Mill Girl Research Paper

Boarding houses were dormitories owned and located close to mills. At first mill girls enjoyed the peaceful life of the boarding houses but soon it seem like the company was not only fixated on controlling and regulating every aspect of there working life but their leisure life also. Boarding house keepers and overseers were to be held responsible to a superintendent who of necessary must be a person of character and

Beginning her speech, Kelley applies her credibility by placing statistics regarding the controversy of child labor laws, revealing that she is informed about this topic. Her credibility has a great connection to her purpose, she claims that the number of working girls doubled from census to census and girls from twelve to twenty years are working when they should not have to. Kelley then manifests her concern over these working girls by explaining that, “tonight,” while everybody else is snoozing away in bed, “these several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills,”(16-17). These words make her audience feel pity concerning those young girls and are a great reason to act against the unfair laws and regulations that violate both their human and women's rights, especially when they aren’t even getting paid fairly. By appealing to their emotion Florence Kelley wishes to push the women to act on her proposal of joining together and helping the poor young girls of their nation. Kelley continues to approach and influence the women’s sentiments and- hopefully- their actions by including her scandalized argument that in “Georgia there is no restriction whatever! A girl of six or seven years, just tall enough to reach the bobbins, may work eleven hours by day or by night,” (29-31). She decides to include the ‘bobbins’ of sewing machines in factories to illustrate how short and how young they are to be working in dangerous factories where their rights are ignored, girls at that age should worry more about going to school instead of sacrificing themselves to bring money for bread to their homes. One would understand that many families are living through poverty due to the economy being at a very depressing state and they need the most they can do to increase their financial position to survive in their society, then again, girls should be

Woman along with the children were affected while working during the industrial revolution. During 1834 and 1836 Harriet Martineau, a British feminist and abolitionist, visited America and enthusiastically embraced the social implications of the Industrial Revolution, (DTA, 223). Martineau compared the lifestyle of women to slaves and said the United States contradicted the principles of the Declaration of Independence. She did believe though with some progress that it could become New England’s new industrial order. One of the Mill factories Martineau visited, Waltham Mill, was a prime example of the scheduled lifestyle of women mill workers. Women Mill workers of all ages worked at Waltham Mill, which I compared to a boarding school because of their strict schedules. The ladies had a time to wake up, to be at work, to eat, and to go to school. A lot of women did not mind the harsh conditions they lived and worked in because they fought for their equality of rights for a long time now.

Most of the women who worked in factories were there because they lacked other opportunities. Many dropped out of school because they married young or had to help their family bring in money. Bowman talks about a young woman named Mary, who explained that she had to quit school to help her mother out after her father passed away (Bowman Reid, 112). Women in the lower class did not have a choice whether they worked or not. Their husbands did not make enough to support their families and some women were left widows with children to

Also during this time, the Panic of 1837 occurred leaving many unemployed, therefore the number of women employed during the 19th century would have been even higher. Women at this time period worked mainly in textile and clothing factories. Although many young girls worked in factories, as shown in the letter written by a factory worker, life in a factory is much different than life at home. At first the girl questioned why factories were ever made, however, with time the working life grew on her. Also, often times women were worked much harder than the men. In the letters written by a frontier woman in Iowa in 1861, the male worker worked much less than she did. She stated that “the hired man left just as the corn planting commenced” and she was left to do the hard work. This illustrates the inequality between the two genders very well.

earns 9 sen which is about 4 US cents, they would need to work many days in order to just buy a pound of sugar, radishes or shoes. also, men who worked in any of those textile mills earned way more than a female worker when they both do the same things. when female workers earn as little as 9 sen, men would earns 27 sen as an average daily wage.in another situatuin, young girls would given off to silk mills by their parents.(Doc E) while the family earns earnest money, their daughters would work without lapse till they finished. if they were to break any of those rules they would need to return the earnest money and pay twenty more times the earnest money without

With the center of production moving from households to mass-production, women in America had to alter their way of life. A great number of women followed labor opportunities to the mills, factories, and workshops. For the first time in history, large numbers of women left their homes to participate in the public world. “Mill Girls” were typically young, unmarried women who lived together in boarding houses provided by the factory for which they worked. Lucy Larcom recalls,

1. The complaints of women working in the mills were harsh working environments and extremely long hours.

Patty mills was born on the 11 of august 1981, in Canberra Australia. He is a professional aboriginal Australian basketballer. Before he started playing for the nba he played in the NBL for the Melbourne tigers then went to china and played for the xinjiang flying tigers, he played also college basketball for saint Marys collage in California. Patty mills then signed with the san Antonio spurs in 2012. 2 years later he was in the winning nba championship team. This year patty was named ACT young Australian of the year

According to the document, the Lowell girls lacked “the means of health and comfort” and “bathing-rooms fitted in the basement of each mill” (Document E). Those were just two of the many complaints about what should and need to have been fixed about the Mills. There were also complaints of the lack of proper house ventilation and the fact that the girls barely got any time for their breakfast and lunch breaks and their passing times. None of the workers at the Lowell Mills had adequate working conditions and were not treated very fair for the work they were doing for the

Also, there were no safety rules which caused multiple accidents resulting in injuries. One of the mill worker Amelia wrote – “most of the women work on average 13 hours a day. It was worse than the poor peasant of Ireland or the Russian serf who labors from sun to sun” (“Lowell Mills...”, n. d.). Despite this hard labor, most of them were receiving less pay as compared to men. Hence, when in 1834, when the owners decided to cut their wages further, the mill girls had enough. Most of them organized and went on strike. Even though the strike was unsuccessful, they were successful in establishing a first women union in the US. The union requested safer workplace and a shorter workday. With their persistent efforts, the government of Massachusetts passed a law in 1874 which limited the workday to 10 hours for women and

A regular shift for any factory worker was 12-16 hours a day, six days a week. The poem “My Boy” written by a working mother during the Industrial Revolution says that her “labor drives [her] forth…” (Document 2) until “…night when [she is] free.” (Document 2) She is “a stranger… to [her] child and [her child] one to [her].” (Document 2). This was not unheard of during this time. Parents and their children being driven away from each other to provide for the family. However, the mother working at the factory provided better financial opportunities for her family and in turn a higher standard of living. Elizabeth Bentley, a woman who testified on the child labor in Britain, when asked “what time [she] began work at the factory” (Documents 7) responded “when I was six years old” (Document 7). She worked in the mill “for about a year” (Document 7). Long hours and separation of family weren’t the only problem when it came to the Industrial Revolution. The use of child labor was also a significant

Firstly, the Industrial Revolution affected women in the working and poor classes by allowing them to work in factories and mills. Before this time, women in the working class were primarily working unpaid jobs such as cooking and cleaning around the house for the family, but the industrial revolution gave women the chance to be paid and work outside of their homes (Frader, “Effects of the Industrial Revolution”, BCP). Most women obtained jobs in the textile industry. According to Dr. Christopher Wells, a professor of U.S cultural history at Macalester University, explained that ,“The town of Lowell, MA, for example, was incorporated in 1826 and soon hosted over 30 different mills.” (Wells, “Industrializing Women”, Teaching History). In the Lowell Mills, women expected to work at least thirteen hour days of constant and tiring labor in which women accounted for three-fourths of the workers in the mill. (Wells, “Industrializing Women”, Teaching History). Women factory workers typically made around $3.00 to $3.50 per week which was much greater than most women could earn in their hometowns (Dublin, “Women and

YOUNG UNMARRIED WOMEN: Public acceptance of wage-earning jobs for young unmarried women was growing. No longer being limited to work as "mill girls" or domestics, these women began to perform clerical work in offices and

In 1870, nearly two million women and girls worked outside the home. Domestic work was an important source of income. Some girls even dropped out of school to help make money. One in fifteen American homes employed live-in servants that were mostly immigrants or African American. Working from dawn to dusk, these women cooked, cleaned, washed, ironed, and cared for children. A lot of them supported their own families who lived elsewhere. Most of the women that were working were single because then they did not think that married life and careers for women mixed. Many of the single women workers were between the ages of 16 and 24. Employers thought that they would leave when they got married so they rarely gave them supervisory jobs or advanced training. They also paid women an average of $3 to $5 a week, 30 to 60 percent less than men. Self-supporting women were discouraged from entering the fields that would put them in competition with men. There were many educated young women that wanted or needed work became nurses or teachers where they wouldn?t be competing with men.