The Lowell Textile Mills

The Lowell Textile Mills

The Lowell textile mills were a new transition in American history that explored working and labor conditions in the new industrial factories in American. To describe the Lowell Textile mills it requires a look back in history to study, discover and gain knowledge of the industrial labor and factory systems of industrial America. These mass production mills looked pretty promising at their beginning but after years of being in business showed multiple problems and setbacks to the people involved in them.

Lowell mills were located in Lowell, Massachusetts and specialized in manufacturing cotton cloth. The strong currents from the surrounding streams of water powered the mills machinery. More often then not, a mill was a community's largest employer and mill owners frequently had other business investment in the neighborhood such as general stores, real estate, and residential properties (Inventing America p.391).

Finding workers for Lowell was not much of a problem. Workers were attracted for the great cultural opportunities available at Lowell. "Besides the obvious attraction of a place of labor people saw the mills to constitute a great social experiment, with moral gymnasiums where employees would not only earn wages but also experience moral and spiritual growth" (Inventing America p394). Lowell mills tried to base their manufacturing differently then Europe. The operatives in the manufacturing cities of Europe were notoriously of the lowest character for intelligence and morals (Lucy Larcom: Among Lowell Mills Girls). Lowell wanted to give workers opportunities to make great friendships and enjoy a fulfilled church life.

The mills filled with girls from smaller towns who had good country morals and stayed away from the unpleasant urban conditions. These women workers were given the name mills girls. In 1836, Lowell boasted twenty mills with 6,000 workers: 85 percent of Lowell's labor force consisted of single women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine (Inventing America p.394).

In the early years while the profits were high working conditions looked promising to the mill girls in their brief opening experiences of factory work. Jobs required little skill because the machinery was mostly self-acting. It looked very pleasant at first, the rooms were so light, spacious, and clean, the girls so pretty and neatly dressed, and the machinery so brightly polished or nicely painted (Harriet Farley, Letters from Susan, Letter Second).