Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson

“ The hours of labor are now less, it is true; but the operatives are obliged to do a far greater amount of work in a given time. They tend so many looms and frames that they have no time to think. They are always on the jump; and so have no opportunity to improve themselves. They are too weary to read good books, and too overworked to digest what they have read. The souls of many of these mill-girls seemed starved, and looked from their hungry eyes as if searching for mental food.
Why are they not fed? The means of education are not wanting. ”

“ These authors represent what may be called the poetic element of factory-life. They were the ideal mill-girls, full of hopes, desires, aspirations; poets of the loom, spinners of verse, artists of factory-life.
The Lowell Offering did a good work, not only among the operatives themselves, but among the rural population from which they had been drawn. It was almost the only magazine that reached their secluded homes, where it was lent from house to house, read and re-read, and thus set the women to thinking, and added its little leaven of progressive thought to the times in which it lived. ”

“ For the first time in this country woman’s labor had a money value. She had become not only an earner and a producer, but also a spender of money, a recognized factor in the political economy of her time. And thus a long upward step in our material civilization was taken; woman had begun to earn and hold her own money, and through its aid had learned to think and to act for herself. ”

“ That they could be educated and developed into something more than mere work-people, was an idea that had not yet entered the public mind. So little does one class of persons really know about the thoughts and aspirations of another! It was the good fortune of these early mill-girls to teach the people of that time that this sort of labor is not degrading; that the operative is not only “capable of virtue,” but also capable of self-cultivation.
At the time the Lowell cotton-mills were started, the factory girl was the lowest among women. ”

“ BY FEMALE OPERATIVES.
Our magazine is the only one which America has produced, of which no other country has produced the like. The Offering is prima facie evidence, not only of the American “factory-girls,” but of the intelligence of the mass of our country. And it is in the intelligence of the mass that the permanency of our republican institutions depends.
And our last appeal is to those who should support us, if for no other reason but their interest in “the cultivation of humanity,” and the maintenance of true democracy. There is little but this of which we, as a people, can be proud. ”

“ It is claimed that the factory is not a “philanthropic institution,” and that corporations are not responsible for the well-being of those they employ. But until Boards of Health and Factory Inspectors can succeed in reforming the abuses which exist among the mill-people, who but the corporation ought to be held responsible [215] for the unwholesome surroundings and the hard life which is undermining the vitality and poisoning the blood of so large a portion of our working-people?
“Labor is worship,” says the poet. Labor is education, is the teaching of the wise political economist. ”

“ Indeed, I think in a general way they would not suffer by a comparison with the daughters of the Southern slaveholders. I believe it would be found, that, for refinement, intelligence, and for any qualification that is requisite to constitute an agreeable companion, the “factory-girls” are not inferior to any class of women in the South, notwithstanding the slurs that are often flung at them. It is surely true, that as the benign spirit of the gospel pervades the minds of men, slavery will be seen in its true character, and be finally abolished from every community professing Christianity. ”

“ As for cheap American prints, who prefers to buy them nowadays? Certainly no woman who remembers with affection the good, pretty, durable, and washable old Merrimack print,—the old-time calico, that, when partly worn out, would still do for gowns and “tiers” for the children, or for comforters for the family beds. Gentlemen! mill-owners and managers! give us as good material as that we can buy of English and French manufacture, and we will wear no more dress-goods that are not of “home production,” and will cheerfully pay you whatever price you may ask for them. ”

“ Indeed, the most prevailing incentive to our labor was to secure the means of education for some male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of these provident mill-girls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. ”

“ Some of the operatives of this city have been teachers in institutions of learning in your own State. Why do your people send here for teachers if your slaves are better off than they? Shame on the man who would stand up in the Senate of the United States, and say that the slaves at the South are better off than the operatives of New England; such a man is not fit for any office in a free country. ”

“ Sometimes I like philosophers, and sometimes I don’t. The thing is to live. Beautiful theories don’t make any of us do that, but the real breath of life from the Infinite Good, which every soul must have for itself, or, fool or philosopher, he is dead as a heap of sand.... ”

“ THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY FACTORY GIRLS.
When I look back into the factory life of fifty or sixty years ago, I do not see what is called “a class” of young men and women going to and from their daily work, like so many ants that cannot be distinguished one from another; I see them as individuals, with personalities of their own. ”

“ The factory population of New England is made up largely of American-born children of foreign parentage,—two-thirds it is estimated; as a rule, they are not under the strict control of the church of their parents, and they are too apt to adopt the vices and follies, rather than the good habits, of our people. It is vital to the interests of the whole community, that they should be kept under good moral influences; that they should have the sympathy, the help, of employers. ”

“ It was natural that such a thoughtful life should bear fruit, and this leads me to speak of The Lowell Offering, a publication which was the natural outgrowth of the mental habit of the early mill-girls, for many of the pieces that were printed there were thought out amid the hum of the wheels, while the skilful fingers and well-trained eyes of the writers tended the loom or the frame. ”

“ Before 1836 the era of mechanical industry in New England had hardly begun, the industrial life of its people was yet in its infancy, and nearly every article in domestic use that is now made by the help of machinery was then “done by hand.” It was, with few exceptions, a rural population, and the material for clothing was grown on the home-farm, and spun and woven by the women. Even in comparatively wealthy families, the sons were sent to college in suits of homespun, cut and made by the village seamstress, and every household was a self-producing and self-sustaining community. ”

“ Why not try these or some better experiments, and so uplift gradually the status of the modern factory-operative?
These suggestions regarding a better class of goods and a better class of operatives, if carried out, will involve sacrifice for a time on the part of the mill-owners and stockholders. But it is certainly better to sacrifice even a great deal than it is to lose all; and there seems to be danger of this if something radical and far-reaching cannot soon be done to improve the present condition of our New England cotton-factories and their operatives. ”

“ And a glimpse of one handsome woman, the wife of an agent, reading by an astral lamp in the early evening, has always been remembered by one young girl, who looked forward to the time when she, too, might have a parlor of her own, lighted by an astral lamp!
The second class were the overseers, a sort of gentry, ambitious mill-hands who had worked up from the lowest grade of factory labor; and they usually lived in the end-tenements of the blocks, the short connected rows of houses in which the operatives were boarded. ”

“ I am not ambitious to appear in any book; but if I am to be ‘written up,’ would much rather it would be done by a friend.... I told in ‘A New England Girlhood’ all I care to tell about my early life. You know something more of me, and you are at liberty to say what you choose. I have tried to make my life count for good to others, and to make my verses an expression of what I am trying to live. ”

“ Our working-people have their intellectual freedom, as well as the wage-question, to fight for, just as the ancestors of the early factory-operatives fought for their [204] social and constitutional liberty. They will carry on the warfare in their own way; and if employers are wise they will try to do something practical to prevent strikes, riots, and labor-unions, which are the working-man’s weapons of defence, and so to “lock the door before the horse is stolen.” ”

“ Although the magazine under its women editors was a continued success, still, to Mr. Thomas, as its projector and first editor, must be given the credit of bringing before the public these productions; and too much honor cannot be awarded to him for believing in the capabilities of the young people under his charge, and for utilizing the talent which he found. But for his Improvement Circle The Lowell Offering might never have been heard of; and its writers, if this impetus had not been given to their talents, would never have thought themselves capable of any success in this direction. ”

“ My mother kept forty boarders, most of them men, mill-hands, and she did all her housework, with what help her children could give her between schools; for we all, even the baby three years old, were kept at school. My part in the housework was to wash the dishes, and I was obliged to stand on a cricket in order to reach the sink!
My mother’s boarders were many of them young men, and usually farmers’ sons. They were almost invariably of good character and behavior, and it was a continual pleasure for me and my brothers to associate with them. ”

“ This was the genius of mechanical industry, which would build the cotton-factory, set in motion the loom and the spinning-frame, call together an army of useful people, open wider [4] fields of industry for men and (which was quite as important at that time) for women also. For hitherto woman had always been a money-saving, rather than a money-earning, member of the community, and her labor could command but small return. If she worked out as servant, or “help,” her wages were from fifty cents to one dollar a week ”

“ Labor has always been honorable for [158] everybody in our steady-going New England life, but it was not as easy for a young woman to put her mental machinery into working order forty years ago as it is now. Her ambition for the education of her higher faculties was, however, all the greater for the check that was put upon it by the necessities of a longer day’s toil and the smaller compensation of the older time. ”

“ It was to overcome this prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become mill-girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this “degrading occupation.” At first only a few came; for, though tempted by the high wages to be regularly paid in “cash,” there were many who still preferred to go on working at some more genteel employment at seventy-five cents a week and their board.
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But in a short time the prejudice against factory labor wore away, and the Lowell mills became filled with blooming and energetic New England women. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The cotton-factories themselves are not so agreeable nor so healthful to work in as they used to be. Once they were light, well ventilated, and moderately heated; each factory-building stood detached, with pleasant sunlit [209] windows, cheerful views, and fresh air from all points of the compass. But these buildings are now usually made into a solid mass by connecting “annexes,” and often form a hollow square, so that at least one-half of the operatives can have no outlook except upon brick walls, and no fresh air but that which circulates within this confined space. ”

“ If my ecclesiastical connections had been of the popular order, there could have been no doubt of success; but I was well known as a Universalist. Sectarian hostility, in that day, was of a sort which would not be tolerated now; and I had to combat the falsehood that The Offering was a Universalist publication.
The Operatives’ Magazine was issued as a rival, or competitor; and only the superior talent of the contributors to the original work kept it in the ascendant of repute and circulation. ”

“ They had, perhaps, less temptation than the working-girls of to-day, since they were not required to dress beyond their means, and comfortable homes were provided by their employers, where they could board cheaply. Their surroundings were pure, and the whole atmosphere of their boarding-houses was as refined as that of their own homes. They expected men to treat them with courtesy; they looked forward to becoming the wives of good men. ”

“ The history of Lowell, Mass., is not identical with that of other manufacturing places in New England, and for two reasons: first, because here were gathered together a larger number of factory people, and among them were the first who showed any visible sign of mental cultivation; and, second, because it was here that the practice of what was called “The Lowell factory system” went into operation, a practice which included the then new idea, that corporations should have souls, and should exercise a paternal influence over the lives of their operatives. ”

“ To one who has watched with sad interest the gradual decline of the cotton-factory industry in New England, and has marked the deterioration of its operatives, it has often seemed as if something might be done to restore this great factor in our national prosperity to its early influence and importance. ”

“ We were paid two dollars a week; and how proud I was when my turn came to stand up on the bobbin-box, and write my name in the paymaster’s book, and how indignant I was when he asked me if I could “write.” “Of course I can,” said I, and he smiled as he looked down on me.
The working-hours of all the girls extended from five o’clock in the morning until seven in the evening, with one-half hour for breakfast and for dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen hours a day, and this was the greatest hardship in the lives of these children. ”