Lowell Mills Girls According to the article “Power Looms. One Girl Works Four.” , women held nearly two-thirds of all textile jobs in Lowell, Massachusetts. Francis Cabot Lowell hired women, mostly from farm families, to work in the city for his textile factories.
The dangers of working in factories gave a great perspective of what it was like to do a man’s job, but women weren’t afraid. They desired equality and
Women worked in textile factories since it gave them a higher-paying job opportunity. In Document C, Sally Rice writes that “It (working in the factory) will be better than doing housework.” Housework didn’t pay as much as an average family needed, so the women had to change jobs for a better opportunity. Document A, explains that the textile mills had a fee on “Room and board (meals) in company boarding houses” which “cost about $1.25 per week”, the average daily wage for women was 60 cents leaving the women with $2.71 each week. Housework didn’t pay as much, and the women thought it was best for them to have more money; ergo, they switched to
The jobs that the women were doing that were originally men’s jobs, they were getting paid around half of what the men got paid. As one woman said: “It was hard work and boring too. We worked for long hours and it was dirty and very, very noisy.
Factory Girl said, “one of the most lucrative female employments should be rejected because it is toilsome, or because some people are prejudiced against it. Yankee girls have too much independence for that” (Doc B) because Orestes Brownson said that factory work is immoral for women. Another worker, Lucy Ann, said “if I go to Oberlin I take comfort & forget all those long wearisome mill days & perhaps I prepare myself for usefulness in this life. ” (Doc F) because her parents and neighbors keep taking her hard earned money instead of it being hers.
In the middle of the 20th century, women were at a cultural crossroads in American society. Work or not to work? Ration or consumption - a ration? These very concerns were a hot debate across the nation at the time, as women of this period were expected of nothing more than keeping the house and raising children, but the goliath that was World War II opened up opportunities in manufacturing and other non-traditional jobs for women because of the fact that there was no men to fill these vacancies. Many women upon hearing Congresswoman’s Clare Boothe Luce’s speech in September of 1942 directed to the women’s banking committee were motivated to fill these spots that men normally would’ve worked at.
The Lowell Mills had a big impact on the U.S. because women could work for the first time ever. The Lowell Mills hired young single women between the ages of 15 to 35 to work in the mills. The girls would work about 20 hours a week in the mills. One day the Lowell Mill Girls went on strike because they found out that the wages would be cut down the mills were shut down and the girls were no longer working in the Lowell Mills. Single women were chosen because they could be paid less than men.
Though in the beginning, manifest destiny began to grip capable, hardworking men and dragged them out west in search of cheap land and new opportunities. With this in mind factories like those in Lowell, Massachusetts began hiring women due to the lack of men, but also found that their feminine hands had the dexterity to perform the skills needed for machine work. There were many different reasons for the mill girl’s original attraction to the factory communities. Some were there to help pay for family needs, grab onto educational prospects, or to simply earn an income and gain some economic independence for the first time. Being mostly New England farm girls the attraction of a place that provided them with tolerable work, meals and boarding provided for, moral disciplines to reassure the family, and then academic and cultural opportunities.
In order to deal with the issue of finding labor, the Lowell system employed young women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. These women became known
It was these types of jobs that women specialized in that further promoted this idea of a working woman. Ninety percent or more of the nurses, midwives, telephone operators, secretaries, domestic service workers, and boarding housekeepers in 1940’s were women. These new professions and ideas about how women should be viewed helped to advance women’s rights movements, leading to significant gains in the decades following the passing amendment’s This reflects how the Nineteenth Amendment empowered women to challenge gender-based discrimination in all aspects of their
On the other hand, some claim that the mills oppressed these women workers by cutting their wages and increasing their work. Reporters of the newspaper The Harbringer visited the Lowell mills in 1836 to observe the practices there (Voices 136). They commented on the cumbersome work load of the operatives: “The girls attended upon an average three looms; many attended four, but this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care….Attention to two is as much as should be demanded of an operative” (Voices 136). The mill owners reduced the girls’ wages and increased their loom and speed quota to maintain profits during a decrease in cloth prices (“Bagley” 94).
The war had provided a variety of employment opportunities for women and the most common job for women was at home, working in factories and filling in positions for their husbands, fathers, and brothers in their absence. Although the highest demand for workers were in previously male-dominated
The wartime economy brought women into the workforce, both north and south, for the first time in meaningful numbers” (Davis). Just before the Civil War, women were fighting to reform their rights and freedoms. The war really pushed the controversial topic of women’s rights to the forefront. Many women were left to pick up the slack after men left for the war. This was a chance for women to really prove themselves.
In the article it says that women entered jobs like engineering, other professions, and manufacturing jobs that many people believed that those jobs were too dangerous for women and women were too weak. In their jobs, women made airplanes, warships, munitions, and tanks working in technical and scientific fields. Also, after the war, women were still employed as secretaries, waitresses, or in other clerical jobs. This was often called the “pink collar” force. This article shows how sometimes women are given clerical jobs that show people underestimate the abilities of women.
Women had no rights when it came to working and since they didn’t have rights not many women got employed. Also, the jobs that were available were not for women and if mill owners decided to hire women they would go and hire immigrant women instead. The reason they would hire these immigrant women was because they accepted any amount of money so the owners of the mill would make more profit than they would if they paid American women to work for them. However, if a women did get a job they would normally get paid less than men did since they weren’t seen as equal to them and the conditions were usually not the best. Since there were no laws against discrimination in the 1800’s there was nothing an American women could do to demand the equality they deserved in the workforce.
