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The Lowell did provide great inspiration and a beacon of what women can do, but it also had inhumane work conditions that countered the good it was doing. When respected figures visited the mills, it was noted that the visitors only were presented with the nicely dressed operatives.
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 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 ...
In 1873, over 100 women in Lowell walked out to protest the hot and humid conditions of their workroom. Working with steel led to horrific injuries. Men working in the South Works Steel Mill in ...
Resistance was led by the young women known as mill girls. With the mid-nineteenth-century growth in immigration and social changes post-Civil War, mill owners began to recruit immigrants, who often arrived with skills and were willing to work for lower wages. By mid-century, the Waltham-Lowell system proved unprofitable and collapsed.
Lowell was a planned mill town. Under the Lowell System, the company recruited young women (15-35) from New England farms to work in the mills. The companies built boardinghouses managed by older women, often widows to provide meals and safe places to live.
In 1837, at the age of 31, Bagley first appeared in Lowell, Massachusetts, working at the Hamilton Mills.She worked initially as a weaver and then as a dresser, and by 1840 she had saved enough money to make a deposit on the house which her parents and siblings were living in. [5] Bagley was dissatisfied with working conditions however and published one of her first pieces of writing ...
Working together on contributing to the “Lowell Offering” was one of the ways that women could continue their education while working in the mills. [7] The Lowell Offering wanted to show that working women could be intellectuals. [8] This image went against what European social reforms and union supporters thought of the mills.
Lawrence had the 5th highest child mortality rate of any city in the country at the time, behind four other mill towns in Massachusetts (Lowell, Fall River, Worcester, and Holyoke). By 1912, the Lawrence mills at maximum capacity employed about 32,000 men, women, and children. [14] Conditions had worsened even more in the decade before the strike.