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Camelot On The Merrimack Analysis

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The American Industrial Revolution was prompted mostly by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Stephen Yafa was the author of “Camelot on the Merrimack.” The word “Camelot” is unusual because of the situations of the mill girls’ working hours, low pay, and working conditions. “Camelot” is usually thought of a prefect, beautiful time, place, and situation, like a fairy tale. Yafa writes about Boston businessmen who made Lowell, Massachusetts the first planned industrial community. The mills (factories) were built, and instead of using men to run the textile (fabrics) mills, the Boston Associates used “healthy, young, farm girls to work the mills.” Often the girls were very young and were separated from their families, lived in boarding houses, and saved some of their very low wages to send back home to their parents and to save up for their dowries (to give to future husbands). At first, when Andrew Jackson came through, he saw the mill girls dressed nicely, with parasols (fancy umbrellas) walking together. President Jackson was impressed and compared these pretty mill girls with the dirty, ugly, girl workers in England, who were dressed in rags. When the girls were working, they were supervised by strict men all day. Life as a mill girl at the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution was very hard. They worked 14 hour days, only …show more content…

The Industrial Revolution meant that they would need to buy expensive farming equipment, which many could not afford and also the demand for the amount of crops needed to sell to the textile mills was very overwhelming to the small farmers. The invention of the cotton gin led to plantation owners using slaves to pick the cotton and use the cotton gin. This also led to a caste system in the urban population. Also, many urban New Englanders thought the mills represented a form of

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