In the late 1820s, investors and manufacturers joined forces to create factory towns in the New England countryside, the most famous of which was constructed in Lowell, Massachusetts, along the Merrimack River. Funded by the Boston Associates, a group of investors from eastern Massachusetts, the Lowell mills were based on an earlier experiment in nearby Waltham. In the Waltham system, every step of the production process was mechanized. The factories were far larger than earlier ones and were built as part of a planned community that included boardinghouses, government offices, and churches. Agents for the Waltham system traveled throughout New England to recruit the daughters of farm families as workers. They assured parents that their daughters would be watched over by managers and foremen as well as by landladies. The young women were required to attend church and observe curfews, and their labor was regulated by clocks and bells to ensure discipline and productivity.
Textile towns allowed young women to contribute to family finances while living in a well-ordered environment. Farm families needed more cash because of the growing market economy, and daughters could save money for the clothes and linens required for married life. Factory jobs also provided an alternative to marriage as young New England men moved west and left a surplus of women behind. The boardinghouses provided a relatively safe, all-female environment for the young workers, and sisters and neighbors often lived together. Despite constant regulation and supervision, many rural women viewed factory work as an adventure. They could send money home and still set aside a bit for themselves, and they could attend lectures and concerts, meet new people, and acquire a wider view of the world.
Initially, factory towns offered many benefits to young women and their families, but by the 1830s working conditions began to deteriorate. Factory owners cut wages, lengthened hours, and sped up machines, forcing women to produce more cloth in less time for lower pay. Many boardinghouses became overcrowded, and company officials regulated both rents and expenses, so higher prices for lodging did not necessarily mean better food or furnishings. Factory workers launched numerous strikes in the 1830s against longer hours, wage cuts, and speedups in factory production. The solidarity required to sustain these strikes was forged in boardinghouses and at church socials as well as on the factory floor.
See Documents 11.1 and 11.2 for firsthand accounts of life in the mills.
Despite the mill workers’ solidarity, it was not easy to overcome the economic power wielded by manufacturers. Working women’s efforts at collective action were generally short-lived, lasting only as long as the strike itself. Then employees returned to their jobs until the next crisis hit. And as competition increasingly cut into profits, owners resisted mill workers’ demands more vehemently. When the panic of 1837 intensified fears of job loss, women’s organizing activities were doomed until the economy recovered.