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Women in the 19th Century - Harriet H. Robinson (Report Date 1883)

HARRIET H. ROBINSON (REPORT DATE 1883)

SOURCE: Robinson, Harriet H. "Early Factory Labor in New England." In Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Fourteenth Annual Report, pp. 380-92. Boston: Wright & Potter, 1883.

In the following report, Robinson describes the experiences of women factory workers in Lowell, Massachusetts.

In what follows, I shall confine myself to a description of factory life in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1848, since, with that phase of Early Factory Labor in New England, I am the most familiar—because I was a part of it. In 1832, Lowell was little more than a factory village. Five "corporations" were started, and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of work-people; stories that reached the ears of mechanics'...

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