The Lowell Experiment

The Industrial Revolution caused great changes in the way people worked and produced goods. Factories started hiring teen girls to move to the mills to run the machines. In Great Britain poverty was high and living space was low so they had plenty of cheap laborers all the time. However, in America people could always just move further west to get more land and there was less of a pestering thirst for work. In order to draw in laborers Lowell decided to appeal to people. They would make the town seem nice and highlight the benefits in order to convince girls to move out and work there.

"Starting for Lowell" a girl says goodbye to her family and leaves for work at the mills

The girls were attracted to the idea of the nice city environment. In the video Daughters of Free Men Lucy Hall is invited to move out to Lowell to work there. She really wants to go because she wants to earn her own money to buy things for herself. The girls are also enticed by the idea of freedom from their families, as all teen girls are. It is great for them because they are able to live on their own and work yet the mill makes sure they still are presentable and virtuous so they can get married later on. 

While the young workers did get education, free hours, room/board, paid, and a family environment, there were also many drawbacks that they had not been warned about. Lucy tells about her first day working and how if she didn't tie up her hair it could be caught in the machines and she could die, it happened to some other girls. The conditions of the work are also unpleasant. There's cotton dust in the air that makes it hard to breathe, she has long hours, repetitive motion that leads to chronic injury, and must sneak out in order to get any water or fresh air. She learns how to sneak away for breaks in order to not get in trouble with the supervisor who was the man that she was first told would be like a father figure. 

These girls are also powerless to wage cuts. In the video Lucy and her friends suffer pay cuts and try to stop it. At the time there was nothing like workers unions or strike laws, these were also women, who no one bothered to listen to anyways. The group of females in the streets were mostly regarded as unladylike freaks who would probably never get married. Yet they tried, the workers gathered whoever was brave enough to stand up for themselves and organised a march. The girls all refused to work until their normal pay was restored. But there weren't enough of them to make a huge impact on the factory work, the protesters were fired and replaced.