Article contents
Labor in a Massachusetts Cotton Mill, 1853–601
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Abstract
Skilled textile workers migrated from Scotland to Massachusetts in the 1850's because of a large wage differential and low steerage rates for the transatlantic passage. For each one of 56 women weavers in the Lyman Mills, expenditures on current consumption took less than 75 per cent of income. But the circumstances were unusual, so this sample does not permit any conclusions about the role of wage-earners' savings in the accumulation of capital in New England. In this mill, two-thirds of the labor force in 1860 had been working there less than three years. The impact of this high degree of labor mobility on labor relations and on the technology of the industry is tentatively assessed.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954
References
2 Allen, Zachariah, The Science of Mechanics, as Applied to the Present Improvements in the Useful Arts in Europe, and in the United States of America … (Providence, 1829), 350.Google Scholar
3 [Josiah Bigelow], Review of “An Address to the Working-Men of New-England, … By Seth Luther….” By a Factory Hand of Waltham (Cambridge, 1832), 23.
4 Appleton, Nathan, Labor, Its Relations in Europe and the United States Compared (Boston, 1844), 12–14.Google Scholar
5 Aiken, John, Labor and Wages, at Home and Abroad (Lowell, 1849), 16.Google Scholar
6 See his speech at New Haven, Conn., 6 March 1860, in Nicolay, John G. and Hay, John, editors, Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, 2 vols. (New York, 1894), I, 625.Google Scholar In his Annual Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, at Milwaukee, 30 Sept. 1859, Lincoln declared: “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. … If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.” Ibid., pp. 581–82.
7 Luther, Seth, An Address to the Working Men of New England, on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America …, 2d ed. (New York, 1833), p. 6.Google Scholar
8 The Condition of Labor: An Address to the Labor Reform League of New England; … by One of the Members (Boston, 1847), pp. 9, 10, 16.
9 “Beauties of Factory Life,” Factory Girl's Album and Operative's Advocate (Exeter, N. H.), 21 Nov. 1846, quoted by Stearns, Bertha Monica, “Early Factory Magazines in New England,” Journal of Economic and Business History (Cambridge, Mass.), II (1930), 703.Google Scholar
10 Boston Quarterly Review, July, 1840, quoted in Bartlett, Elisha, A Vindication of the Character and Condition of the Females Employed in the Lowell Mills … (Lowell, 1841), 3.Google Scholar
11 New England Offering (Lowell, Mass.), II (March, 1849), 71–72; see also I (June, 1848), 71–72.
12 Clementine Averill, “Letter from a Factory-Girl to Senator Clemens,” dated Lowell, 6 March 1850, and published in New York Tribune, quoted by Robinson, Harriet H., Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls (New York, 1898), 194–5Google Scholar; also Miles, Henry A., Lowell, As It Was, and As It Is (Lowell, 1845), pp. 114–5Google Scholar; Bartlett, Vindication, 21–22.
13 Lyell, CharlesA Second Visit to the United States of North America, 2 vols. (London, 1849), I, 109–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Friends of American Industry, New York Convention, Report on the Production and Manufacture of Cotton (Boston, 1832, report of a committee, P. T. Jackson, chairman), 12–13Google Scholar; see also Luther, An Address, 22–23, 23n.; [Bige-low], Review of “An Address …,” 17, 27; Robinson, Loom and Spindle, p. 76; Scoresby, William, American Factories and Their Female Operatives … (Boston, 1845), 32–34.Google Scholar
15 Ware, Norman, The Industrial Worker, 1840–1860 (Boston, 1924), chap. viii, x.Google Scholar
16 [Bigelow], Review of “An Address …,” p. 21; Robinson, Loom and Spindle, 194–5.
17 Ware, Caroline F., Early New England Cotton Manufacture (Boston, 1931), 251–2Google Scholar.
18 Bunn, Alfred, Old England and New England, 2 vols. (London, 1853), I, 195Google Scholar; Robinson, Loom and Spindle, 89–91; Miles, Lowell, 67–76; Scoresby, American Factories, 57–62, 28–29; Larcom, Lucy, A New England Girlhood (Boston, 1889)Google Scholar, passim.
19 See Benton's speech in Lowell, 16 Jan. 1857, quoted by Cowley, Charles, Illustrated History of Lowell, rev. ed. (Boston, 1868), 154–5.Google Scholar
20 Abbott, Edith, Women in Industry (New York, 1910), pp. 125–30.Google Scholar
21 Ware, Early New England Cotton Manufacture, 268.
22 Shlakman, Vera, Economic History of a Factory Town: A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts (Northampton, Mass., Smith College Studies in History, Vol. XX, 1934–1935), 63.Google Scholar
23 Josephson, Hannah, The Golden Threads: New England's Mill Girls and Magnates (New York, 1949), 289n.Google Scholar
24 Green, Constance McLaughlin, Holyoke, Massachusetts (New Haven, 1939), 44.Google Scholar
25 Handlin, Oscar, Boston's Immigrants, 1790–1865: A Study in Acculturation (Cambridge, 1941), 59.Google Scholar
26 Ashton, T. S., “The Standard of Life of the Workers in England, 1790–1830,” Journal of Economic History, Supplement IX (1949), 19–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 US Senate, 61st Cong., 2nd Sess., Doc. No. 645, Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States (Washington, D. C, 1910), Vol. IX, History of Women in Industry in the United States, by Helen L. Sumner, p. 34.
28 Shlakman, Economic History of a Factory Town; Green, Holyoke; Knowlton, Evelyn H., Pepperell's Progress: History of a Cotton Textile Company, 1844–1945 (Cambridge, 1948), 58–66, 153–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Norton, Nancy P., “Labor in the Early New England Carpet Industry,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XXVI (1952), 19–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Green, Holyoke, 34–40.
30 Bill presented to Charles Cochran by John Gebbie, solicitor, of Glasgow, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
31 Ledger LH-1, ibid.
32 The entries for earnings in Ledger LH-1 have been checked against the entries in the payroll ledgers (Payroll Ledgers LX-2, LX-3, LY-1, Lyman Mills Papers), and have been confirmed in every case.
33 Income spent to repay a debt is obviously equivalent to savings, in the sense that it is withheld from current consumption.
34 Statement signed by Christina McKimm et al., 16 July 1853, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
35 Receipts for these drafts are in Box LW-1, ibid.
36 Hansen, Marcus Lee, The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 (Cambridge, 1940), 281–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Edward Everett Hale declared in 1852 that he had never seen a letter from Ireland to an immigrant in the United States “which contained much more than congratulations that the reader had arrived in a land of liberty, — and acknowledgements of remittances, or requests for them.” Hale, Edward E., Letters on Irish Emigration (Boston, 1852), 6.Google Scholar
38 Green, Holyoke, 44.
39 Ware, Early New England Cotton Manufacture, 209. The Amoskeag Company recruited skilled weavers in England as early as 1865. See Creamer, Daniel, “Recruiting Contract Laborers for the Amoskeag Mills,” Journal of Economic History, I (1941), 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 Martin, Edgar W., The Standard of Living in 1860: American Consumption Levels on the Eve of the Civil War (Chicago, 1942), 398.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., 401.
42 DeWitt, Francis, Statistical Information Relating to Certain Branches of Industry in Massachusetts, for the Year Ending June 1, 1855 (Boston, 1856), 220Google Scholar; Warner, Oliver, Statistical Information Rehting to Certain Branches of Industry in Massachusetts, for the Year Ending May 1, 1865 (Boston, 1866), 252.Google Scholar
43 Green, Holyoke, 59.
44 J. T. Davis to Stephen Holman, 24 Oct. 1857, Box LW-1, ibid.
45 Quoted by Green, Holyoke, 60.
46 David Daig to Stephen Holman, 10 April 1856, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
47 George Brown to Stephen Holman, 3 Feb. 1857, ibid.
48 Payroll Ledger LY-2, ibid.
49 Mrs. Hugh Bowie to Stephen Holman, 19 June 1856, Box LW-1, ibid.
50 Jane Wallace to Stephen Holman, 2 Dec. 1857, ibid.
51 David Daig to Stephen Holman, 10 Apr. 1856, ibid.
52 Jane Wallace to Stephen Holman, 2 Sept. 1857, ibid.
53 Gilbert Wilson to Stephen Holman, 3 Sept. 1858, ibid.
54 Printed circulars of Enoch Train & Company and its Boston agents, ibid.
55 This tax had a tortuous history. The Passenger Act of 1837 in Massachusetts provided for a head tax on alien passengers. This tax was stricken down by the U. S. Supreme Court on 7 Feb. 1849 (Smith vs. Turner and Norria vs. City of Boston, 48 US 282, 7 Howard 283, 12 L.Ed. 702). Massachusetts then passed a new act requiring the master, owner or consignee of every ship bringing alien passengers to the state to post a bond of $1,000 for each such person which would be forfeited if the person became a public charge at any time during his life. In the case of able-bodied aliens, this bond could be commuted by payment of a head tax of $2.00 for each alien. The shipping companies, rather than post the impossible aggregate of bonds, paid the commutation fee whenever they were permitted to do so (Hale, Letters on Irish Emigration, 24–27). A similar act in New York was declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1875 (Henderson et al. vs. Mayor of New York et al., 92 US 259).
56 Carey, H. C., Essay on the Rate of Wages … (Philadelphia, 1835), 88n.Google Scholar
57 De Witt, Statistical Information … Massachusetts … June 1, 1855, p. 220.
58 The word “town” is used of course in its New England sense, not in the more general sense of an urban community.
59 DeWitt, Francis, Abstract of the Census of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, … 1855 … (Boston, 1857), 24.Google Scholar
60 This factor does not greatly affect any specific entry.
61 In addition to the 66 women included in Table 2, Table 3 covers the following groups: (a) 33 women weavers, 11 piecers, and 7 fly-frame girls, who arrived in Holyoke about 1 June, 1854; (b) 34 persons (of whom 29 were women weavers), who arrived in Holyoke in late October, 1855.
62 In the usual modern terminology, these jobs would be designated foreman, assistant foreman, slasher tender, and loomfixer.
63 In the Pepperell mills at Biddeford, Maine, from 1870 to 1920, the managerial ranks — agents, superintendents, overseers — “stayed with the company for long periods.” Knowlton, Pepperell's Progress, 153. The writer found a similar result in a study of the managerial ranks in the anthracite industry in 1902; see an article based on this research which will appear soon in the Journal of Economic History.
64 Massachusetts House Document No. 50, 1845, reprinted in Commons, John R.et al., editors, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), VIII, 146.Google Scholar
65 Miles, Lowell, 194.
66 Ibid., 165–91.
67 Green, Holyoke, 28–29n, 41–44.
68 Mary Morrison to Stephen Holman, 28 May 1856, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
69 Knowlton, Pepperell's Progress, 59.
70 This account is based on several memoranda in the Miscellaneous administrative papers, Vol. 19, Hamilton Mfg. Co. Papers, Baker Library, Harvard University.
71 Register LA-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
72 Quoted by Green, Holyoke, 48–49.
73 Jane Wallace to Stephen Holman, 8 Dee. 1858, Box LW-1, Lyman Mills Papers.
74 Same to same, 9 Oct. 1858, ibid.
75 Memorandum labeled “Mr. Mills letter of instructions to me when going to New York to make arrangements for DeWylder [?],” ibid.
76 A. G. Goodwin to Stephen Holman, 16 Nov. 1854, ibid. Goodwin was superintendent of the Office of the Commissioner of Alien Passengers in Boston.
77 Bartlett, Vindication, 14.
78 Lowell, John A., “Patrick Tracy Jackson,” in Hunt, Freeman, ed., Lives of American Merchants, 2 vols. (New York, 1858), I, 564–5Google Scholar. Compare Chancellor Harper's comment that the free laborer “may change his employer if he is dissatisfied with his conduct towards him; but this is a privilege he would in the majority of cases gladly abandon, and render the connection between them indissoluble.” [Harper, Williamet al.], The Pro-Slavery Argument (Philadelphia, 1853), 52–53.Google Scholar
79 Batchelder, Samuel, Introduction and Early Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in the United States (Boston, 1863), 89.Google Scholar
80 Montgomery, James, A Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States of America … (Glasgow, 1840), 56–57Google Scholar, Montgomery, a native of Glasgow, was brought to the United States in 1837 as superintendent of the York Mfg. Co. at Saco, Maine.
81 Carey, Essay on the Rate of Wages, 78–79.
82 Appleton, Nathan, Introduction of the Power Loom, and Origin of Lowell (Lowell, 1858), 32.Google Scholar
83 For a description of the strike of 1836 in Lowell, see Robinson, Loom and Spindle, 83–86.
84 Shlakman, Economic History of a Factory Town, 121–3.
85 Ware, The Industrial Worker, 134.
86 Abbott, Women in Industry, 129, 131.
- 8
- Cited by