The Industrial Revolution, Were the Poor Mill Conditions Inevitable.

                                                                         colson kuliopulos

                                                                                               9/17/1         

                                       H History10   

                                                                                                                                        Block E   

In the early 19th century the industrial revolution changed everyone’s way of life. At that time in History there had never been such an unshakable demand for goods and services which led to a significant increase in new and exciting innovations that took the world by storm. One of these innovations was the United States’ promising Lowell experiment which was conceived as a far more humane alternative to the cruel state of child mills in England. Here in these new mills the girls would acquire better education, work in better conditions, get fed daily, and receive all the respect and care that their adult counterparts did in the working world. Or at least that was the intention, but the sad reality was these girls were not always treated as such. As the test of time began to wear down on Lowell’s once promising enterprise the girls hours became longer, their food colder, and their pay a trifle of what was originally promised to them. And although it is undebatable that Lowell wasn't the shining picture of morality that it was originally thought to be, it is still debated by many whether or not the cruel environment these girls worked in was avoidable or not. Well frankly there always will be people who in the heat of a revolution are forced to do all the dirty work, but it is absurd to think that those people had to be as starving, beaten, weak, and above all things young as the children were in the mills in England, and the mill owners in Lowell weren't pictures of moral sanctity either. Things could certainly have been done in both countries to prevent the inexcusable state these girls were left in, and it wouldn't have been as hard as simply giving them some food that wasn't just a glass of blue milk.   

The strange thing about the conditions in Lowell however was that in the early years the conditions weren't really that harmful at all. In fact, famed Author Charles Dickens once came to visit the Lowell mills on his first trip to the US and he was shocked at how pristine and orderly they were kept (Doc.A). As he puts it, the difference between the Lowell mills and the state of the mills in his home country of England was like “The difference between good and evil”. This seems like it could possibly prove that the conditions of the mills, in America at least, were not as dismal as people said, but a couple decades after Dickens visit to the mills the conditions decreased rapidly. Over time overproduction of goods led to the wages of the children being cut significantly, and the conditions became slowly more unlivable, overproduction led to increased hours of the workers up to 11:00 at night, far more industrial accidents and deaths, and an overcrowded, unsanitary workplace just like the mills in England that Dickens loathed so much. These conditions could have been easily avoided, if the mill owners just kept the conditions the same as they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution, but instead they increased the work hours so the children could produce more goods even though there was already an overproduction, wages were cut even though the American economy was booming, and safety of the mills just simply should have been maintained no matter what, out of basic human decency and compassion.

the published letters of a mill girl from 1845 to 1849 (doc.C) sheds a little light on just how harmful the conditions in Lowell could be. Young Mary Paul, published letters to her father in Vermont during her tenure at the mills. She writes how she enjoys working in Lowell and how her health seemed to be fine, but in reality it had been deteriorating rapidly . Mary had told her father she was perfectly healthy to keep him from worrying, but in reality her health had been failing for the past 3 years years, and she constantly had to miss work days and was even fired for a time. Mary had to continue to work in these environments even in her terrible state, and she even documents how multiple people she knew died while on the job from various causes but still she kept on working. This shows not only how harmful the conditions were physically but also mentally. Mary was living in denial of her situation for years and after so long was completely unfazed by coworkers dying before her eyes.

But although Lowell’s conditions were inexcusable, It’s practically a Utopia when compared to the conditions in England. The testimony of a young former employee of one of the British mills, Hannah Goode, says in her inquiry (doc. D) that at work everyday when someone got drowsy that person would be brutally beaten by the overseers.  In her mill the age of one of the workers was 7 years old with over 20 kids under 9 years of age. They aren't even allowed to stop for any meals except at dinner time, no breaks or food for about 18 straight hours maybe more and sometimes the workers get out at 9:00 sometimes as late as 11:00. It is also made clear that the workers in these mills were not educated because Hannah states in her inquiry “I can read a little, I can’t write” which leads me to wonder why the Mill system implies that the ample age for workers is as young as seven years old,  the time when they should be taught how to read, write and count, little lone work a spinning jenny. For anyone to say that conditions these bad were unavoidable is just ignorant and shows obvious denial of the true severity of the condition, the Lowell mills weren't the only mills at the time of the industrial revolution and although you might think that Lowell was in an acceptable state the state of the English mills was inexcusable.

But in direct contrast to Charles Dickens’ view on the state of the Lowell mills another testimony reveals a more negative view to what was really going on there. In “The Observations of Young Bobbin Girls” (doc. B) the author states how he/she viewed the mill girls to be rather improper in nature. he/she was “struck with the impropriety of even so many as the twenty girls I saw” showing that dickens’ view on how pristine and organised the Lowell mills seemed to be was not uniform throughout. But this article gets to the route of another problem, one that I think ties together why these girls parents really sent them to the mills in the first place. The overseer of the mills states to the observer “Many parents did object to send their girls, but that the poverty of others, and not having any work to send them to left him not at any loss for hands”. I think this statement gets to the dark and gritty truth over why these girls stayed so long in the first place, it’s not that they wanted to stay and the overseers definitely weren't forcing them to, but instead it seemed they really had no choice regardless. They were so poor often times that they needed the money to support their family, and they needed the mill so they could get a decent meal, get a roof over their heads, and receive an education. It was a vicious unbreakable circle, it seemed that just as long as the working class stayed poor, and the mills promised a safe place for their daughters to be fed, housed, and educated then people will keep sending their daughters their and the machine kept on working, that's how they could afford to keep the conditions so bad because some of the girls had no choice in whether they could be there or not.

But the thing is is that none of this needed to happen at all, It seemed like Lowell had a pretty decent system going until it all fell apart at the seams. That’s what Dickens saw in Lowell, and it was definitely possible to maintain it, maybe if the mill owners put forth as much effort in maintaining the conditions as the mill workers did at using the spinning Jennies and Bobbins then people would look back on Lowell with fondness instead of fury. But the Industrial Revolution was arguably the biggest period of advancement in all of American history and without it we wouldn't have any of the perks and necessities that we squander today. But since the Industrial revolution was arguably the biggest period of manufacturing in our nations history too, for this event to occur there had to have been somebody appointed to do all the heavy lifting, it’s just a Shame that the people who had to carry this burden where about 10 years old, 5 ft. 2, and probably should’ve been learning how to spell spinning Jenny before they were learning how to use it.                                                               

          

My Experience as a Curator of the Industrial Revolution

I think the curating process was very beneficial in not only teaching us facts about the industrial revolution but also giving us a feeling of what life was actually like back then for the people that lived through it, whether it was the slaves who had to feed the growing demand for cotton or the children who worked all day in the mills or simply just people who worked at looms I feel like doing this project and viewing other groups made me realize how complex the industrial revolution was
from it's flashy exterior to it's rarely ever talked about dark side with the mills and the children that worked them.

Our exhibit was "A New Age is Looming Over the Horizon" Atticus came up with the idea rather out of the blue and we all instantly approved. Our sources for the project where a picture of a spinning jenny, a picture of a newly developed loom at the start of the revolution, a picture of the new looms being used in an American mill, a picture of a woman using one of these looms (depicting gender roles at that time) an article on how the industrial revolution impacted families, and a bar graph of London's rapid growth throughout the Industrial Revolution. we hope that viewers will take from our exhibit that such a simple invention like the loom can effect so much both positively by improving London's economy and negatively by effecting the dynamic of families during that time.

Something that I thought was very interesting that showed how the Industrial revolution benefited America and England was from the "Changes to life conditions due to the Industrial Revolution" exhibit which showed that the increase in factories led to the increase in good production which then not only raised the population because more people had access to better clothes and food in America and England then they could get in other countries but the individual wages of everyday workers were also raised due to the booming economy and the increase in productivity from machines like the steam engine and the loom. But not every statistic about the Industrial Revolution proved positive, another statistic from the "Unlawful Conditions, Dangerous Work spaces, and Mistreated Children"exhibit which showed that about 49% of child labor done in the mills in England and the US was done by children under 9 years of age.

These exhibits showed me that for every benefit that the Revolution had on modern day life like the world changing inventions, and the improvement of the world economy their was also a child that's life was consumed by the seemingly impossible labor put upon him by the revolution itself. Although it is clear that the impact the revolution had on the future is undeniable, the suffering of the children who lived during that time can't be forgotten.