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Why does Lyddie feel she has been discarded like dry husks in the wind?
Quick answer:
Lyddie feels discarded like "dry husks in the wind" because she sees the factory girls, including herself, being used up and then cast aside by the factory owners. The process of threshing and winnowing, which separates useful grain from useless chaff, mirrors how the owners exploit the girls' youth and energy for profit, only to abandon them when they become sick or weak, as seen with her friend Betsy's departure due to illness.
Lyddie 's quote appears in chapter 14, and it is a perfect quote for Lyddie because she is a former farm girl; however, the quote will not make sense to a reader if that reader has no idea about what is involved with the processes of threshing and winnowing. Threshing is the first part involved with securing the edible part of grain from the husks and straw. Threshing can be done in a variety of methods, but it generally involves some kind of beating or grinding process. What this will do is smash the dry part of the crop and free the edible part. The problem is that what a person is left with is a mixture of edible part and dried out, useless husk. This is where winnowing comes in. A person can put the crushed husks and edible part into a basket and start tossing the mixture up...
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into the air over and over again. The wind will blow away the dried out "chaff" and leave the desired product in the basket. Lyddie feels this is what the factories are doing to the girls. The working conditions are so demanding that the girls are crushed physically and in spirit to the point that they are left like useless husks. The factories then cast aside the girl like chaff to the wind and hire a new girl in her place.
The quote you mentioned comes from Chapter 14.
In that chapter, Betsy develops a cough and never quite recovers her strength. She becomes so weak that she has to leave her factory job. Betsy's uncle comes to take her back to Maine in April. Before she leaves, Betsy assures Lyddie that she will be back in a year; she also voices her desire to have enough money to attend college one day.
As she sees her friend off, Lyddie becomes convinced that Betsy will never be strong enough to work thirteen to fourteen hours a day in the factory again. Lyddie decides that, when she is ready to the leave the factory, she will sign the petition for Betsy's sake.
For her part, Lyddie feels that it is wrong for the factory owners "to suck the strength of their youth, then cast them off like dry husks to the wind." To Lyddie, the factory owners care only about their profit margin. They make their employees toil for long hours in hazardous working conditions. Young girls like Rachel and Betsy are considered expendable. When workers become sick from the toxic air, they are cast aside. The factory owners take no responsibility for the girls' suffering, which means that the girls have no recourse to competent medical care. In Lyddie's mind, these girls are cast away like "dry husks to the wind." They are treated as no more than encumbrances to be discarded once their health fails.