Mill Girl Research Paper

“Wages dropped and working conditions worsened” (“Harriet Hanson Robinson”). This is why many of the valued mill girls started to fight back. Lowell, a man who ran his own mill, gave young women a safe place to live and work in ,because they were all very valuable and important to his work. He provided a safe work environment and a secure place to sleep in at night. As a mill girl, having a safe place to live in was important, but textile mills began to drop the safe and respectable ways they ran things. This is one of the factors to what started the rise of mill girls against mill companies. During the Industrial Revolution, mill girls had been a valuable asset to companies and started to fight for women’s rights.

One way mill girls had

“Worked 12 hours a day Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday” (“The mill girls”). These girls had worked for half of their day more than half a week to help their families. They had to be strong for their families so they could barely stay on their feet. “As she gained more experience, a mill girl might move ahead over to the weaving process, where the cotton thread was woven on a loom into a finished cloth” (”The mill girls”). These girls would work hard to get better so they could get paid more. Working in the mills meant having to improve to move higher up in the jobs and earning more pay. “Some of the workers hired for Lowell’s mill were children” (“ Mill girls: harriet Hanson’s story”). Being so young was difficult and some of the other workers would try their best to help out younger workers. So, they would both be doing their job and also trying to help out a child in need of help. The mill girls gave an example that women can be hard working and independent without even knowing the influence that they had.

Mill girls also started to show that women deserved more freedom and rights by being a big part of the industrial revolution. “Without the mill girls working in those textile mills how else could we have made progress in the fabrication with cotton.” (Flores, Mila. “Mill Girls.” History Notebook. February 2nd. Page 178). If there weren’t ever

“Mill girls had been replaced in the mid-to late 1800s by Italian, Irish, and Portuguese immigrants who would work for lower wages” (“Harriet Hanson Robinson”). Although the textile mills thought they had found a better way to work without spending as much money on workers they were wrong. Most mill girls were already very experienced and good at their jobs, while immigrants needed to be taught all of their jobs and there was a strong language barrier which made everything more difficult. “One out of every three spinners, many under the age of twenty five, would die before completing ten years in the factory” (“Harriet Hanson Robinson”). With many of the mill girls not being able to survive in such harsh conditions and as they got fewer and fewer, it showed how important all of them were in the business. So, mill girls were proven to be a big part of society’s need for the distribution of cotton. Which showed what a big impact they had.

The Industrial Revolution needed mill girls to advance even further. Without the mill girls there wouldn’t have been anyone to help in the advancement of turning cotton into a much used and needed fabric. The women of later years had the mil girls to show you can stand up for yourself. To give the example that women too can be strong and independent. Mill girls were an important part of history and without them there might not be what there