"When she was older, Robinson became a drawing-in girl, one of the more desirable positions in the mill. new mills were quickly constructed. In exchange for running to the library and back, the boarder let Harriet and her siblings read the books, too.With work consuming fourteen hours of each day, mill girls had precious little free time, yet many spent their free hours reading, writing, and learning. Since the drawing-in girls were paid by the piece, not by the hour, they could work at their own pace. Housing became scarce and overcrowded.
She later wrote of her experiences in a book called Assured of a safe environment and attracted by the cash wages and the chance to earn a living for themselves, women from all over New England flocked to the mill towns to work. Drawing-in girls drew in the threads of the warp through the William was born in 1862, in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia.
"In October 1840, some of the mill girls got together to produce and publish, in the words of editor Abel C. Thomas, "the first magazine or journal written exclusively by women in the whole world."
Harriet Robson (born Millar) was born in 1867. She was sent to work as a doffer—a worker who took full bobbins off the spinning frame and replaced them with empty ones.
Many had come from faraway villages and farms where the only book available was the family Bible.
She felt that hardworking poor people were just as worthy as wealthy people and she hated laziness. Though it required skill and a nimble and steady hand, this job was not very demanding. By Vivek Chaudhary For Mailonline. Her husband, who for a time published an antislavery newspaper, was politically active and his liberal views made him many enemies. In spite of their poverty, the children went to school every day and Robinson also attended a sewing school on Saturdays.Mrs.
The sixteen-page In spite of the educational advantages, the spirited fellowship, and the income that the mills offered, workers were not always happy with the treatment they received.
If they chose to read, they could, and Robinson often took the opportunity to open a book while she worked.
Taking advantage of the demand for cloth brought on by the War of 1812 and with financial help from his family, Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company.
… I can see them now, even after sixty years, just as they looked,—depressed, modest, mincing, hardly daring to look one in the face, so shy and sylvan had been their lives.
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.Robinson was a mill operative for the Tremont Corporation at Lowell, Mass., beginning at the age of 10 as a bobbin doffer, and she later wrote poems and prose for the Robinson later became an advocate of woman suffrage, organizing the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts in 1881 and presenting a request to the U.S. Congress in 1889 for her enfranchisement. Katherine MacGregor (* 12. This strike was one of the first cases of organized protest in the history of the textile industry and did considerable damage. No, not even in a college class … as in that assembly of young women, laboring for their subsistence.
His employees did not need to be strong, only intelligent and hard working.
Robinson was content to live as a housewife while her husband worked. A photograph of her during this time shows a strikingly beautiful young women with piercing black eyes, ringlets in her long hair, and a brave, confident face.After high school, Robinson joined in many of the literary groups that had sprung up around Lowell. She even began writing and publishing her own poetry. At these lectures she met women who were working in the mills of the late 1800s and soon learned that the conditions they labored under were far worse than anything she remembered. She hoped to, but did not, see women get the vote in her own lifetime.With her elder daughter, Hattie, Robinson joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, which promoted a woman's right to vote as well as her rights in the workplace Her mother needed the extra income and Robinson wanted to help out.
"Inside the mills, the noise of so much machinery— pounding levers and grinding gears—could be deafening.
It lies on Massachusetts Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a mill complex that, under Lowell's guidance, used the power loom to its greatest advantage. "Robinson spent the last years of her life keeping active with her family, reading, writing, and sewing. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Some rooms in the mills were left completely empty and the town's banks were drained as fired workers withdrew their savings and returned home.Two years later, when Robinson was eleven and working as a doffer, workers struck because of a proposed pay cut that would allow mill owners to pay more to the boardinghouse managers. But after the first payday came, and they felt the jingle of silver in their pockets … their bowed heads were lifted, their necks seemed braced with steel, they looked you in the face, sang blithely among their looms or frames, and walked with elastic step to and from their work. They called themselves mill girls.According to Robinson, mill girls included farmer's daughters aching for city life, women from fine families who did not really need the money but wanted to be in a cultured and stimulating environment, "women with past histories," married women running away from husbands who had mistreated them, and unmarried women who had been dependent on relatives for their support.Robinson's moving account of this last group gives a clear idea of how strongly women were affected by the opportunity to earn their own income: "How well I remember some of these solitary ones!
Robinson witnessed two strikes during her younger years, and participated in one of them.