No Longer The Nice Girls

Many girls during the Industrial Revolution wanted to work in the Lowell Mills. Many girls were intrigued to work in the mills because they wanted to know what life was like outside of the farm, and be able to make their own money. The girls wanted to experience a new life and meet new people. The thought of being able to make their own money to buy glamourous things drove them to work harder. The girls wanted to feel independent and prove to their families they can take care of themselves. The girls had to prove to their fathers that they can be off on their own and show him it was the right decision in sending her to work at the mills.

For fathers it was an important decision to send their daughter away to work at the mills, even if the money the daughter sent home was beneficial to the family. The father figure of the house was supposed to protect his family and by sending his precious daughter away to an unknown place is very unsettling. The mill owners were very convincing when it came to trying to convince fathers to allow their daughter to work in the mills. The mill owners emphasized the ‘parental system,’ which implied, mill girls would always be protected by a man figure just like at home.  Mills girls would have to maintain mortality and were not allowed to date boys and only work temporary. Working temporary meant, once the girls got older they would need to leave the mills to get married. The girls had to also follow a set of rules. They must attend church on Sundays, they had a curfew of 10 pm, and the girls must also follow the mill house and code for behavior. The girls would have a mother figure or boarding house keeper that would regulate the girl’s behavior outside the mill hours, and also maintains the ‘home’ environment. After listening to what the mill owners had to say about girls working in the mill, the families allowed their daughters to go and work.

At first working in the mills started off fine but then the working and health conditions started to decrease. The mills become dangerous to work in because the machines that were being used. The machines were big and loud, and weren’t cleaned very often so it was easy for one of the workers to get sucked up into and injured. If the overseers thought you were not working hard enough they could beat you. The girls had strict rules they had to obey and if they did not they could potentially be kicked out of the mills. If a girl gets kicked out of the mills it is very hard to find another factory that would be willing to hire them. Girls that worked in the mills for too long were often judged. It was said that if girls worked in the mills past a certain age , meant that they were old and no man wanted to get married to them.

Overtime, the mill gills became more and more furious with the way the mills were running. Mill owners started to lower the girl’s wages. After a while the girls no longer put up with the unfairness of the mills and they went on strike. The girls held meetings to discuss what to do about the unfair conditions, and over the years the organization got stronger. More and more women started to stand up for what they believed in and no longer obeyed the “proper etiquette,” of a female figure. The female figure changed from being a quiet and reserved house maid into an educated, powerful leader figure. This led to the many female activists and gender equality.