# Mill City Artwork:  The Lowell Experiment



## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

In the early 1800s, Lowell, Massachusetts was perhaps the most famous city in the nation.  Men...and women...were offered "life on the Corporation".  The mills housed and fed their workers in modern boarding  houses, built a short walk from the factories themselves.  

In what became known as "The Lowell Experiment," corporate investors  specifically targeted women recruits for their mills.   They built  "proper" boarding houses that were offered to women  only, and kept under stead by a community matron, often with children of her own that were working in the mills. The women more often than not worked because  they wanted to...not because they had to.  They were generally not  in bad straits, they worked to improve their family's  standing, fund their own dowry, or to experience a life of independence  and cosmopolitan culture.  

Lowell's fame was not just its available work, it offered the highest wages in the nation, the highest standards of living, and unlike other industrial pursuits of the day, the Lowell mills paid cash instead of  Company Scrip.  The workers were provided with a dispensary and given free vaccinations.  The "Lowell Factory System" was called a miracle by some, and a Utopia by others.

As pressure to cut costs steadily rose, living and working conditions began to degrade.  Some women protested, others chose to leave mill life all together.   Some moved home, some got married, and others parlayed their financial and cultural enrichment in to a completely new career, such as politics -- a particularly notable achievement considering women would not regain the right to vote until well in to the next century.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city of Lowell has commissioned artists to tell more of Lowell's story...especially the story of the people themselves.

Feedback and comments welcome


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## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

I found this to be among the most moving pieces of artwork.  It is a granite sculpture made by Ellen Rothenber, in 1996.  The clock is directly across the canal from the site of the ladies' boarding houses.




Side Text:


_We the undersigned peaceable, industrious and hardworking men and  women of Lowell, in view of our condition -- the evils already come upon  us by toiling from 13 to 14 hours per day, confined in unhealthy  apartments, exposed to the contagion of air...hastening upon us through  pain, disease and privation, down to a premature grave, pray the  legislature to institute a 10 hour working day in all of the factories  of the state.

 Signed_ _
 J.Q. Adams Thayer
 Sarah G. Bagley
 James Carle 
 and 2000 others, mostly women

 Voice of Industry, January 15, 1845_


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## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

The text is an excerpt from "Weaving" by Lucy Larcom.  Lucy lost her father as a small child, leaving her mother to raise 10 children on her own.  Her mother moved the family to Lowell, where she took a job as supervisor of one of the women's boarding houses. Lucy was sent to the mills to work at age 11, where she would work for 10 years.  She later became a schoolteacher, author, and magazine editor.


_So up and down before her loom
She paces on, and to and fro,
Till sunset fills the dusty room
And makes the water redly glow
As if the Merrimack's calm flood
Were changed into a stream of blood

Too soon fulfilled, and all too true
The words she murmured as she wrought
But, weary weaver, not to you
Alone was war's stern message brought
"Woman!" int knelled from heart to heart
"Thy sister's keeper know thou art!"


_


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## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

Sarah G. Bagley was a mill worker that fought for the rights of workers, especially women, in the Lowell Mills.  Its been said that she organized night classes for less-educated women and had been fired from at least one mill for being a labor organizer.

Her efforts lead to the first time in American history that a state legislature stepped in to investigate working conditions...largely due to her efforts to get the workday in Massachusetts shortened to 10 hours.


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## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

An unattributed quote from the Voice of Industry, a labor newspaper started by Sarah Bagley and four other like-minded women.


















Burma Shave.  (just kidding...)


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## Carol (Aug 7, 2010)

Homage to Women
Mico Kaufman, 1984
Bronze and Granite


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