Most women worked in textile mills because they wanted to provide money for their families and themselves. Sons were usually the main priority in the family, so women worked to provide education for them. In the 1800s, technology changed the United States workforce. This was caused by a man named Francis Cabot Lowell, who was an American businessman. Lowell went on a trip to Great Britain where inventors and businessmen built the first factories and mills. His main goal was to memorize those ideas and attempt to bring the textile industry to Massachusetts. His trip was a total of two years and during that time, he viewed many different factories and saw lots of different designs and manufactures. Some British developers thought that he was a spy and …show more content…
Overall, women worked in factories to provide money for their families. They would send their earnings back to their parents so that they could buy necessities in order to survive. The amount of money they earn in the mills is beneficial to the parents income, so it gives them more money to live. Education for boys was the priority for women who worked. A mill worker by the name of Harriet Robinson explained that “To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education was a dominant thought of the better class of mill girls” (Document E). Harriet shows us the importance of working in factories and textile mills during her time. Women focused their earnings and money to ensure their sons schooling and education in hopes of them making more money for the family. Lucy Ann feels like the reason she works is to bring money to her father to spend the money on necessities. She displays this knowledge by saying, “like a dutiful girl, place the money in her father’s hands” (Document F). Lucy explains where her money goes once she earns it in the
What would one expect to be the sentiment of a young women who worked in the Lowell textile mills? It is just such a depressing story; and the sad heroines are the young women of Lowell - Lucy Larcom- who Stephen Yafa portrays in his excerpt “Camelot on the Merrimack.” A perception through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Lucy Larcom reveals that, “For her and the other young girls, the long and tedious hours they spent tending to demanding machines robbed them of their childhood.” The imagery in “Camelot on the Merrimack,” from Big Cotton by Stephen H. Yafa disclose the working conditions in those sordid mills.
Baillargeon also mentions the work that women did in order to earn money to help care for their families. The women she interviewed did many of the same things mentioned by Hollingsworth and Tyyska at home, only a few were employed outside the home. In several cases the husbands of the women did additional work on top of their regular jobs.
Many of us complain about the tough hours we work or the amount of chores we have to complete, but think about the truly harsh conditions that young girls and women had to work in the textile industry with very little pay and no accolades. Back in the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution struck, it made it hard for female mill workers to enjoy being employed. Due to the terrible working conditions, the amount of hours worked, and the low wages were a few of the similarities that the female mill workers in England and Japan shared.
In the course of history, both Japan and England has made significance success in world military and economy. The two island nations (Document A) experienced an industrial revolution and became the economic giant respectively in the 19th century and the 20th century (DBQ 218). As a saying goes that Science and technology constitute the primary productive force. The industrial revolution also brought great changes to textile industry
Samuel Slater and Francis Lowell were just two of these visionary business men who helped transform textile production through water-powered machines. Although Francis Lowell had a good idea to provide wholesome living environments for women, they were not ideal. They worked six days, twelve to thirteen hours a day, at seventy or more hours a week, for half the price of what men were paid during that time. Working conditions were dangerous and held great health risks to the women, leaving some with deafness and some with lung problems. Even though they lived in boarding homes the conditions did not seem to be ideal, but according to the documentary it was better than living on the farm in even
Women of the nineteenth century had very set expectations. There were only two types of women: upper class bourgeoisie and lower class farmer’s wives or daughters. Women were considered physically weaker to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere while the men workers and made the money. The mill girls defied all of this, and created their own class of women: wage earning middle class women. These women were not like farmers’ wives that were typically uneducated, nor like the bourgeoisie women that were educated, by mostly in domestic and “womanly” skills. The mill girls went to college if they so desired, most of the time doing that in the stead of getting married and becoming a housewife. The mill girls were a
Industrialization had a major impact on the lives of every American, including women. Before the era of industrialization, around the 1790's, a typical home scene depicted women carding and spinning while the man in the family weaves (Doc F). One statistic shows that men dominated women in the factory work, while women took over teaching and domestic services (Doc G). This information all relates to the changes in women because they were being discriminated against and given children's work while the men worked in factories all day. Women wanted to be given an equal chance, just as the men had been given.
Kelley then uses the example of a 13-year-old girl from Pennsylvania. She calls the workers “breadwinners” (12) and then says that the largest number of these breadwinners were young females. This shows that the young women are working intensively and are the income of their families. Also, in the previously stated quote (“Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy.
When families immigrated to the United States, men were primarily the ones who were expected to learn and bring in wages to support the family. While women did bring in wages as well, they were expected to care for the home and take care of the children. Because of this, women lacked the chance to go to school and become educated because it was boys who were mainly sent to school. Women were only expected to work and earn money to help support the family. In the novel Bread Givers, a book about an immigrant family in New York, one of the daughters named Sara explains her sister’s role by saying, “Bessie would rush home the quicker to help Mother with the washing or ironing, or bring home another bundle of night work, and stay up till all hours to earn another dollar for the house.” In this novel, Bessie’s duties are to help around the house and work all she can to earn money to support her family. She does not have the privilege to go to school and attempt to prepare for a bet...
In the 1800's the construction of cotton mills brought about a new phenomenon in American labor. The owners needed a new source of labor to tend these water powered machines and looked to women. Since these jobs didn't need strength or special skills th...
The time of the Industrial Revolution was one of immense change for both men and women. The new advancements of British machinery that sparked the Industrial Revolution transformed the economy and way of life in the United States, specifically New England and neighboring states. The recent developments lead to children and women, most of whom were immigrants, to work in factories to produce textiles and ready-made clothing. The factory owners of Lowell exploited the girls’ safety and time, yet the occupation provides opportunities that were not even imaginable before.
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.
A huge part of the economical grow of the United States was the wealth being produced by the factories in New England. Women up until the factories started booming were seen as the child-bearer and were not allowed to have any kind of career. They were valued for factories because of their ability to do intricate work requiring dexterity and nimble fingers. "The Industrial Revolution has on the whole proved beneficial to women. It has resulted in greater leisure for women in the home and has relieved them from the drudgery and monotony that characterized much of the hand labour previously performed in connection with industrial work under the domestic system. For the woman workers outside the home it has resulted in better conditions, a greater variety of openings and an improved status" (Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, pg.4) The women could now make their own money and they didn’t have to live completely off their husbands. This allowed women to start thinking more freely and become a little bit more independent.
The first key player in the American industrial revolution was Francis Cabot Lowell. In 1810, in Waltham, Massachusetts, Lowell was responsible for building the first American factory for converting raw cotton into finished cloth. Large factories were built along the river to house the new water driven power looms for weaving textiles. At the same time that more factories were built to keep up with the growing demands of the consumer, the numbers of immigrants to the United States grew (Kellogg). This new labor force could be employed with even less pay and provided with a much lower standard of housing. This in turn increased the profit margi...
Manal Shafiq Mrs. Maisner Honors US History 9 10 April 2024 Why did women choose to work in the Mills? In the New England scene of industry and modernization, women went to work in the mills because of both monetary reasons and also because of the relative freedom it provided. Many things changed during the Industrial Revolution. In the late 1700s, Francis Cabot Lowell introduced the idea of mass manufacturing textiles and the factory setting to New England society. He had stolen the secrets of such a set-up from British factories.