Final Project, History 2100, Spring 2017, William Paterson University

1. Lowell Mill Girls
By: Jaclyn Conte

2. Francis Cabot Lowell
Francis was born in 1775 in a town called
Newport that resided in Massachusetts. Francis
was also apart of a very well-to-do family that
was stationed in Boston. He had the opportunity
to go to Harvard university and graduated in
1793. After college, Francis became a very
successful merchant here in the United States,
but he wanted to expand. So, he took a boat to
Britain and what he learned there changed his
life and the United States Labor force forever.(5)

3. Where did Francis learn about the textile mills?
Francis spent two years studying the inner workings of the textile industry
and the power looms being used in those factories. Lowell brought his
knowledge back to the US, and with his brother and business associates,
formed the Boston Manufacturing Company, which improved upon the power
loom technology that was used in their textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The waterways in Lowell proved to be perfect to power Boston Manufacturing
Company’s power looms, and a new textile mill was opened by the company in
Lowell, MA.(5)
As Lowell expanded, and became the nation's largest textile
manufacturing center(4)

4. Illustration of French Textile Mill

5. Hiring women
Lowell was a pioneer in employing women in his mills, and although they
were paid lower wages, they were offered educational and religious freedoms
that were not offered anywhere else at the time. They were also given
superior boarding houses and cash wages, that weren’t afforded to women
elsewhere. These pioneering women became known as Lowell Mill Girls, and
they were the backbone of Lowell’s thriving cotton industry during the
American Industrial Revolution.(5)
The Lowell Mill Girls ranged in age from hiring ten year-old girls up to
middle aged women, although most of the girls were in their early twenties.(5)

6. A
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7. What New Image was Formed For Women?
A new social image o f the
female species emerged:
The New England mill girl : literate ,
industrious , dedicated to the
improvement of her own endowments
and the improvement of society , no
less a product o f the American
industrial revolution in cotton than the
bales o f coarse sheeting turned out
by New England's rattling looms and
spinning spindles.(1)

8. Why was this new Liberation Wanted by Women?
Mill Village is offered certain liberating
advantages which women had never
experienced before. Despite long hours,
conditions in the mills with Women endanger
their health, crowding in their boarding houses,
and other inconveniences, a great many women
in their teens and early 20s sought employment
in such factory villages as Waltham, Lowell, and
Nashua for the cultural, social, and educational
advantages they offered.(1)

9. Where did the mill girls Live… Daily Life ?
Each of the Lowell Mill Girls was offered space in one of the hundreds of
boarding houses run by the Boston Manufacturing Company. The houses,
which held up to 25 women at one time, enforced a 10pm curfew and male
visitors were forbidden. The girls were mentored by older female mill
workers, and they were advised how to dress, how to conduct themselves in
public, and how to speak properly. The girls in the boarding houses were
also given opportunities to attend lectures, concerts, and other events. The
Lowell Mill Girls generally worked 70 or more hours each week in hot and
difficult workplace conditions.(5)

10. Aerial View of What the Lowell Mill Looked Like.

11. Boarding Houses

12. What did the Village Experience Do for the Women?
For many young women, the mill village experience was preparation for
participation in women's rights, suffrage, temperance, abolition, and other social
reform movements of the second half of the 19th century. In these villages, the women
there spent much time in the study, progress towards the development of public
library collections was precipitated by the existence of literate female populations who
had enjoyed the advantages of sabbath schools, Sabbath school libraries, lectures, and
evening schools that characterized the cultural environment of the boarding houses in
the villages. They were experiencing an approaching equality with men in the labor
market and were reaching out for equal opportunities in other aspirations.(1)

13. Work Song the Girls Made up and Sang

14. Strikes
When the economy took a downturn and the mills decided to reduce wages
by 15%, the Lowell girls went on strike. With only a fraction of the employees in
support of the walk out, the strike ended just days after it started, with most of the
girls going back to the mills with the salary decrease. Two years later, when the
mills proposed an increase in rent for the girls living in the boarding houses, more
than 1,500 of them walked out with support from the community of Lowell. After
several weeks, it was determined that the company was in violation of the written
contract it had with the Lowell Mill Girls, and the rent hike was abandoned.(5)

15. Typical Strike

16. Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA)
The Lowell Mill Girls organized in 1845 to try and get a ten hour
workday reform enacted. Their strength and power again proved
formidable, and with thousands of signatures on petitions and the
appearance of the girls at public hearings, the Lowell corporations
eventually reduced the workday from fourteen to eleven hours.(5)

17. Lowell Female Labor Reform Association ( L.F.L.R.A. )

18. How did the Lowell Mill Girls affect Women's Role in Society?
The Lowell Mill Girls affected the workforce dramatically. In the
United States history this is the first time women broke free from the
constrictive social norms that had been placed upon them. Women are
being empowered to be independant and not being forced to get married,
because it is what you have to do. For the first time, women were being
pulled out of their homes and thrown into the workforce.

19. How did the Lowell Mill Girls affect civic engagement?
With the shift in gender in the labor force, many other social contracts had
been broken. Social contracts are roles in agreement among the members of a
society to cooperate for social benefits. For women, their social contract was to
stay home and have children while their male counterpart went out into the
workforce, and was the breadwinner. Because of the shift many women delayed
getting married or didn't get married at all. Slowly and slowly the age of marriage
and a woman's first pregnancy rose significantly. With this exception growing in
society that women are in the work force, it was then granted in education. When
women were allowed to go to universities, more minds were able to work on
making a difference and helping communities become better places to live. With
this being true, an educated women is more inclined to teach her child to be a free
thinker and this will stimulate ideas and create motivation to make real change.

20. Showing Some of the products of how Civic engagement and the
empowering of women in our society can make a change. Feminism in a
product of women entering the workforce and Feminism fought for rights
and equality of all.

21. Work Cited
1. MCCAULEY, ELFRIEDA B. "THE NEW ENGLAND MILL GIRLS: FEMININE INFLUENCE IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN NEW ENGLAND, 1820-1860." Order No. 7417883, Columbia University, 1971.
https://ezproxy.wpunj.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/288081845?accountid=15101.
2. "Lowell Mill Girls and the factory system, 1840." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. September 03,
2013. Accessed April 17, 2017.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/age-jackson/resources/lowell-mill-girls-and-factory-system-1840.
3. Wilkening, 9/20/2016 Margaret, 10/13/2015 Padavida, and 10/1/2015 Edwin Lloyd. "Lowell Mill Girls and the Factory
System, 1840." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. N.p., 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.
<https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Lowell_FPS.pdf>.
4. "Labor History." Taylor and Francis Online. Accessed April 10, 2017.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/00236567508584324?scroll=top&needAccess=true.
5. "Lowell Mill Girls." Francis Cabot Lowell | Lowell Mills | Lowell History | Lowell.com. Accessed May 01, 2017.
http://www.lowell.com/francis-cabot-lowell/.