How Did The Embargo Affect Women In The 1800s

The factory workers at Lowell were mostly young women from New England farm families. During that time, employers hired women instead of men due to the shortage of labor and willingness of a woman to work for lower wages. As a result, for the first time in the U.S. history, the existence of women as wage earners became prevalent. By 1840, there were about 8,000 women working in the textile mills in Lowell, which was about 75% of the total workforce in those factories. Most of those women were from farms and came to mills for various reasons such as helping their brother to pay for college, helping with the home mortgages, to earn a supplementary income for themselves or for educational opportunities offered in Lowell. In some houses, the mill girls were the sole source of income. However, the work environment in the mills where these women worked was extremely poor.

Employment in the factories allowed the women to gain a sense of freedom, as they were free from parental authority, had time to attain information for a better education, and able to earn money. This “freedom” was viewed as a threat to the societal norm in the United States. Women were typically restricted in society, making the actions of the Mill Girls extremely meaningful. Other people perceived the factory system as a form of slavery and helped fight against long hours and working conditions faced by the women. Textile mills that were run by the Lowell Girls were key to saving America during economic crisis when there were not any other methods to manufacture products. The women’s impact on the economy was indisputable when they went on strike to demand better working conditions. The textile industry came to a complete stop, pressuring factory owners to grant the Mill Girls’ requests.

Getting chosen to work in the Lowell Mills was a gift many young girls in the New England States initially aspired to achieve. The Lowell Mills was a group of factories built in the 1820’s for the manufacture of textiles (GilderLehrman.org, 2015). Increasing population numbers in the United States required more goods made from cotton that required milling and weaving into useable products. Expanding on roles women performed during the War of 1812 and wanting additional compensation and recognition for their work, young girls left their families and went to work in one of these mills. Enticing the girls with promises of tolerable working conditions, a formal education, and comfortable living quarters, the owners of the factories were able to recruit the girls at a lesser wage than what was paid to men (Tindall & Shi, 2013). Eventually rapid growth and unfavorable working conditions led others to question whether factory work was the proper work environment for young girls.

The Lowell Mills were textile factories in Lowell, Massachusetts. These factories started popping up in the brink of the Industrial Revolution. These factories were very unlike many other factories that we think of because these were factories were people (mostly young women) are working in these factories, but also live on site. These young females were usually the ages 15-30 years old. This made up close to about seventy-five percent of the whole textile factory. These factories were very controversial because women were not usually working in these times. These young women decided to come to these factories to help make ends meet or try and get an education. The working quarters were very packed having usually 80 women in these small crapped rooms. This working condition would have never been able to work in today’s working factories. The living quarters where very small and where not up to standards by any means. These women where packed in like sardines and they had curfews by ten at night. These women also had very strict regulations to follow throughout the work day and many of these women did everything together. There overseers were usually men and they were pushed to work super-fast and super hard. The pay was more than they would get paid in many other places, but wasn’t very good for the hours they had to put in and the strict rules they had to obey. As time went on many of these women would see pay cuts and they would go on strikes, but these

By laboring in work places such as cotton mills, women were depended on to supply additional funds for the family. For example, if a mother ceased to work in a factory, she would run the risk of not having enough money to buy food or pay for any other expenses of living. And because women consisted of such a large part of factories’ output, they affected the Industrial Revolution’s economy greatly. The Factory Act of 1833 depended on women to propel the Industrial Revolution even more than before. The Factory Act restricted children’s work hours extensively; therefore, women were relied on to work more in the factories by taking over the children’s jobs.

Textile mills made New England America’s first industrial region. Mills like those at Waltham and Lowell relied heavily on the labor of young women. Young women formed the primary work force at many New England mills, but elsewhere a piecemeal system of work predominated. Industrialization brought mixed results. Results of this early industrialization were uneven, particularly in terms of equality and inequality. As many workers’ economic position deteriorated, new questions arose about equality in the United

Women largely influenced the textile industry performing jobs such as hand spinning, knitting, and weaving. Prior to the rise of manufacturing, these tasks were deemed a “woman’s job” and a duty of their domestic role. According to “The Heritage of World Civilizations,” women in factories were mostly young and single or widows because factories seen married women as a liability to labor production. Notwithstanding the skill set women brought to manufacturing, owners disliked married women due to pregnancy as well as the interference of child caring - or influence of their husband (Craig, 674). Moreover, women in the Industrial Revolution birthed the Lowell System – a movement that migrated women from rural areas to cities to earn more money and live a more prosperous

The first article was chapter three, “The Lowell Work Force, 1836, and the Social Origins of Women Workers” from the book, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860, written by Thomas Dublin. It paralleled nicely with the article I chose which was, “‘I Think Less of the Factory than of my Native Dell’ Labor, Nature, and the Lowell ‘Mill Girls’” from Environmental History, by Chad Montrie. The article, “The Lowell Work Force” primarily discussed what type of people, predominately women, worked in the Lowell mill. The information was neither new nor surprising for me. I had been to the Lowell Mill museum before and most the information there was in the article. The women were young women, from farming families, not yet married and mostly native-born women, not immigrants. What did surprise me was why they chose to work. I would have guessed that they worked to earn wages to send home to help support their families, yet, that was rarely the case. Moving away did lighten the family burden; however, that is not why these women left. They moved to work in a factory so they could earn wages and use them for nonessential things, things that they wanted, not needed. For many, the appeal of this might have been from the fact that growing up on a farm with limited money, clothes were always homespun and they had few, if any, frivolous things. For example, “Sally Rice left home to ‘earn something of my own,’ which was obviously not

In the 19th century, women would work in the Lowell mills and were called Lowell Girls. For the time period, it was very beneficial for young women to work at these mills. They were able to do things that they couldn’t do at home. There were advantages and disadvantages for the girls to be working in the factory.

The female factory workers had horrible working conditions and low pay just like slaves but they were a lot different from slaves. What was different was that at the end of the day the female factory workers could go home at the end of the day and slaves could not do that. They could also seek other employment if they wanted to. They see each other as hands instead of individuals because that is how they were treated but yet they were still free. The textile mills would convince parents to allow their daughters to work at the factories and this was the first time in history that a large number of women left their homes to work in a factory. They were not treated like people they were treated like slaves in away by not letting them have jobs

In Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1822, a new opportunity arose for young single women. A factory operated there with several cotton mills. Their work environment wasn’t in the best shape as their factory yard was full of mud. The work involved cleaning, burling, inking, marking, and fine-drawing cloth. These women could work long days at the mills in exchange for pay. This work became very popular and many women came to work at the mills from morning until night. However, they didn’t receive an extraordinary amount of money for it.

Few would have survived the introduction of free trade.” (Harley 560). In this situation, the American cotton industry was an infant industry that greatly needed the cushion of tariffs in this era to survive. Harley argued that without these tariffs, the American cotton industry could have fallen apart completely in the absence of such protection. The effects of a crippled cotton industry would have caused a major economic crisis for America given that it was itself a weak and developing entity at the time. The dangers of a wounded American economy were severe, as such an economic crisis could have motivated a foreign power to attempt to recolonize the United States. Due to the 1807 embargo and other tariffs, the integration of the growing cotton industry in America was one of the key forces behind the incredible growth of the American economy in the decades to follow. With brief assistance from the

This is discussed in Chapter 13 in the textbook, which covers the 1800s period where industry and machines in factories rose, and women were able to work , take wages and depend on themselves like in the mill factories. However, this document comes to notice the issue of their poor work conditions following the decline in

The mill girls lived in these boarding houses in Biddeford Maine. They had this mother that was in charge of the boarding house. Most of the time these house wives would accomplish anything with help from the girls. They would save up their money for each other, sometimes for themselves, and the house. These women could make dresses, clothing, food, feed the chickens, and make milk and butter. These girls started working at the mills at the age of 13. These women and sometimes the girls would help pay for their brothers to go to college. Women worked as hard as men but they didn’t make as much money. The women that were in the mills didn’t get treated fairly like the men. About 800 women got recruited from the mills because they thought

Women in the Lowell Factory were so closely supervised because women women who were closely supervised were not able to organize. Also,they were supervised since that idea appealed to many parents who would send their daughters to the mills. Some parents would send their daughters to the mills because they could barely provide for their children. Not many jobs were for women at the time, especially those that paid a so called ‘good’ wage.