Last Choice for Some, First Choice for Many

The Lowell Experiment was an industrial project that tried to avoid the negative aspects of Industrialization in England.  It attempted to convince girls (and their families to let them) to go to Lowell and maintain morality and dignity of temporary workers.  Many girls wanted to go yet some were reluctant.  However, the success of the Lowell Experiment had current mill girls encouraging other mill girls to come to work in Lowell.  The mill girls were given hard labor but were accommodated well. 


There were many things that brought the mill girls to Lowell.  For instance, some families needed the extra cash to support their family farms.  The girls were never able top go without their fathers' consents.  The Lowell Experiment provided a 'paternal system' which was similar to the 19th century American family dynamic.  It emphasized that women could be protected and safe at the mills.  The mills also had a father and mother figure.  Father Figure is the corporation, which had a set of rules of rules that had to be followed.  Certain rules were church on Sundays, curfews at 10 pm, and there were certain sets of working hours and a behavior code.  The Mother Figure was the boardinghouse keeper.  He/She regulated the behavior outside mill hours, and maintained a home environment.  There were many motivations for the girls and their families.  For the families, girls sent home extra money and their girls were cared for with morality.  For the girls, they got to earn their own cash, they had independence, and they got to be in the city....with city life...  Some of the costs of going to Lowell was a low pay, dangerous and loud machines, leaving their families, there were strict overseers, it was crowded in the mills and in the boardinghouses, and if a worker got kicked out of a mill, they could not get another job anywhere else.  On the bright side, the benefits were houses to live in, they were fed well, got three months of education, and had social life, and as I said before, city life.  Lastly, the Lowell Experiment helped prepare women for their adult lives and to marry.  No matter what they did or how they worked, they were always daughters of free men.  Women were usually happy and proud to be working for Lowell.  Now, although they were working hard in Lowell, they were still viewed as women.   Women seemed to be paid less than men because they could not do as much as men.  The attitude of having women workers changed because they just could not do as much as men could eventually, women's jobs were being taken over by men and new advances in machines in the mills.       

Shown here is a mill girl on a spinning frame and is working the same machine over and over again

"Lowell Female Labor Reform Association." Antebellum Social Movements. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2014. <http://antebellumperiod.wordpress.com/labor-reform/lowell-female-labor-reform-association/>.

A Trip to England in the 1800s, VIA Google

Last Tuesday, many kids from Mrs. Gallagher's Honors History 10 classes attended a live video chat via Google.  That chat was with two curators at an actual mill in Manchester, England.  It contained many of the machines used in the Industrial Revolution.  They showed, explained, and even demonstrated how they worked and how the machines were operated.  However, before we could do the chat, we needed to get some knowledge ourselves so we could collaborate and ask relevant questions regarding the things we learned instead of asking basic question to them.  The day before, we watched a brief video from one of the guys that was on the chat named Jamie.  It was just a general tour of the machines and the ways they worked but it was nothing compared to the actual chat.  We also researched through a textiles gallery of every machine and learned about each one individually.  During that video, we got into groups and each group got the eight words which we had to define and explain to the other members.  Then, based on hat we learned from the video and the websites, we had to draft possible questions to ask both Jamie and the other guy during the chat.  Then we were prepared for the chat the next day.

The textile process was a long tiring cycle that was continuous throughout the day without intermission.  That was in the factories but some machines could be operated in houses.  For example, the most common house and factory machines were the water frame and the loom.  The water frame spun thread and then the loom took the spun thread and weaved into a cloth.  These machines were very powerful and strong and were not often damaged if taken care of.  If a machine ever was damaged in house, then that family would be forced to go the workhouse because most families' lives depended on their machine in their house and they made money off of it.  If a machine ever broke, it was very hard to repair besides the fact that most families could not afford to fix anyways so machines needed very good care.  In factories, machines were innovated on and improved on endurance/stability and efficiency.  Machines got faster and louder.  This also brought problems.  Louder machines brought more noise which caused deafness on the workers.  It wasn't just one machine, it was all of the machines on the floor that got louder because they were faster.  They were not necessarily safer though.  They were so powerful that they could suck up a worker into it and crush them to death.  Women had to tie their hair back so it would not get caught in a machine.  If someone ever did get caught in a machine, they would stop the machine and try to save whoever was caught but rarely did that person survive or get out without being severely injured.  If they were injured, they would go the workhouse if they could not return.  However, there was sick pay and a trade union to protect workers.  Jamie made a great point that people today take that stuff for granted when back in the Industrial Revolution those were appreciated greatly and some families depended on it while not working.  The machines also excreted heat and gases through a shuttle which could get into the lungs of the worker on that machine which could possibly cause cancer.  Jamie also got specific about how the conditions contributed to the work.  He said when the revolution began, there was only 1 toilet for about every 25 people.  People eventually just started putting wastes into a bag and throwing it out the window.  The last thing that really made me interested was when Jamie said how if children got hurt, which constantly happened, it would be their fault and no sympathy was given to them by the owners or overseers.  Overall, the textile process expanded on their machines getting stronger and much more powerful but it brought negative impacts along with it like the sickness, the beatings, and dangerous machines while they got more powerful.

This discussion definitely helped me learn more from a real curator at the actual mill.  He really explained and demonstrated how the machines operated, how lifestyles were, and how life was so much different than today but changed so much.  There is a reason why he is called an expert.  I think I liked how he explained the daily lifestyle of the workers and families (and when he excreted gas from the shuttle into his mouth....)  I also liked when he actually turned on a machine to show how powerful and dangerous they actually were.  Reading about it in a book or seeing a picture of it is one thing, but actually seeing it run is another.  If I ever had the chance to do this again, I would because I believe that he really helped us learn more on the Industrial Revolution to our prior knowledge on it. 

Now This Is a Museum....

For this assignment, we were divided into groups and each group got a major category of the ways that the Industrial Revolution changed the ways people lived and worked, and the products that were bought and sold.  Among those categories, each group was given six sources to analyze and make placards to describe each source.  For each group, placards lay under the each source, the proper citation comes along with the, put all of the sources in correct order, create a title, display them out, and a museum has now been created up on our school's fourth floor square area.  Everyone became museum curators for each exhibit.  A curator must be an expert in a topic, thoroughly analyze each exhibit's sources, determine what should be learned by visitors, arrange sources in an orderly way, provide citations, and provide placards with essential information with minimal text.  The first step is analyzing each source.  Each group member read a source and cited it and determined the main idea. This is one of if not the most important part of curating because finding out what the source is saying in our own words is what will be in the placards for the exhibit.  Visitors will read the placards because visitors may not be able to completely understand the source like we do so accurate analysis is needed so the visitors can get the essential information.  Our exhibit basically has six sources with placards analyzing the actual source.  With the exception of one source being a document and another a chart of London's growth, our sources are all about spinning wheels for wool and thread.  Our first source is the house spinning wheel which was used before the Industrial Revolution which were powered by people of all ages.  The next source is the hand loom.  This was a major innovation of the Almond spinning wheel which quickened the process of weaving thread and sparked the creation of the next source, a spinning jenny.  It shows a wheel turning cotton to thread.  This was step-up of the hand loom and it was created to keep up with the Almond loom.  The fourth source is the power loom which was invented to speed up the weaving of cloth and was designed to be faster than an almond loom and keep up with spinning jenny.  Source number five was a chart of London's increasing population throughout the Revolution.  The reason for the population boost was new factories provided jobs for newcomers from the countryside.  Lastly, a document explains how cities with factories had many newcomers moving, the newcomers families became more poor because factories only allowed men to work so a family only had one source of income.  Families that had money lacked it when going to a city.  Based on our sources, our group came up with title for the exhibit about how families were torn down.  Our title as you can see was 'Building Industry Tearing Down Families'.   We hope that visitors learn that while so many cities gained population by providing jobs and being able to establish trade and commerce, the families that moved there suffered because of the factories' procedures.  While the cites were gaining business and wealth, the families were losing wealth and being torn apart. 

There were many new things I learned form other exhibits like with transportation, relying on river currents and wind or relying on flat terrain for travel wasn't necessary while at the same time children were being used to help power factories and help the industry, their own lives were enslaved and could not live a life they had dreamed of.  I also learned that slavery increased rapidly as the Industrial Revolution continued especially in the south which could very well play a role in the fact that people's living conditions were becoming unfit and unhealthy and pollution from all of the smoke from the factories, and enslaving children did not contribute to as healthy start. 

It Started and Will Not End

Currently, our History class is studying the Ingredients to the Industrial Revolution and why the Industrial Revolution.  There were many ingredients and techniques behind the success of the Industrial Revolution. Our class was divided into five groups and each group had to research and present notes about one of ingredients to answer the essential question; What was 'revolutionary' about the Industrial Revolution?  Each group took notes and then got to present on the screens.  All of the other groups not presenting got to take pictures of the notes using their devices.  Two of the biggest ingredients were new resources and new types of transportation. 

There were many resources that were not discovered yet and were waiting to be used until the Industrial Revolution began.  Resources like iron, coal, and cotton were all starting to be used regularly.  There was also a capital to invest in enterprises to build many things like factories, mines, and railroads.  It was also used to invest in shipping overseas.  Iron which is a strong and hard magnetic metal was used as a material for construction and manufacturing, especially in the form of steel.  It was also used in construction of the steam engine and machinery.  It was then innovated on in 1709 by Abraham Darby.  He used coal to melt the iron.  However, the coal was producing impurities so a new method was used to remove the impurities from it.  This lead to the production of less expensive and better quality/stronger and more reliable iron for more than just railroads.  Coal was also very depended on.  Coal is basically a black combustible rock consisting mostly of plant matter, found mostly I underground deposits and was widely used as a fuel.  It also helped power the steam engine and it separate iron from its ore.  Cotton and cloth was imported from India.  They also distributed raw cotton to peasant families to be spun into thread and then cloth.  They then made factories because spinning machines were too big homes.  Iron, coal, and cotton all revolutionized this era because people of this time period found a way to properly use resources that were there and did not have a commonly known use before they were discovered.   This helped provide for transportation, fuel for power, and cloth for clothing and other cotton based products. 

Another huge ingredient to the Industrial Revolution was new mechanisms of transportation.  Before transportation was revolutionized, trains and boats were expensive and weren't very fast.  They needed a way to create faster and cheaper transportation.  There were some good starts like new turnpikes which were private roads which charged users a fee, and sturdier bridges and more efficient canals and harbors were made.  However, the innovations that had a huge impact were the steam locomotives and steam boats.  They were newer versions of old vehicles, but were powered by a steam engine.  Steam Engines used coal to create electrical power and the new ways of transportation used it as their power source.  Steam locomotives made the building of railroads a success and tracks were used more frequently.  With the invention of the locomotive, rivers did not need to be followed.  The first major train was in 1830 from Liverpool to Manchester and by 1870, trains were widespread.  The steam boat's power source was also the steam boat.  The first successful steam boat traveled up the Hudson in 1807 achieving a speed of 5 MPH.  By the late 1800s, steam freighters sailed the oceans and could travel with 10-20 times more goods than older ships.  Both the steam locomotive and the steam boat revolutionized the transportation industry.  As discussed earlier, he test of making sturdier iron came to good use because now steam engines had more reliable tracks to travel on safely.  Also, they were able to transport more larger quantities of goods to places that were not accessible by rivers faster and easier than ever before.  Lastly, it allowed the growth of cities in many places that were previously impossible from the trading of perishable goods over long distances.  

 

Softpedia Staff. "How Steam Engines Work." How Steam Engines Work. N.p., 14 Apr. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2014. http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-Steam-Engines-Work-83331.shtml.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Google Should Never Lie

Finding something on Google sounds like a simple and easy procedure.  That is true when searching for something broad.  However, when searching a specific thing using Google, you have to really understand how Google generates searches and shows sites for answers.  Google basically can allow any random website to appear.  This is where searching on Google does not turn out to be so easy.  Sometimes, it takes a long time to find accurate information and there are other times when you cannot find any info. at all.  Our history class will be using the web every day and more than likely using Google as a searcher.  For the first few days, we did class activities.  One was called a Google a Day.  The other was called Accuracy, Authenticity, and Reliability.  These activities showed us how to find original information using proper sources to get the information.  It also showed us that there are so many unverified websites that contain wrong or unproven information.  For our class, we need the best information to successfully complete the tasks that we are given.

A Google a Day http://www.agoogleaday.com/#game=started was one of the activities we did to help us use the Internet responsibly.  It was a site where a question is asked by Google and we had to find the correct answer.  As a group, we had to determine what the question was really asking and what we needed to search.  Then, we had to search a key phrase from the question and find a result.  Then the online responsibility part came into play when we had to find relevant information from a verified source that our group all had to agree on.  The fun part was figuring out the key phrase and finding out what the question meant.  The frustrating part was finding irrelevant websites that either didn't have an answer or was full of advertisements that kept popping up every minute.  But the most frustrating part was typing in a answer and realizing we were way off or we were so close and just couldn't find the exact answer quickly.  This activity taught us all that in order to find clear and precise information, you have to think before you search so that more of the relevant sites and sources will show up rather than more counterfeit websites. 

The other activity we used was called Accuracy, Authenticity, and Reliability.  This is when our groups defined and explain the importance of all three of these terms and why it is important to make sure a search fits into these.  Then, we searched a site for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  We found an entire website that describes everything about the tree octopus.  We determined that the site is authentic because it is original and it is a website that started from scratch about this topic.  However, we knew that this site was not reliable nor accurate because there is no such thing as a tree octopus.  The internet hoax was created by Lyle Zapato and the URL of the website is http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/links.html which is close to the creator's name.  Also, the URL is not a '.gov' or '.org' site.  When using a site in school, preferred URLs are those because they have been approved as accurate, authentic, and reliable so using this site for research is not a valid option to successfully complete a search for any assignment.




       

          

Teachers Actually Do Teach

There are many things that make a great teacher.  Teachers have a duty and in most teachers it's a passion.  The duty of a teacher is to educate students so they can do great things in their life.  A teacher must be able to educate various groups of kids with all types of personalities at a learning pace that is challenging but manageable for everyone.  A teacher who is reliable and is always updating online is available for and willing to give extra help says a lot about him/her.   Also, teachers should try to communicate with students and form personal connections so that the student doesn't just see him/her as a teacher, but as a mentor.  For example, a great teacher will always receive greetings and give them not just inside but outside the classroom like the hallway or even outside of school on occasion.  That greeting should occur without a thought and be natural enough so it is normal.  I had many teachers just like that in 8th grade my last year of middle school.  One of my favorite teachers from that year was my English teacher Mr. Olivo.  I had heard he was a great teacher at move-up day in 7th grade.  At the beginning of 8th grade, he had us do a refresher activity that was not hard but he could quickly understand how we wrote and how he could help us improve our skills.  He arranged mini assignments, discussions, short story readings, and he constantly had us writing essays on a blog.  He knew how to make us better writers and also knew how to keep a class like mine in control but moving so that we learned but enjoyed the class.  He helped me especially with my analysis on writing and taught me ways on how to backup facts with reasoning.  He also was a teacher who could be connected with easily.  Every day after class, we would discuss sports news from the previous nights either about game results or certain players.  That's what made him a fantastic teacher.  Now, I know we will be writing a lot of essays for this class and this class is mostly paperless which I will enjoy.  However, towards the beginning of the year, I believe just a little guidance in my essay writing specifically finding analysis to backup evidence.  Once we get into the swing of things and we get more into the middle of the year, I will need less and less of it but to begin with, that would be great for a start.

Reading Memorial High School has a very challenging curriculum but the great teachers in the school help the students learn it at a pace right for them.  This also goes for all of Reading's Public Schools.   The town of Reading has an outstanding school system.  Now, John Green believes all should take their education and do great things with it.  I agree completely.  Right now, America has an economy where jobs are being created but it can be challenging finding a job with a certain degree.  Job opportunities will not be dependent on us.  Our futures depend on our jobs when we grow older and in order to get a solid job, a proper education is needed.  For example, an employer needs someone qualified to do a certain job.  If I'm not educated, I will not get that job and the employer will not try to chase me down and give me time to go get an education.  The employer will just find someone else that is qualified.  So, I will need the proper education to help me get a firm job.  Now, a proper education for a solid job is going to a great college.  Colleges want to see students in High School get involved with multiple extra-curricular activities each year.  Currently, I am on the RMHS JV Boys Soccer team and I hope to do tech-crew for a winter play.  This helps me interact with different kids and form new friendships.  My academic goals are to start out on a strong foot with all of my classes and do well while at the same time, get to know all of my teachers well and form those personal connections like I mentioned earlier.  I will reach these goals by giving my best effort in all of my classes and staying ahead of the workload.  With JV soccer which is a big step up from last year, I will go out and bust my chops to earn a decent amount of playtime in games and prove to the coach that I deserve a spot on the team.  I expect that this year will be one of the best of my High School years.

John Green Crash Course Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x78PnPd-V-A&feature=youtu.be