Lyddie, Chapter 16: "Moral Turpitude" or Female Solidarity?

Written from an essay by Dr. Robert Forrant, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and author of Empty Mills, No Jobs, Zombie Cities, for the National Park Service's Lyddie: Voices from the Field series (Lowell National Historical Park).

In chapter 16 of Katherine Paterson's novel Lyddie, Lyddie stands firm when the overseer Marsden grabs her arm, backs Bridget when he accosts her — and is fired for "moral turpitude." How did real women in Lowell's mills live, and how did they push back?

The mill city

In the 1840s, Lowell's red-brick mills ran for a mile along the Merrimack River. Of the city's 8,000 workers, nearly three-quarters were young women. Some lived in company boarding houses, like Lyddie and Diana; others in the Irish Acre neighborhood, like Bridget. Some were as young as 12. Most came to earn money for their families.

The promise and the reality

To persuade parents, the companies painted boarding-house and mill life as safe, even idyllic. The reality:

• Pay: $3 to $4 for a 72-hour week in deafening rooms, with part of it handed back for rent and board.
• Control: the boarding houses let the companies control their workers, but did little to restrain overseers or make the work safer.
• Danger: in a December 21, 1845 letter home to Vermont, 15-year-old Mary Paul wrote that in one day the week before, "one girl fell down and broke her neck," a man was killed by a rail car, another had nearly all his ribs broken, and another was nearly killed by a falling bale of cotton.

Finding a voice

Protest began at the boarding-house dinner table.

• In print: women wrote stories, poems and letters for the company-controlled Lowell Offering — about noise, heat, accidents, rent increases, wage cuts and the speed-up of machines. One writer said workers were treated like "so many living machines."
• Organizing: the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, one of the first organizations of women workers in the U.S., petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for a ten-hour workday. The legislature refused.
• Their own paper: the Voice of Industry, edited in Lowell by former mill worker Sarah Bagley, wrote on December 11, 1846, that long hours in confined rooms were "very injurious to health" and that "the whole system is one of slow and legal assassination." (article)

No law on their side

Women often put up with danger and abuse from bosses because they needed the wages. There were no laws against dangerous work or mistreatment of working women, and owners sided with male supervisors no matter how strong the women's evidence.

The Voice of Industry printed one mill worker's answer to the overseers:

"You boast of the protection you afford to women. Protection from what? From the rude and disorderly of your own sex? Reform men, and women will no longer need the protection you make such a parade of giving."

Women organized against danger and harassment, but federal laws on workplace safety and against harassment did not arrive until the 1970s.

Lyddie's line

By saying enough, by resisting Marsden and by standing with Bridget, Lyddie crossed the line of what was acceptable for a woman of her time — and lost her job. Was that "moral turpitude," or female solidarity?

Sources

Written from "Lyddie: Voices from the Field – Chapter 16, Moral Turpitude," by Robert Forrant, published by the National Park Service (Lowell National Historical Park) and in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Lyddie is a novel by Katherine Paterson. The author's portrait is not reproduced.