Others criticized the entire wage-labor factory system as a form of slavery and actively condemned and campaigned against the harsh working conditions and long hours and the increasing divisions between workers and factory owners.
Many observers saw this challenge to the traditional roles of women as a threat to the American way of life.
FACTORY TOWN FINDING COTTON FREE
Unlike most young women of that era, they were free from parental authority, were able to earn their own money, and had broader educational opportunities. For many of the mill girls, employment brought a sense of freedom. The Lowell mills were the first hint of the industrial revolution to come in the United States, and with their success came two different views of the factories. These "operatives"-so-called because they operated the looms and other machinery-were primarily women and children from farming backgrounds.
It introduced a new system of integrated manufacturing to the United States and established new patterns of employment and urban development that were soon replicated around New England and elsewhere.īy 1840, the factories in Lowell employed at some estimates more than 8,000 textile workers, commonly known as mill girls or factory girls. Lowell, Massachusetts, named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell, was founded in the early 1820s as a planned town for the manufacture of textiles.
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