The novel Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson, is about Lyddie, the protagonist. After her family’s farm goes into debt, she goes to work in the Cutler’s Tavern where she works, almost like a slave as she doesn’t earn money for herself. Lyddie then gets fired and goes to Lowell, Massachusetts to get a job at the textile factory. She manages to become one of the factory workers at the factory and works with Diana, a fellow worker. Diana started a petition for getting fewer work hours and better working conditions because they have bad working conditions. Currently, in the novel, the working conditions are long hours of tending the looms, bad air quality, disease, and dangerous machines. Diana wanted Lyddie to sign the petition, however, there would be consequences of signing. The benefits of …show more content…
As noted on page 92, “You’d be blacklisted no other corporation would hire you.” This confirms that if Lyddie gets fired is a very little chance that she would get another job. According to dictionary.com, a blacklist is, “A list privately exchanged among employers, containing the names of persons to be barred from employment because of trustworthiness for holding opinions considered undesirable.” If Lyddie is blacklisted it means she can be fired from her current job and other factories will refuse to hire her.
On the other hand, Lyddie should sign the petition because then she would have more free time. Evidence that supports this is, “Time is more precious than money, Lyddie girl. If only I had two more free hours of an evening what I couldn't do.” This shows that the factory girls did not have a lot of free time and if they signed the petition they would have two or three more hours of free time and that Betsy (another factory girl and Lyddie’s roommate) believes that time is valuable. However, Lyddie does not need extra hours of freedom, but more money for her family and to pay off the