Generation Citizen by Scott Warren

Author:Scott Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640091276
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2018-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

At the time the Lowell cotton mills were started, the caste of the factory girl was the lowest among the employments of women . . . She was represented as subjected to influences that must destroy her purity and self-respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched, and pushed about.

Other historical accounts largely confirm Harriet’s analysis, providing a gaudy glimpse into the severe hardships imposed upon the women workers. Most women received contracts for only one year at a time and were paid a fixed daily wage. The Mill Girls usually worked fourteen-hour days, from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., without a real break. Each textile room in the factory held approximately eighty women, with a small number of males overseeing the entire operation.

Because the machinery was so new, it did not operate at peak safety or efficiency. The machines were exceedingly loud; one worker described them as “something frightful and infernal.” The air inside the factories was filled with loose particles and thread. Even during the harsh, hot, and humid weather of the summer, windows remained closed to ensure optimal conditions, at the risk of the safety and well-being of the workers themselves. As one girl, Amelia, noted of the conditions, it was worse than “the poor peasant of Ireland or the Russian serf who labors from sun to sun.”

After work ended for the day, the women all boarded together, in extremely tight quarters. A worker-run newspaper from 1845 entitled The Voice of Industry recounts the living realities:

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