Math Department faculty member, after his election to the Lowell City Council proposed the first Historic District "The Mill and Canal District" which was approved in 1972; Gordon Marker, Executive Director of Model Cities and an urban planner, was instrumental in designing the concept for an Urban Park based on Historic Preservation and Economic Revitalization; Patrick
8902911
Saints Medical Center


under the direction of the Oblates with the Grey Nuns of the Cross of Ottawa acting as management. The facility then became known as St. Joseph's Hospital of Lowell. Ultimately, the rapid growth and changing demographics of Lowell in the following decades created the need for additional hospitals. With the waves of new immigrants came the need for health care services with a broader focus. Many of those arriving in Lowell with no jobs found themselves ineligible to use the services of the Lowell Corporation Hospital. The need for a health care facility
4743632
Voice of Industry


in the mills: "With wages and board," she wrote, "we have nothing to do. These depend on circumstances over which we have no control." The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was started by Sarah Bagley and twelve other women in January 1845. Its membership grew to 500 within six months, and continued to expand rapidly. The Association was managed completely by working women: they elected their own officers with Bagley as president and held their own meetings; they organized the Lowell's female workers, and
16165546
Waltham-Lowell system


, weaving, dyeing, and cutting were now completed in a single plant. This large amount of control made it so that no other company could interfere with production. The Waltham mill also pioneered the process of mass production. This greatly increased the scale of manufacturing. Water powered line shafts and belts now connected hundreds of power lines. The increase in manufacturing occurred so rapidly that there was no localized labor supply in the early 19th century that could have sufficed. Lowell solved this problem by hiring young women. After the successes
21102693
Harriet Hanson Robinson


, Angeline Cudworth, also a widow, the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, a center of the textile industry. Lowell was a planned factory town. Under the Lowell System, the company recruited young farm girls to work in the mills, building dormitories where they could live at low rents, and hiring matrons to monitor the social conduct of the girls. The company arranged for cultural events, bible studies and other educational opportunities. Initially, the pay was appealing to the women, as the alternative employment, domestic work
8735138
Waltham-Lowell system


as mill girls, who came to the new textile centers from rural towns to earn more money than they could at home, and to live a cultured life in "the city". Their life was very regimented - they lived in company boardinghouses and were held to strict hours and a moral code. As competition grew in the domestic textile industry and wages declined, strikes began to occur, and with the introduction of cheaper imported foreign workers by mid-century, the system proved unprofitable and collapsed. The precursor to the
21102690
Mithan Jamshed Lam


state of Maharashtra, in a Parsi family, to Ardeshir Tata, a textile mill employee and Herabai Tata, a women's rights activist. Her childhood and early education were at Phulgaon, in Pune district, where her father was working at a local textile mill, but later, she moved to Ahmedabad when her father shifted his job to that place. Soon, she came to Mumbai, where she joined "Frere Fletcher School" (present-day J.B. Petit High School for Girls) to complete her school education.
5014363
Mill conversion


the Border City Mill Apartments in Fall River, Massachusetts, situated in a historic 1870's brick cotton mill. The huge Massachusetts Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were converted into a 445-unit apartment complex beginning in 1990, while the nearby Market Mills Apartments have 230 units. In recent years, with Massachusetts historic tax credit program, the Boott Mills and Lawrence Mills have been converted into residences also, as part of Lowell's continued revitalization of its historic waterfront area. Mill conversions have also occurred in other parts of the United States,
2268070
Lucy Larcom


her links to her home town. The ten years that Larcom spent at the mills made a huge impact on her. The "Lowell Offering", a magazine whose editors and contributors were "female operatives in the Lowell mills," was published in 1842, and soon after Larcom became one of its corps of writers. One of her first poems was entitled "The River," and many of her verses and essays were found in its volumes. Some of those "Lowell Offering" essays appeared afterwards in "Similitudes
19374178
For the Union Dead


book "The Mills of the Kavanaughs." In the version in "For the Union Dead", Lowell completely removed from the poem any mention of the Biblical characters of David and Bathsheba who were central to the earlier version. During Lowell's 1963 public reading at the Guggenheim, prior to the publication of "For the Union Dead", he explained that many of his readers expressed confusion over the presence of the Biblical characters being located in a modern park in Boston, and according to Lowell, the characters made the
22045165
Betsey Guppy Chamberlain


and walked very erect, with great freedom of movement. One of her sons was afterwards connected with the "New York Tribune"." Lowell was a planned factory town. Under the Lowell System, the company recruited young farm girls to work in the mills, building dormitories where they could live at low rents, and hiring matrons to monitor the social conduct of the girls. The company arranged for cultural events, bible studies and other educational opportunities. Lowell was rich in educational and cultural opportunities for women at that time
10011546
James Lloyd (Massachusetts politician)


received a BA in 1787 and an MA in 1790. He got a job as a merchant clerk, in which capacity he traveled to Russia in 1792. Lloyd became a successful merchant, and was a close business associate of Francis Cabot Lowell. With Lowell, he was a major stakeholder the construction of Boston's India Wharf and Central Wharf, and was a major investor in the Boston Athenaeum. He served as the first president of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the first major textile mill in the nation. In 1800 Lloyd
130176
History of Lowell, Massachusetts


present borders. By 1850, Lowell's population was 33,000, making it the second largest city in Massachusetts and America's largest industrial center. The 5.6 mile long canal system produced 10,000 horsepower, being provided to ten corporations with a total of forty mills. Ten thousand workers used an equal number of looms fed by 320,000 spindles. The mills were producing 50,000 miles of cloth annually. Other industries developed in Lowell as well: The Lowell Machine Shop and Father John's Medicine opened. Tanneries, a bleachery, and service companies
5411656
Lewiston Mills and Water Power System Historic District


The Lewiston Mills and Water Power System Historic District encompasses the major 19th-century mill complexes and associated water power systems in Lewiston, Maine. Developed beginning in 1850, Lewiston's canals and mills were the largest textile mill complex in the state, and one of the best-preserved mature large-scale expressions of the Lowell system of cotton textile manufacturing, perfected at Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts earlier in the 19th century. The district includes a series power canals and mill complexes developed over a 100-year period, along with mill
20035953
Factory system


, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire and Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system. The factory system began widespread use somewhat later when cotton spinning was mechanized. The first use of an integrated system, where cotton came in and was spun, bleached dyed and woven into finished cloth, was at mills in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts. These became
2704633
Lowell mill girls


hands, I would have removed from those works if I had had the power." However, there was concern among many workers that foreign visitors were being presented with a sanitized view of the mills, by textile corporations who were trading on the image of the 'literary operative' to mask the grim realities of factory life. "Very pretty picture," wrote an operative named Juliana in the "Voice of Industry", responding to a rosy account of life and learning in the mills, "but we who work
5467410
Nashua Manufacturing Company


and several other local tradesmen began the company after quietly buying up land from the banks of the Merrimack along the Nashua River up to Mine Falls, as they planned to use the falls to power their mills, rather than the Merrimack. They hired Asher Benjamin to design the mills, including churches and a grid of streets. They modelled their plans on the experiment at Lowell with the Lowell Mill Girls. They were highly successful, and after digging the Nashua power canal were able to build more mill buildings and hire more labor
2934428
Margaret Foley


age of fourteen, Foley traveled to Lowell, Massachusetts to work in the spinning room of the Merrimack Corporation as a mill girl. While working at the mill, Foley began a career as a professional cameo carver in both shell and lava. She learned this trade at Ednah Dow Cheney's School of Design for Women, which opened in 1850 to provide occupational training for single women in the domestic arts. Cameo carving, like miniature painting, was considered a suitable career for women artists due to its decorative nature and association with
11331762
Mary Blewett


Mary H. Blewett (born 1938) is an author and academic specializing in American social history, women's history, and labor history. She was a lifelong friend of Gabriele Annan, who she met at a progressive boarding school in England. Her works include "The Last Generation: Work and Life in the Textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1910-1960" and "Constant Turmoil: The Politics of Industrial Life in Nineteenth Century New England". Her book "Men, Women and Work: Class, Gender,
15671254
Cannelton Cotton Mill


hydropower that ran the Lowell mills. The task proved too difficult for Smith and his associates, one of whom was Salmon P. Chase, later United States Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States, who became Smith's friend when both were students at Dartmouth College. Another was Indiana federal judge Elisha Mills Huntington. In 1851, control of the mill passed to brothers Dwight Newcomb (1820–1892) and Horatio Dalton Newcomb (1809–1874) who operated it successfully. The mill closed in 1954. It was listed on
1669749
Uriah A. Boyden


, as other mills in Lowell and the Boston and Lowell Railroad. While at Lowell, Boyden worked with British-born engineer James B. Francis, who in 1848 developed the Francis turbine, which superseded Boyden's earlier invention. However, Boyden-type turbines continued to be manufactured, including those installed at Harmony Mills in Cohoes, New York in the early 1870s, and those used at the first Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant in 1895. In 1850, Boyden settled in Boston, and devoted himself to the study of chemistry and
10189433
Lowell Mick White


Lowell Mick White is an American fiction writer living in Texas whose work focuses on the changing relationships between physical place and the individual. Born in Marion, Ohio, White grew up in Mankato, Minnesota, and Coxs Mills, West Virginia, and settled in Austin, Texas. After working a variety of jobs—including stints as a shade-tree salesman, bureaucrat, and cab driver—White received a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. In 1998,
20307717
Francis Cabot Lowell


the enterprise, in 1822, Lowell's partners moved north to the more powerful Merrimack River and named their new mill town at the Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River "Lowell," after their visionary leader. The Waltham-Lowell System, pioneered by Lowell and first introduced at the Waltham mill, was expanded to the new industrial city of Lowell and soon spread to the Midwest and the South. The mechanized textile system, introduced by Francis Cabot Lowell, remained dominant in New England for a century until the industry shifted to
10453485
Nathaniel P. Banks


on January 30, 1816. His father worked in the textile mill of the Boston Manufacturing Company, eventually becoming a foreman. Banks went to local schools until the age of fourteen, at which point the family's financial demands compelled him to take a mill job. He started as a bobbin boy, responsible for replacing bobbins full of thread with empty ones, working in the mills of Waltham and Lowell. Because of this role he became known as Bobbin Boy Banks, a nickname he carried throughout his life. He was
17644707
Augustus Lowell


of the Boott Cotton Mills, also in Lowell. And in 1883, he was Director of The Winnipiseogee Lake Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company. All were positions his father, John Amory, had once held within the same companies. He was also, as of 1878, a director of the Pacific Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the largest textile combine of its time. Lowell was also a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vice President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1881,
10573899