Girls from Lowell, Massachusetts, worked hard for around 14 hours each day in dust and lint filled air in the mid 1800’s. In the book, “Lyddie”, by Katherine Paterson; the main character, Lyddie, is one of the girls from the factory. Lyddie is a young teenage girl who grew up on a farm in Vermont with her mom and her three younger siblings. Her dad left her at a young age which caused her mom to go crazy, leaving Lyddie in charge of taking care of the rest of the family. Her dad left her family with so much debts making her have to rent out the farm and work at Lowell. The factory offered high pay, but desired hard work in a poor conditioned area. This left many factory girls very sick, and almost causing them to die. Many girls started to protest, forming the petition. …show more content…
Lyddie should choose to sign the petition. With nothing to lose, Lyddie can help her friend Diana, and help the girls around her to avoid working in a toxic area for a long amount of time and the long working hours each girl must participate in each day.
One reason Lyddie should sign the petition is because the working conditions in the Factory are harmful to all the factory girls containing toxic material from the machines filling the air. When Lyddie just figures out that Betsy has to go home because of a sickness of the factory in chapter fourteen, she states while Betsy is leaving to go home in the boardinghouse, “It ain’t right for this place to suck the strength of their youth, then cast them off like dry husks to the wind.”(Paterson, p.113) Therefore, the lint and dust filling the air while girls work each day is making them so sick that they can’t gather the strength up to work hard again. The working conditions is making it very easy for girls to develop strong sicknesses, that could cause them to end up having to leave the factory. If Lyddie were to catch a virus, she could be
Workers rights were very minimal and their was uproar among the workers. Many lower class impoverished workers forced to terrible conditions and
She asked for a transfer to the drawing room… the air was cleaner in the drawing room, there was much less work. ”(112) In the factory, the air was polluted and unsafe for the workers the breath in.with all the dust and lint from the wool and material they used, the dust would go everywhere and it was affecting the workers lungs. Lyddie could sign the petition and have to worry about getting getting injured a lot less, her lungs wouldn’t get so sore as much so she wouldn’t get sick, she wouldn’t be so sore all the
Since it would be difficult to replace a large amount of workers, strike was an efficient way of getting attention. However, the factory owners could not allow those young girls to teach them how to run their business. “They are biting the hands that feed them,” said in the PBS documentary. (Wignot, Triangle Fire) Because of their wealth and social status, they had the money and power to bribe local policemen and judges while average working-class people did not had chance to know those people.
This evidence shows why Lyddie should leave the factory because Mr. Marsden was grabbing Lyddie and trying to kiss her which is assault and Lyddie can't tell anyone or stick up for herself because she would get fired from the job, or get demoted and not make as much money. The treatment and well-being of the girl weren't very good the mill worker, especially Mr. Marsden Lyddie would be assaulted and harassed. Lyddie should also leave because of the food, it was moldy and old which could make the girls very
And what was she to do with Rachel?”(122) Lyddie worked hard for the money she needed to go back home. When she finds out she can’t even do that, she doesn’t know what to do. Even though she doesn’t know what to do now, she should not sign the petition! She instead should wait it out until she knows what to do.
So, this is why Lyddie is not free. Lyddie considers herself not free because she works long hours at the mill. “Even when the girls were free at 7:00,it was to push and shove their way across the street to their boarding houses,bolt down their hearty breakfast,and rush back,stomachs
Jumping forward to 1909, it became the rising of the women. Once again women are fighting what they believe in when working in the factories. However, this is the most famous strike that has taken place against International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). The women started to picket them, but ended up getting arrested for doing so. One day 20-30 thousand people went on strike; they got strike pay, publicity, and legal support from the WTUL to continue the strike against the factories.
I´m worn out Amelia, Were all worn out.(91)¨ Betsy pointed out how long the hours were at the factory and that everyone is tired and worn out. The petition would let the children working in the factories have reasonable hours. Brigid, a new worker at the factory, is being taught how to work the loom with the reluctant assistance of Lyddie. ¨Forget everything else but the loom.” ¨But I canna forget,¨ Brigid cried out.
In America’s history, child labor was fiercely criticized. Many activists of child labor laws and women’s suffrage strived to introduce their own viewpoints to the country. Florence Kelley was a reformer who successfully changed the mindset of many Americans through her powerful and persuading arguments. Florence Kelley’s carefully crafted rhetoric strategies such as pathos, repetition, and sarcasm generates an effective and thought provoking tone that was in favor of women’s suffrage and child labor laws. Florence Kelley uses pathos continuously throughout her speech.
People who endure dislocation feel out of place and have many mixed emotions. Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” tells the story of a group of girls who suffer from lycanthropy including Jeanette, Claudette, and Mirabella. The “pack” of girls go through many stages to rehabilitate to their human identity. The girls experience culture shock and have to work as they progress through the stage.
Because the Kelvey's were children of a washer women, they were treated as outsiders. An example of this is in paragraph 15 where it says "Even the teachers had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers. " This excerpt from the story shows that the Kelvey children were put on the outside, and treated like outsiders because of something they cannot
In her speech addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association on the topic of child labor, Florence Kelley bases her argument, through the use of logos, cacophony, and rhetorical questions on the ethical merit against child labor. Establishing her main arguments, and introducing the topic at hand, Kelley provides statistical evidence by which she conveys the pandemic of child labor. By stating that, “We have, in this country, two million children who are earning their bread,” she establishes the idea that child labor is widespread throughout the union and further notes the idea by describing the alarming trend of low wage-earning children growing as a demographic. She also notes it is especially common for girls between the ages
Another result of the Triangle Factory fire that resulted in change in the American workplace was the attempts of labor unions and strikes. Prior to the fire, in 1909, one of the more notable strikes dubbed the "Uprising of 20,000" was organized primarily by female immigrant garment workers because of the awful conditions, long hours, and low wages they were made to work in due to the lack of options available to them (Pool, 2012). The primary challenge was to get attention paid to the mistreatment of immigrant workers. While there were short term agreements for their demands, the strike ultimately failed, however where it did succeed was exposing poor working conditions and stirring a debate about what counted as public and private (Pool,
One reason Lyddie should sign the petition is for better hours and wages. One example was one day at the mill Lyddie was telling herself “She needed the money. She had to have the money” (89). In this part of the book Lyddie is working on four looms just to earn a little bit of money. For all the hard work she is doing she needs more money and signing the petition may help in doing so.
Factories were paying far too little for someone to feed their whole family for that little, so many either would die or would turn to crime to survive; these laborers wanted equality. Men, women, and children were working and got employed in factories to work, and the dangerous and strenuous labor that children were put through to help the family expense caused many young children to die. Workers individually could not stop corporations, but collectively they could make an impact on their wages. The corporations eventually had to succumb to the pressure of labor supplies because the National Trade Union convinced the majority of the labor force to work from 12 hours a day to 10 hours. After the labor unions won, workers worked less, and they still had the same salary.