How did the Lowell factory change the way women worked in Massachusetts?

Beginning in 1823, with the opening of Lowell's first factory, large numbers of young women moved to the growing city. In the mills, female workers faced long hours of toil and often grueling working conditions. Yet many female textile workers saved money and gained a measure of economic independence. 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. For many of the mill girls, employment brought a sense of freedom.

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In 1834, when their bosses decided to cut their wages, the mill girls had enough: They organized and fought back. The mill girls "turned out"—in other words, went on strike—to protest. They marched to several mills to encourage others to join them, gathered at an outdoor rally and signed a petition saying, "We will not go back into the mills to work unless our wages are continued."

No one had ever seen anything like this. But if the mill girls were exuberant, managers and owners were horrified. "An amizonian [sic] display," one fumed. "A spirit of evil omen has prevailed." And they determined to crack down on the mill girls.

A showdown came and the bosses won. Management had enough power and resources to crush the strike. Within a week, the mills were operating nearly at full capacity. A second strike in 1836—also sparked by wage cuts—was better organized and made a bigger dent in the mills' operation. But in the end, the results were the same.

Those were hard defeats, but the mill girls refused to give up. In the 1840s, they shifted to a different strategy: political action. They organized the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association to press for reducing the workday to 10 hours. Women couldn't vote in Massachusetts or anywhere else in the country, but that didn't stop the mill girls. They organized huge petition campaigns—2,000 signers on an 1845 petition and more than double that on a petition the following year—asking the Massachusetts state legislature to cap the work day in the mills at 10 hours.

They didn't stop there. They organized chapters in other mill towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They published "Factory Tracts" to expose the wretched conditions in the mills. They testified before a state legislative committee.

What's more, they campaigned against a state representative who was one of their strongest opponents and handily defeated him.

So what did the Lowell mill girls really win? In the short term, not much. That's how it often is with the first pioneers in social justice movements. Both of their strikes were crushed. And the only victory they won in their 10-hour workday campaign was pretty hollow. In 1847, New Hampshire became the first state to pass a 10-hour workday law—but it wasn't enforceable.

That was in the short term. But in the long term, the Lowell mill girls started something that transformed this country. No one told them how to do it. But they showed that working women didn't have to put up with injustice in the workplace. They got fed up, joined together, supported each other and fought for what they knew was right.

One of the mill girls put it this way: "They have at last learnt the lesson which a bitter experience teaches, not to those who style themselves their 'natural protectors' are they to look for the needful help, but to the strong and resolute of their own sex."

Today, millions of women in unions who teach our kids, fight our fires, build our homes and nurse us back to health owe a debt to the Lowell mill girls. They taught America a powerful lesson about ordinary women doing extraordinary things.

Extra  

Foner, Philip S. (editor), The Factory Girls. University of Illinois Press, 1977. Howe, Daniel Walker, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1845.Oxford University Press, 2009. Eisler, Benita, The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women, 1840-1845. J.B. Lippincott, 1977. Dublin, Thomas, "The Lowell Mills and the Countryside: The Social Origins of Women Factory Workers, 1830-1850," in Weible, Robert; Ford, Oliver; and Marion, Paul (editors), Essays from the Lowell Conference on Industrial History, 1980 and 1981. Lowell Conference on Industrial History, 1981.

It encouraged the U.S. to desegregate, because the Soviets claimed they supported equality for all people.

Explanation:

The United States kept claiming to be the beacon of democracy and equality around the world yet she was segregating against members of her own citizenry by keeping black people against from white people.

The Soviet Union always seized upon this to show the world that the U.S. was not actually equal and that the Soviet Union was more equal than the U.S. This was during the time of the Cold War and the U.S. did not like the fact that the Soviets held the moral high ground and so actively tried to end segregation.