What did women do in Lowell Mills?

What did women do in Lowell Mills?

During the early period, women came to the mills for various reasons: to help a brother pay for college, for the educational opportunities offered in Lowell, or to earn supplemental income for the family.

What were the women in the Lowell Mass mills protesting against?

The mill girls protested the 1834 wage cut by organizing a labor union and going on strike. Their actions shocked and angered their supervisors and mill owners. The strike was crushed. Two years later, when their room rents were increased, the girls went on strike again.

What was life like for women in the Lowell Mills?

Difficult Factory Conditions These women worked in very sub-par conditions, upwards of 70 hours a week in grueling environments. The air was very hot in these rooms that were full of machines that generated heat, the air quality was poor, and the windows were often closed.

What did Lowell girls complain about to the textile mill bosses?

Low Wages. The biggest reason that the mill owners employed a female labor force was that they could pay them a lower wage than they would have to pay a male worker. In addition, the mill girls were treated as subordinates, so their complaints, suggestions, and comments could be ignored.

Why did the mill girls strike?

Mill owners reduced wages and speeded up the pace of work. The young female operatives organized to protest these wage cuts in 1834 and 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike, en masse.

What groundbreaking action did the women working the mills of Lowell Massachusetts undertake in October 1836?

One of the first major strikes among mill girls took place in Lowell, in October, 1836. The mill owners announced a wage cut and a withdrawal of a subsidy for their room and board. They decided to strike. Without their primary workers in place, the mills were forced to shut down.

What was life like for mill workers in the Lowell system?

What was life like for mill workers in the Lowell System? Workers, mostly young women, worked hard for 12 to 14 hours per day,lived in boardinghouses, and were encouraged to use their free time to take classes and form clubs.

Why was the Lowell Mills important?

The Lowell mills were the first hint of the industrial revolution to come in the United States, and with their success came two different views of the factories. For many of the mill girls, employment brought a sense of freedom.

What were the reasons why the Lowell workers went on strike?

The Lowell Mill Girls went into strike because the Lowell mill started to reduce wages because the mills of the city of Boston started to overproduce and the prices and profits dropped. The workers were mostly young girls led by Harriet Hanson Robinson and they organized protests against the wage cuts.

What was mill life like?

What was life like for mill workers in the Lowell system? Life was hard, they worked in these terrible conditions there were young girls working in the mills. At times it was hard you had to pull your hair back so it would not get caught in the machine and also sometimes they could loose their hands or fingers.

What was the impact of the Lowell Mills?

At Lowell’s mill raw cotton came in at one end and finished cloth left at the other.” This Lowell System was faster and more efficient and completely revolutionized the textile industry. It eventually became the model for other manufacturing industries in the country.

What did the Lowell mill girls do for a living?

The Lowell Mill Girls were female workers in early 19th century America, young women employed in an innovative system of labor in textile mills centered in Lowell, Massachusetts. The employment of women in a factory was novel to the point of being revolutionary.

Why was the Lowell mill system so revolutionary?

Employing women in a factory was novel to the point of being revolutionary. The system of labor in the Lowell mills became widely admired because the young women were housed in an environment that was not only safe but reputed to be culturally advantageous.

When did the first mills open in Lowell?

In 1821, the investors purchased farmland around the falls, and the first mills opened in 1823. During the next 25 years, they built additional mills and an intricate system of canals that supplied water power to the mills. By 1843, Lowell was the largest industrial center in the United States.

Why did Thomas Lowell build the cotton factory?

Utilizing the latest technology, he built a factory in Massachusetts which used water power to run machines that processed raw cotton into finished fabric. The factory needed workers, and Lowell wanted to avoid using child labor, which was commonly used in fabric mills in England.