Chapter V
Characteristics (Continued)

One of the first strikes of cotton-factory operatives that ever took place in this country was that in Lowell, in October, 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike, en masse. This was done. The mills were shut down, and the girls went in procession from their several corporations to the “grove” on Chapel Hill, and listened to “incendiary ” speeches from early labor reformers.

One of the girls stood on a pump, and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience.

Cutting down the wages was not their only grievance, nor the only cause of this strike. Hitherto the corporations had paid twenty-five cents a week towards the board of each operative, and now it was their purpose to have the girls pay the sum; and this, in addition to the cut in the wages, would make a difference of at least one dollar a week. It was estimated that as many as twelve or fifteen hundred girls turned out, and walked in procession through the streets. They had neither flags nor music, but sang songs, a favorite (but rather inappropriate) one being a parody on “I won’t be a nun.”

"Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I — 
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? 
Oh ! I cannot be a slave, 
I will not be a slave,
For I’m so fond of liberty 
That I cannot be a slave."

My own recollection of this first strike (or “turn out” as it was called) is very vivid. I worked in a lower room, where I had heard the proposed strike fully, if not vehemently, dis cussed; I had been an ardent listener to what was said against this attempt at ” oppression ” on the part of the corporation, and naturally I took sides with the strikers. When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, “Would you?” or ” Shall we turn out?” and not one of them having the courage to lead off, I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk, became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado, “I don’t care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether any one else does or not;” and I marched out, and was followed by the others.

As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud than I have ever been since at any success I may have achieved, and more proud than I shall ever be again until my own beloved State gives to its women citizens the right of suffrage.

The agent of the corporation where I then worked took some small revenges on the supposed ringleaders; on the principle of sending the weaker to the wall, my mother was turned away from her boarding-house, that functionary saying, ” Mrs. Hanson, you could not prevent the older girls from turning out, but your daughter is a child, and her you could control.”

It is hardly necessary to say that so far as results were concerned this strike did no good. The dissatisfaction of the operatives subsided, or burned itself out, and though the authorities did not accede to their demands, the majority returned to their work, and the corporation went on cutting down the wages.

And after a time, as the wages became more and more reduced, the best portion of the girls left and went to their homes, or to the other employments that were fast opening to women, until there were very few of the old guard left; and thus the status of the factory population of New England gradually became what we know it to be to-day.

Some of us took part in a political campaign, for the first time, in 1840, when William H. Harrison, the first Whig President, was elected ; we went to the political meetings, sat in the gallery, heard speeches against Van Buren and the Democratic party, and helped sing the great campaign song beginning : —

"Oh have you heard the news of late?"

the refrain of which was:

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too, 
Oh with them we'll beat little Van, Van, 
Van is a used-up man."

And we named our sunbonnets “log-cabins,” and set our teacups (we drank from saucers then) in little glass tea-plates, with log-cabins impressed on the bottom. The part the Lowell mill-girls took in these and similar events serves to show how wide-awake and up to date many of these middle-century working-women were.

Among the fads of those days may be mentioned those of the “water-cure” and the “Grahamite.” The former was a theory of doctoring by means of cold water, used as packs, daily baths, and immoderate drinks. Quite a number of us adopted this practice, and one at least has not even yet wholly abandoned it.

Several members of my mother’s family adopted “Professor” Graham’s regimen, and for a few months we ate no meat, nor, as he said, “anything that had life in it.” It was claimed that this would regenerate the race; that by following a certain line of diet, a person would live longer, do better work, and be able to endure any hardship, in fact, that not what we were, but what we ate, would be the making of us. Two young men, whom I knew, made their boasts that they had “walked from Boston to Lowell on an apple.”

We ate fruit, vegetables, and unleavened or whole-wheat bread, baked in little round pats (“bullets,” my mother called them), and with out butter; there were no relishes. I soon got tired of the feeling of “goneness” this diet gave me; I found that although I might eat a pint of mashed potato, and the same quantity of squash, it was as if I had not dined, and I gave up the experiment. But my elder brother, who had carried to the extremest extreme this “potato gospel,” as Carlyle called it, induced my mother to make his Thanksgiving squash pie after a receipt of his own. The crust was made of Indian meal and water, and the filling was of squash, water, and sugar! And he ate it, and called it good. But I thought then, and still think, that his enjoyment of the eating was in the principle rather than in the pie.

A few of the girls were interested in phrenology; and we had our heads examined by Professor Fowler, who, if not the first, was the chief exponent of this theory in Lowell. He went about into all the schools, examining children’s heads. Mine, he said, “lacked veneration; ” and this I supposed was an awful thing, because my teacher looked so reproachfully at me when the professor said it.

A few were interested in Mesmerism; and those of us who had the power to make ourselves en rapport with others tried experiments on “subjects,” and sometimes held meetings in the evening for that purpose. The life in the boarding-houses was very agreeable. These houses belonged to the corporation, and were usually kept by widows (mothers of mill-girls), who were often the friends and advisers of their boarders.

Among these may be mentioned the mothers of Lucy Larcom; the Hon. Gustavus Vasa Fox, once Assistant Secretary of the Navy; John W. Hanson, D.D.; the Rev. W. H. Cudworth ; Major General B. F. Butler ; and several others.

Each house was a village or community of itself. There fifty or sixty young women from different parts of New England met and lived together. When not at their work, by natural selection they sat in groups in their chambers, or in a corner of the large dining-room, busy at some agreeable employment; or they wrote letters, read, studied, or sewed, for, as a rule, they were their own seamstresses and dressmakers.

It is refreshing to remember their simplicity of dress; they wore no ruffles and very few ornaments. It is true that some of them had gold watches and gold pencils, but they were worn only on grand occasions; as a rule, the early mill-girls were not of that class that is said to be “always suffering for a breast-pin.” Though their dress was so simple and so plain, yet it was so tasteful that they were often accused of looking like ladies; the complaint was sometimes made that no one could tell the difference in church between the factory-girls and the daughters of some of the first families in the city.

Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, in The Lady’s Book, in 1842, speaking of the impossibility of considering dress a mark of distinction, says: ” Many of the factory-girls wear gold watches and an imitation at least of all the ornaments which grace the daughters of our most opulent citizens.”

The boarding-houses were considered so attractive that strangers, by invitation, often came to look in upon them, and see for themselves how the mill-girls lived. Dickens, in his “American Notes,” speaks with surprise of their home life. He says, “There is a piano in a great many of the boarding-houses, and nearly all the young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries.” There was a feeling of esprit de corps among these households; any advantage secured to one of the number was usually shared by others belonging to her set or group. Books were exchanged, letters from home were read, and “pieces,” intended for the Improvement Circle, were presented for friendly criticism.

There was always a best room in the boarding house, to entertain callers in; but if any of the girls had a regular gentleman caller, a special evening was set apart each week to receive him. This room was furnished with a carpet, some times with a piano, as Dickens says, and with the best furniture, including oftentimes the relics of household treasures left of the old-time gentility of the house-mother.

This mutual acquaintanceship was of great advantage. They discussed the books they read, debated religious and social questions, compared their thoughts and experiences, and advised and helped one another. And so their mental growth went on, and they soon became educated far beyond what their mothers or their grandmothers could have been. The girls also stood by one another in the mills; when one wanted to be absent half a day, two or three others would tend an extra loom or frame apiece, so that the absent one might not lose her pay. At this time the mule and spinning-jenny had not been introduced ; two or three looms, or spinning-frames, were as much as one girl was required to tend, more than that being considered “double work.”

The inmates of what may be called these literary households were omniverous readers of books, and were also subscribers to the few magazines and literary newspapers ; and it was their habit, after reading their copies, to send them by mail or stage-coach to their widely scattered homes, where they were read all over a village or a neighborhood ; and thus was current literature introduced into by and lonely places.

From an article in The Lowell Offering, ( “Our Household,” signed H. T.,) I am able to quote a sketch of one factory boarding-house interior. The author said, ” In our house there are eleven boarders, and in all thirteen members of the family. I will class them according to their religious tenets as follows : Calvinist Baptist, Unitarian, Congregational, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Mormonite, one each; Universalist and Methodist, two each; Christian Baptist, three. Their reading is from the following sources: They receive regularly fifteen newspapers and periodicals; these are, the Boston Daily Times, the Herald of Freedom, the Signs of the Times, and the Christian Herald, two copies each; the Christian Register, Vox Populi, Literary Souvenir, Boston Pilot, Young Catholic’s Friend, Star of Bethlehem, and The Lowell Offering, three copies each. A magazine, one copy. We also borrow regularly the Non-Resistant, the Liberator, the Lady’s Book, the Ladies’ Pearl, and the Ladies’ Companion. We have also in the house what perhaps cannot be found anywhere else in the city of Lowell, — a Mormon Bible.” The ‘‘magazine”’ mentioned may have been The Dial, that exponent of New England Transcendentalism, of which The Offering was the humble contemporary. The writer adds to her article: “Nothwithstanding the divers faiths embraced among us, we live in much harmony, and seldom is difference of opinion the cause of dissensions among us.”

Novels were not very popular with us, as we inclined more to historical writings and to poetry. But such books as “Charlotte Temple,” “Eliza Wharton,’ ” Maria Monk,” ” The Arabian Nights,” “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” “Abellino, the Bravo of Venice,” or ” The Castle of Otranto,” were sometimes taken from the circulating library, read with delight, and secretly lent from one young girl to another.

Our religious reading was confined to the Bible, Baxter’s ” Saints’ Rest,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Religious Courtship,” “The Widow Directed,” and Sunday-school books.

It was fortunate for us that we were obliged to read good books, such as histories, the English classics, and the very few American novels that were then in existence. Cheap editions of Scott were but just publishing; “Pickwick,” in serial numbers, soon followed; Frederika Bremer was hardly translated ; Lydia Maria Child was beginning to write ; Harriet Beecher Stowe was busy in her nursery, and the great American novel was not written, — nor yet the small one, which was indeed a blessing!

There were many representative women among us who did not voice their thoughts in writing, and whose names are not on the list of the contributers to The Offering. This was but one phase of their development, as many of them have exerted a widespread influence in other directions. They graduated from the cotton factory, carrying with them the results of their manual training ; and they have done their little part towards performing the useful labor of life. Into whatever vocation they entered they made practical use of the habits of industry and per severance learned during those early years, and they have exemplified them in their stirring and fruitful lives.

In order to show how far the influence of individual effort may extend, it will be well to mention the after-fate of some of them. One became an artist of note, another a poet of more than local fame, a third an inventor, and several were among the pioneers in Florida, in Kansas, and in other Western States. A limited number married those who were afterwards doctors of divinity, major-generals. and members of Congress ; and these, in more than one instance, had been their work-mates in the factory.

And in later years, when, through the death of the bread-winner, the pecuniary support of those dependent on him fell to their lot, some of these factory-girls carried on business, entered the trades, or went to college and thereby were enabled to practise in some of the professions. ‘They thus resumed their old-time habit of supporting the helpless ones, and educating the children of the family.

These women were all self-made in the truest sense ; and it is well to mention their success in life, that others, who now earn their living at what is called “ungenteel” employments, may see that what one does is not of so much importance as what one is. I do not know why it should not be just as commendable for a woman who has risen to have been once a factory-girl, as it is for an ex-governor or a major-general to have been a ‘”bobbin-boy.” A woman ought to be as proud of being self-made as a man; not proud in a boasting way, but proud enough to assert the fact in her life and in her works.

All these of whom I speak are widely scattered. I hear of them in the far West, in the South, and in foreign countries, even so far away as the Himalaya Mountains. But wherever they may be, I know that they will join with me in saying that the discipline of their youth helped to make them what they are; and that the cotton-factory was to them the means of education, their preparatory school, in which they learned the alphabet of their life-work.

Such is the brief story of the life of every-day working-girls ; such as it was then, so it might be to-day. Undoubtedly there might have been another side to this picture, but I give the side I knew best, — the bright side !