Lowell

Lowell, MA (Jul 31, 2005)

Today we went with some friends (in the photo) to the Lowell Folk Festival. Lowell is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the United States. At the beginning of the nineteen century Lowell was an important textile center, with the most modern cotton mills of the time powered by the fast running waters of the Merrimack and Concord rivers. Most of the mills workers were young women (the mill girls) employed to work for up to 14 hours per day between the age of fifteen and twentyfive (but some as young as ten). The “mill girls” were revolutionary not only for the fact of being factory workers (very uncommon at the time), but also in their role as labour organizers. In 1834, when an economic downturn led to a wage cut of 25%, the mill workers organized an union (the Factory Girls Association). In October 1936 they went on strike, one of the first that ever took place in this country. The mill workers walked out of their factories, and one of the girls stood on a pump and made an incendiary speech about the severe working conditions she and her companions were suffering, and the need to resist the pay cut. That was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused as much consternation as the strike. The strike eventually failed but made an important precedent for many successive strikes and the development of the workers movement in the US.