Loom and Spindle: Or, Life Among the Early Mill Girls. With a Sketch of "The Lowell Offering" and Some of Its ContributorsThomas Y. Crowell, 1898 - 216 pages |
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boarding-house Boott Boston brother called child church class of operatives CLEMENTINE AVERILL contributors corporation cotton-factory cotton-mill daughters Dingley tariff dollars early mill-girls earn editor Emmeline employers England factory-girls feeling friends Hanson Harriet Farley Harriet Lees Harriot Curtis hearts history of Lowell hours of labor Improvement Circle industry interest Jane Hanson John Caryl Kirk Boott lady land lished literary little girls lived looked looms Lowell mills Lowell Offering Lucy Larcom Lydia Lydia Maria Child magazine manufacturing married mental Merrimack Merrimack River mind Miss Curtis Miss Farley Miss Larcom moral mother never novel overseers persons poem published remember Robinson says Senator Clemens sister slaves speak talent tariff taught Thomas thought tion to-day Turner Universalist verses wages whole wish woman women write written wrote York Tribune young girl
Popular passages
Page 111 - Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, "A repository of original articles, written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills...
Page 3 - For we are the same things that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run.
Page 35 - That night a chariot passed her, While on the ground she lay ; The daughters of her master An evening visit pay ; Their tender hearts were sighing As negro wrongs were told, While the white slave was dying, Who gained their father's gold...
Page 62 - corporations" were started, and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of work-people; stories that reached the ears of mechanics' and farmers' sons and gave new life to lonely and dependent women in distant towns and farm-houses.
Page 83 - 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.
Page 63 - Troops of young girls came from different parts of New England, and from Canada, and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them at the factories. A very curious sight these country girls presented to young eyes accustomed to a more modern style of things. When the large covered baggage wagon arrived in front of a
Page 109 - This motto was used for two years, when another was adopted, — "Is Saul also among the prophets?" In January, 1845, the magazine had on its outside cover a vignette, a young girl simply dressed, with feet visible and sleeves rolled up. She had a book in one hand, and her shawl and bonnet were thrown over her arm. She was represented as standing in a very sentimental attitude, contemplating a beehive at her right hand.
Page 63 - The stagecoach and the canal-boat came every day, always filled with new recruits for the army of useful people. The mechanic and machinist came, each with his home-made chest of tools and his wife and little ones. The widow came with her little flock and her scanty housekeeping goods to open a boarding-house or variety store, and so provided a home for her fatherless children.
Page 61 - American mill-girls of the mid-nineteenth century, photographed with shuttles and reed-hooks she was represented as subjected to influences that could not fail to destroy her purity and self-respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched, and pushed about. 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".
Page 128 - Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production, I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the articles having been written by these girls after the arduous labours of the day, that it will compare advantageously with a great many English Annuals.