Why Young Women Went to Work in the Lowell Mills

A "Voices from the Field" essay for chapter 7 of Katherine Paterson's novel Lyddie*, from Lowell National Historical Park's Books to Parks series.*

Why did young women leave home in the 1800s to work in the Lowell factories? Each had her own reasons, but for many the heart of it was simple: they needed a job and wanted to earn money. For a woman who needed paid work at the time, the mills were one of only a few choices.

Few other options

Most young women in the 19th century spent their days running the household or the farm and helping to raise younger brothers and sisters. Many people then believed a woman's place was in the home.

Before factory jobs spread, a woman who needed a wage could become a servant, do domestic work in someone else's home, or teach. The mills opened a new way to find steady work with good pay.

What the money was for

The mill workers wrote about their reasons. Some were:

• helping pay off a debt on the family farm;
• paying for a brother to go to college;
• supporting a family member who was ill;
• saving for their own future — a dowry so they could marry, or the cost of a female seminary, the equivalent of college.

More than a wage

Life in Lowell had its own attractions. The workers lived in company boardinghouses with other workers, and many formed close friendships with the women they boarded with. After work they read, talked over the news of the day, or sang.

For women from small villages, the city offered a social life they had never known. They could spend some of their pay on shopping, concerts and plays. They could attend lectures and use the library, and some even worked together to write and publish a magazine.

The hard part

None of this made the work easy. Most textile workers put in 12 to 14 hours a day, five days a week, plus half a day on Saturday. They worked at big, heavy, dangerous machines, on factory floors that were dangerously loud and hot, where cotton dust coated every surface and fouled the air.

"Interior of a Lowell Cotton Mill — Weave Room", a postcard in the collection of Lowell National Historical Park.

Even so, the chance to earn money and to find friendship and learning led many women to choose Lowell, despite the hardships of the work and of living far from their families.

Sources

• Emily Donovan, Supervisory Park Ranger, Lowell National Historical Park, "Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 07 Why go to Mills", National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mills.htm
• The cover and weave-room picture are a postcard shown in the park's companion article for chapter 10 of Lyddie. The source page's portrait of the author is not reproduced.
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.