Thomas Dublin, New England Farm Women Respond Essay

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Thomas Dublin, New England farm women respond conditions work textile mills? Reference: Read

Communal Organization

In order to effectively analyze the way in which New England farm women responded to the conditions of work in the textile mills, particularly those existing in Lowell, Massachusetts, it is first prudent to examine exactly what those conditions are, and how they affected these young women laborers. It should be noted that in many cases, the women recruited to work within these factory systems were obtaining their first formal employment, since many of them grew up on neighboring farms and chose the life of a factory workers as a way out of the rural monotony they had known all of their lives. Initially then, regardless of what the conditions were in the factory system, they were agreeable to many female laborers who were able to send money home to their families on farms and who were able to gain some sense of independence and autonomy by laboring within the textile industry.

By almost all accounts, the conditions in which these women labored were decidedly harsh and certainly exacting by modern standards of labor. Work days frequently exceeded 10 hours a day, while laborers were often paid in direct accordance to how much they were able to produce throughout the course of their nearly interminable shifts. Working at the textile mills became the sole focus of these young ladies' lives, as the following quotation readily underscores.

Furthermore, the work schedule was such that women had little opportunity to interact with those not living in company dwellings. They worked, in these years, an average of 73 hours a week. Their work day ended at 7:00 or 7:30 PM, and in the hours between supper and the 10:00 PM curfew imposed by management on residents of company boardinghouses, there was little time… (Dublin, 1975)

This quotation is indicative of the lengthy periods of labor these women endured while earning a living for the first time. Such time consuming work schedules, in which women were engaged in highly repetitive procedures and forms of work, was frequently exacerbated by the living conditions provided for the employees, who, as the preceding quotation suggests, were most often were housed in quarter either onsite of the working facilities or readily close nearby.

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It is safe to assume that the factory owners who employed these women and quartered them in boardinghouses did not spend a lot of time or effort on providing any forms of luxury (or too much of comfort) in providing living conditions for their employees. Women were relegated to tiny quarters, that were considerably cramped due to the large numbers of women forced to occupy a single room as the following quotation demonstrates.

Women in the boardinghouses lived in close quarters, a factor that also played a role in the growth of community. A typical boarding house accommodated 25 young women, generally crowded four to eight in a bedroom. (8) There was little possibility of privacy within the dwelling, and pressure to conform to group standards was very strong... (Dublin, 1975)

This quotation is notable for two reasons. The first is that it confirms the fact that not only were the working conditions in which women labored within the textile mills of New England not very desirable, but the living conditions were also not desirable. These two elements reinforced a conformity to "group standards," however, that would be essential to the way women responded to these conditions, particularly when their wages were cut, which was one of the primary impetuses that spawned the mill workers of Lowell's forming of a union and its first official strike in 1836….....

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