The Lowell Mills

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The Lowell Mills

• Industry, Labor, and Culture
• 1823-1860

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Rising power of industry
Water power from the Merrimack River made Lowell
a prime site for the building of woolen and
cotton mills. The Merrimack Manufacturing Mill
was operating by 1823.
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Lowell Girls
The early needs for laborers at the mills were
met by employing young women, primarily the
daughters of New England farmers. These workers,
pictured in drawings from the 1820s-40s, and in
photographs by the 1850s, were among the first
concentrations of women in American industry.
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Strictly regulated lives
Lowell Girls, as they came to be called, lived
in tightly regulated conditions, housed in
company dormitories and under carefully
enunciated rules. They were paid less than male
workers.
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Vital insights preserved
Historians know much about the lives of female
workers in the mills from letters written by
some of them, from company records and magazines
like the Lowell Offering a company publication
that featured fiction, short stories, news and
information about activities in the mills and
dormitories.
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Lords 0f Loom and Lash
The mill-owners hunger for ever more cotton to
process served to accelerate the cultivation of
cotton in the south. This in turn spread slavery
across the southern states. By 1848,
anti-slavery leaders like Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts (left) were decrying an immoral
alliance between the lords of the lash and the
lords of the loom.
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Cotton south
The (illegal) renewal of the slave trade from
Africa, and the opening of serious divisions
within the nation over the slavery question
became a more divisive issue than the labor
conditions among the Lowell workers.
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Impressed visitors
"I cannot recall or separate one young face that
gave me a painful impression not one young girl
whom, assuming it to be a matter of necessity
that she should gain her daily bread by the
labour of her hands, I would have removed from
those works if I had had the power. Charles
Dickens, on visit to Lowell, 1842
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Pay and Expenses
Cloth workers were traditionally paid by piece
work -- so much per finished item. Those who
worked at the power looms were generally paid a
daily wage 1836 40 to 80 cents a day 1842 --
14.50 for 4 weeks (6 days at 12 hours a
day). Workers pressed for a 10 hour work day
during the 1840s and 1850s. Only a few mills
granted it for skilled jobs.
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Strike
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. From 1836 strike song sung at
Lowell
In 1834, as more mills led to overproduction of
cotton and woolen goods, the mill owners reduced
the pay of the workers less money for each
piece they completed. Some 800 women reacted by
striking. The strikes failed, but left a legacy
on which some unions were eventually built.
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The Factory Girls Association
The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association
petitioned the State of Massachusetts for action
to obtain a 10 hour day and in the late 1840s
the Legislature held pubic hearings. This was
the first time a legislature investigated labor
conditions in American history. But the
Legislature declined to act in a matter of
private contract. In 1853 most mills adopted an
11 hour day. But they also began to hire
immigrants who took lower wages. The Lowell
Girls began to disappear from the labor force
after the Civil War.
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Modern Historic Site
In 1978, the U.S. established the Lowell National
Historical Park, using the Boott Cotton Mill as a
museum and the Mill Girls and Immigrants
Boardinghouse to preserve the story of the Lowell
Girls.