The Lowell factory women challenged gender stereotypes. They started working during the Industrial Revolution at textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, and they formed their own union, which was the first women’s union in American history. The union was formed because the working conditions in the mills were insufferable, and when wages were cut, the brave women stood up for themselves. They went on strike. The mill’s women eventually failed, and the strike ended. After another strike, they organized the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, started similar organizations in other mill towns, and got a law passed that restricted the workday to 10 hours. The Lowell Mill Girls influenced gender relationships – as women, they compelled other workers to take their labor activism seriously.
The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was formed in 1845, before women could even vote. Something interesting is that the union had a newspaper called The Voice of Industry. It was different from other literary magazines published by females. When the Lowell Mill Girls formed the association, they went against the ideals of femininity. Females were supposed to be feminine and submissive. They could not be assertive or rude. The girls’ actions were considered “amizonian,” which referred to the Amazons, a group of warrior women. Managers and owners were horrified while the girls were exuberant. According to aflcio.org, “”An amizonian [sic] display,” one fumed. “A spirit of evil omen has prevailed.”” The union influenced gender relations because it went against the expected behaviors of females. After the Lowell Mill Girls stood up for themselves, other women followed suit. Such actions were especially bold, given the fact that women had not yet even won the right to vote by then. It took guts to form a union of working women before they could vote. These women had mounted an unprecedented challenge to authority.
On Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, which was a major springboard from which women could gain power. The Lowell Mill Girls influenced gender relations, leading up to the women’s suffrage movement. It took some time before all female citizens could vote. In July 19 and 20, 1848, the first women’s convention was held. It was a two-day meeting held to discuss women’s rights; however, it did not address the racism and oppression faced by Black women[1]. It took place at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls. The meeting was advertised by a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. The meeting was planned by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “a young housewife and mother,” and four other people, after a discussion over tea. At the Seneca Falls Convention, sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed a Declaration of Sentiments, a document on women’s rights and the issues they faced. It was inspired by the Declaration of Independence. A quote from the Declaration of Sentiments is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” whereas, The Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The specifics of Stanton’s documents give us some idea of the many social barriers the Lowell Mill girls had to face. For instance, married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law and women could not vote and had to follow laws in which their voices were not heard in the making of the law. Married women had no property rights. Husbands had legal power over women and could beat them or imprison them with impunity. Divorce and child custody laws were in favor of men. Women had to pay property taxes. Women could not work in certain professions, and when they did work, their pay was less than what men were paid. They could not practice medicine or law.
While the Lowell Mill girls pursued their own education, at the time, women could not get the same education as men. Women were not allowed to participate in some church positions, and women’s self-confidence and self-respect were taken away from them, which made them totally dependent on men. Stanton writes, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”
The Lowell Mill girls had many setbacks in their struggle which is also reflected in the backlash against Stanton. Newspapers were scandalized. The backlash against the women’s movement began the same day it started. Some people were embarrassed to the point of withdrawing their signatures from the Declaration of Sentiments. Most “stood firm.” The publicity was actually helpful because now everybody was talking about women’s rights. The women’s rights conventions drew a large number of people and “were held regularly from 1850 until the start of the Civil War” according to nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org.
The National Women’s Rights Convention was first held in 1850 and held annually until 1860. In 1866, suffragists sent a petition of 10,000 signatures to Congress. In 1869, the suffragists split into the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. According to teenvogue.com, “The former focused on achieving voting rights through a constitutional amendment while the latter approached voting rights state-by-state.” In 1872, 15 women attempted to vote and are arrested in New York. Among them is Susan B. Anthony who was put on trial and convicted. She was fined $100 which she refused to pay.
In 1896, The National Association of Colored Women is formed. In New York, on 1909, the Women Suffrage Party is founded. It is a political party. In 1910, suffrage parades began. The first one took place in NYC. In 1913, Ida B. Wells formed The Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago to advocate for Black women’s voting rights. They helped elect Chicago’s first black alderman. In 1919, the 19th Amendment was signed, and white women were able to vote. Then in 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act was passed, which gave Native American women the right to vote. Later on, in 1943, the Magnuson Act was passed, which gave Chinese women the right to vote. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act, allowed Black and Latino women to vote. After a long fight, women secured the rights they have today. The Lowell Mills Girls came before them and definitely started the path to people getting rights. The women’s movement caused scandal in society, but women began achieving their rights and higher quality lives.
When the group of females stood up for themselves, they inspired people with their actions. The legacy of the Lowell Mill Girls is still felt today. The Lowell Mill Girls were among the first to stand up for workers’ rights. They helped a revolution with their actions. People were shocked at first, but what the girls did was good for the country. We all should be treated well and have rights. They started a path for other people to follow.
The Lowell Mill Girls helped with the labor movement by continuing a tradition of strikes or “turn-outs” which had are documented a century before. The labor movement wanted “better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions.”[2] It also wanted to afford workers health benefits, pensions, workers’ compensation, as well as putting an end to child labor. The first known strike was in in 1768, when New York journeymen tailors went on strike because their wages had been reduced. The first known union was a group of shoemakers who formed the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers in 1794 in Philadelphia. More unions formed and merged later on. The first Lowell Mills opened in 1823. The first Lowell Mill strike was in February, 1834. In January, 1845, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was formed. The Lowell Mill Girls helped advance the labor movement, particularly with respect to women. Although, women activists faced opposition to their work, they began to gain equality, and they were a force in gender relations.
Advocates of equal rights started their efforts for reform in the 19th Century and marched onwards in later years. Notable attempts at reform were reflected by the National Labor Union, started in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its peak in the mid-1880s. The Labor movement practiced discrimination. Blacks only made up around 3 percent of the trade union movement. Women and eastern European immigrants were also discriminated against. They were excluded or segregated. The Lowell Mill Girls were white women who faced gender discrimination but not racial discrimination. However, they supported the anti-slavery movement. The Lowell Mill Girls were unrelenting in opposing oppression against women. They joined the labor movement and organized one of the first strikes in American history. Twelve million workers belonged to unions by the end of WWI. Today, the labor movement accommodates workers far more equitably. According to history.com, “In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.”
The Lowell Mill Girls influenced gender relations because they gained employment at a time when women were expected to stay at home. At the time, women had no property rights. According to Harriet Robinson, a Lowell Mill Girl featured on courses.lumenlearning.com, “A woman was not supposed to be capable of spending her own, or of using other people’s money. In Massachusetts, before 1840, a woman could not, legally, be treasurer of her own sewing society, unless some man were responsible for her. The law took no cognizance of woman as a money spender. She was a ward, an appendage, a relict. Thus, it happened that if a woman did not choose to marry, or, when left a widow, to reÂmarry, she had no choice but to enter one of the few employments open to her, or to become a burden on the charity of some relative.”
The Lowell Mill Girls made working more common for women. The fact that they could handle working raised serious questions about the place of women in society. Lowell’s mills paid more than other mills. According to nps.gov, “Most textile workers toiled for 12 to 14 hours a day and half a day on Saturdays; the mills were closed on Sundays. Typically, mill girls were employed for nine to ten months of the year, and many left the factories during part of the summer to visit back home.” Work at the mills was hard work. For most, the decision to leave home and come work for the mills was necessary. Some girls worked there to fund a male relative’s education so that he could potentially get a higher paying job. One notable mill girl is Sarah Bagley, who promoted the 10-hour workday and edited the labor newspaper The Voice of Industry.
There was also another publication, The Lowell Offering, which was a monthly publication that featured works by women. Women contributed poems, ballads, essays, and fiction. The Lowell Mills allowed women some freedom. They worked and made money without depending on males. Women were considered below men at that time.
The Lowell Mills strove to hire cheap labor. Therefore, the organization chose to hire young women because at that time, women would accept lower-paying jobs. Women made half of what men did even though they did the same jobs. According to Ducksters.com, “It may sound strange now, but back then people thought that men should make more money because they provided for the family, while the money women made was considered “extra” money.” The mills were unsafe and dangerous, which evidenced the ways in which gender affected the technology. Because the workers were women, management had even less of a reason to keep safe conditions in the factories.
While men, women, children, Whites and Blacks could be mill workers at other organizations, the Lowell Mills would only hire white women. The jobs that white men did paid the most. The next highest wage earners were white women, then black men, and then children, in that order. There were multiple occupations that one could have in a mill. Employees worked from 5 AM to 7 PM. The women were mostly between the ages of 15 and 35. The average age was 24. In France and England, the position of the Mill Girls was degraded. Lowell became known as the “City of Spindles” and was the center of the Industrial Revolution. The Mill Girls lived in boardinghouses. Their curfew was 10 PM. There were 26 women in a boardinghouse with 6 sharing a bedroom. They were required to attend church and show morals befitting proper society. The boardinghouses embodied a sense of community among the inhabitants but also resentment as well. The allure of Lowell to young girls was its opportunity for study and learning. There was a working-class intellectual culture[3]. Many women read, wrote, created music, and did math.
Today, the genders are more equal. Clearly, the Lowell Mills had influenced gender relations. The gender of the Lowell Mills’ workers mattered. Female workers or Lowell Mill Girls influenced gender relations. The Lowell Mills made history because of the actions of the women working there and what they did.
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[1] https://www.teenvogue.com/story/when-women-got-right-to-vote-united-states
[2] https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor#:~:text=The%20formation%20of%20the%20Federal,union%20organization%20among%20American%20workers.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_mill_girls#:~:text=The%20Lowell%20mill%20girls%20were,ages%20of%2015%20and%2035.
