Lowell Mills Working Conditions

The lifestyle of the American workforce revolutionized in multiple ways in the years spanning the period of 1820-1850. Factors of workplace dynamics, gender politics, and religious influences intersected to change life dramatically for Northern laborers across industries. However, not all workers experienced identical effects of these shifting dynamics. Specifically, operatives at the Lowell mills in Massachusetts had a relatively distinct life experience when compared with their counterparts who were engaged in Northern industries outside of Lowell. While Lowell operatives were certainly subject to the harsh work conditions, paternalistic gender relations, and expected religious standards of the day, the inherent stability of the Lowell
In particular, young women flocked to Lowell mills, although their wages were consistently lower -- often by as much as half -- than those of their male counterparts. Certainly, laborers at Lowell faced harsh working conditions. Like the Philadelphia laborers mentioned above, intellectual Orestes Brownson wrote a piece in the Boston Quarterly Review that criticized Lowell mills on the grounds that the male employer made a huge profit off of the operation, holding on to all the convenient aspects of slavery while dismissing all of its inconveniences by administering a wage. Strikes consisting of hundreds of women were not uncommon at Lowell, and during these demonstrations labor would come to a halt as operatives marched and spoke out against their condition. Again nodding to the concept of wage slavery, strikers would chant, “Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave.” Nonetheless, strikes were largely fruitless, rarely resulting in any kind of significant change in the conditions workers faced at Lowell. Despite the fervor of Lowell strikers, there were mill laborers who found their conditions to be relatively pleasant. Mill girl Annie Gilbert recounts in a letter that the factory was “pleasantly situated” and that laborers at Lowell had “delightful times.” It was the mill’s company line to attribute the hardships of labor at Lowell to the inherent struggles of Antebellum life, claiming that the experience of the Lowell laborer was no more or less difficult than any other female laborer in the period could have expected. Clearly, a variety of opinions exist as to exactly how pleasant or unpleasant the experience of any particular operative may have been. And surely, much of the variation is due to simple differences in individual opinion, as opposed to the failure or success of the Lowell model overall. Activists, individuals, and