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/>.