WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.020 Welcome to today's deep dive. I'm really glad 00:00:02.020 --> 00:00:03.839 you are joining us today because our mission 00:00:03.839 --> 00:00:08.320 is to explore A truly fascinating historical 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:10.619 source. Yeah. It's a very comprehensive Wikipedia 00:00:10.619 --> 00:00:12.939 article we've been looking at. Right. And we 00:00:12.939 --> 00:00:15.599 are going to unpack how a specific group of young 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:18.800 women in 19th century Massachusetts essentially 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:21.500 beta tested the American Industrial Revolution. 00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:25.059 And the early labor movements. Exactly. And the 00:00:25.059 --> 00:00:28.339 very concept of women's economic independence. 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:30.739 To give you the big picture here, we are talking 00:00:30.739 --> 00:00:34.210 about. The Lowell Mill girls. These were young 00:00:34.210 --> 00:00:37.549 female workers, mostly the daughters of New England 00:00:37.549 --> 00:00:40.810 farmers. Who were recruited in the early 1800s. 00:00:40.810 --> 00:00:42.850 Right. They were typically between the ages of 00:00:42.850 --> 00:00:45.789 15 and 35, though. And this is a harsh reality 00:00:45.789 --> 00:00:48.030 of the time, somewhere as young as 10. And they 00:00:48.030 --> 00:00:50.350 went to work in the booming textile mills of 00:00:50.350 --> 00:00:52.490 Lowell, Massachusetts. And for you listening, 00:00:52.609 --> 00:00:54.070 this might sound like ancient history, but it 00:00:54.070 --> 00:00:56.130 is so relevant to things we talk about today. 00:00:56.469 --> 00:00:58.689 Absolutely. Like discussions about hustle culture, 00:00:58.829 --> 00:01:02.890 you know, or the true cost of... Yeah. And even 00:01:02.890 --> 00:01:05.430 how the physical spaces we live and work in end 00:01:05.430 --> 00:01:07.189 up shaping our communities. OK, let's unpack 00:01:07.189 --> 00:01:10.150 this. Because Francis Cabot Lowell had this original 00:01:10.150 --> 00:01:13.590 pitch that sounded amazing on paper. He really 00:01:13.590 --> 00:01:16.109 had to sell it. American society was pretty skeptical 00:01:16.109 --> 00:01:18.569 of industrialization at that point. Because everyone 00:01:18.569 --> 00:01:21.010 knew about the British mills, the horrifying 00:01:21.010 --> 00:01:24.069 Dickensian conditions over there. Right. Poverty, 00:01:24.069 --> 00:01:27.950 filth, danger. So to avoid that, Lowell offered 00:01:27.950 --> 00:01:30.780 a package that seemed... I mean, it seemed genuinely 00:01:30.780 --> 00:01:33.640 revolutionary. Good pay. About $3 to $4 a week. 00:01:33.819 --> 00:01:36.359 Nice company -built boarding houses. Educational 00:01:36.359 --> 00:01:38.099 opportunities, too. For a lot of these women, 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:41.000 this was their first real shot at economic freedom. 00:01:41.239 --> 00:01:43.879 They could save money, maybe fund a brother's 00:01:43.879 --> 00:01:46.359 education, or just buy their own things. What's 00:01:46.359 --> 00:01:48.579 fascinating here is the stark contrast between 00:01:48.579 --> 00:01:52.099 that marketed utopian ideal and the reality on 00:01:52.099 --> 00:01:54.340 the factory floor. Because the sober reality. 00:01:55.019 --> 00:01:57.400 was grueling brutal if you look at the source 00:01:57.400 --> 00:02:00.560 text the work days were 12 to 14 hours long which 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:03.180 adds up to a 73 hour work week and they only 00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:05.959 got a meager 30 minutes for breakfast just imagine 00:02:05.959 --> 00:02:08.539 the sensory overload The source has accounts 00:02:08.539 --> 00:02:11.860 describing the machinery noise as frightful and 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:14.879 infernal. Frightful and infernal. And it wasn't 00:02:14.879 --> 00:02:17.759 just the noise. The process needed high humidity 00:02:17.759 --> 00:02:20.800 so the cotton threads wouldn't snap. So the overseers 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:22.840 would actually nail the windows shut. In the 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:25.280 middle of summer. In the summer. Just sweltering 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:28.259 heat. And the air was incredibly thick with cotton 00:02:28.259 --> 00:02:30.639 dust. They were just inhaling that constantly. 00:02:30.879 --> 00:02:33.219 Which leads to a really shocking statistic from 00:02:33.219 --> 00:02:35.759 the text. Yeah. The average working life of a 00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:38.180 mill girl. was only three years. Three years. 00:02:38.360 --> 00:02:40.500 Because the physical and mental toll was just 00:02:40.500 --> 00:02:43.599 too high. Respiratory issues, sheer exhaustion. 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:46.159 They just couldn't physically do it longer than 00:02:46.159 --> 00:02:48.439 that. But the public didn't know that because 00:02:48.439 --> 00:02:52.039 the company ran this incredible illusion, a VIP 00:02:52.039 --> 00:02:54.560 tour illusion. Oh, the PR machine was working 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:57.069 overtime. Right. When famous figures visited, 00:02:57.229 --> 00:03:00.250 like Charles Dickens or Harriet Martineau, they 00:03:00.250 --> 00:03:03.009 were given this highly sanitized tour. The saw 00:03:03.009 --> 00:03:04.889 wood management wanted them to see. Exactly. 00:03:05.169 --> 00:03:07.870 Harriet Martineau left praising the workers as 00:03:07.870 --> 00:03:10.689 well -dressed and ladylike. Completely missing 00:03:10.689 --> 00:03:13.349 the dark realities those operatives were actually 00:03:13.349 --> 00:03:16.569 experiencing. They successfully hid the 73 -hour 00:03:16.569 --> 00:03:19.129 weeks and the lung damage. But the workers knew. 00:03:19.789 --> 00:03:22.509 The text mentions a worker who wrote under the 00:03:22.509 --> 00:03:26.080 name Juliana. who basically said, yeah, it's 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:28.139 a pretty picture for the visitors, but the sober 00:03:28.139 --> 00:03:31.240 reality is quite another thing altogether. Which 00:03:31.240 --> 00:03:33.939 brings us to their life off the floor. The company 00:03:33.939 --> 00:03:36.120 mandated they live in corporate boarding houses. 00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:39.699 Up to 26 women packed into a single house. With 00:03:39.699 --> 00:03:43.300 six women sharing one bedroom. A strict 10 .000 00:03:43.300 --> 00:03:46.979 PM curfew. Mandatory church attendance. And house 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:49.000 mothers constantly watching their every move 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:51.819 to ensure moral purity. Here's where it gets 00:03:51.819 --> 00:03:53.780 really interesting. Because the psychological 00:03:53.780 --> 00:03:56.860 and sociological result of this totally backfired 00:03:56.860 --> 00:03:59.039 on the company. Yeah, they wanted control. Right. 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:01.319 But the forced proximity didn't just ensure they 00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.099 were well behaved. It created an intense familial 00:04:04.099 --> 00:04:07.080 community. A sisterhood. Exactly. When newcomers 00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:08.960 arrived from these isolated farms, they were 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.680 mentored by the veterans. They built this powerful 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:14.419 unified bond because they were shoulder to shoulder 00:04:14.419 --> 00:04:17.939 24 -7. And it led to this incredible intellectual 00:04:17.939 --> 00:04:20.839 culture among the mill girl. They were so driven. 00:04:21.370 --> 00:04:23.490 They formed their own circulating libraries. 00:04:23.810 --> 00:04:27.290 They paid 25 cents to attend public lyceum lectures 00:04:27.290 --> 00:04:30.170 on botany and astronomy. After working 13 hours. 00:04:30.430 --> 00:04:33.449 Right. They even defied factory rules by pinning 00:04:33.449 --> 00:04:35.889 mathematical problems or verses of poetry to 00:04:35.889 --> 00:04:37.889 their spinning frames. So they could memorize 00:04:37.889 --> 00:04:40.209 them while the machines ran. It's amazing. And 00:04:40.209 --> 00:04:43.370 you see this intellectual life play out in these 00:04:43.370 --> 00:04:45.610 dueling publications mentioned in the source. 00:04:45.889 --> 00:04:49.089 Yeah. On one hand, you had the Lowell offering. 00:04:49.550 --> 00:04:51.850 Which sometimes acted as rosy propaganda for 00:04:51.850 --> 00:04:54.329 the factory. It was organized by a local reverend 00:04:54.329 --> 00:04:56.730 and management loved to hand it out to visitors 00:04:56.730 --> 00:04:58.850 to prove how enlightened their system was. But 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:00.889 then you had the voice of industry. Which was 00:05:00.889 --> 00:05:03.750 the gritty, unfiltered truth. They published 00:05:03.750 --> 00:05:06.689 sharp critiques of industrialism. There's this 00:05:06.689 --> 00:05:08.850 one quote from an exhausted worker that really 00:05:08.850 --> 00:05:11.589 stuck with me. She noted that after 13 hours 00:05:11.589 --> 00:05:13.649 of monotonous work, it was basically impossible 00:05:13.649 --> 00:05:16.990 to apply her mind to deep and long continued 00:05:16.990 --> 00:05:19.149 thought. She just wanted to soak her... aching 00:05:19.149 --> 00:05:22.009 feet and read a novel. Which is so human. Who 00:05:22.009 --> 00:05:24.509 wouldn't? And that tension, that exhaustion, 00:05:24.730 --> 00:05:28.069 it eventually reached a breaking point. The 1834 00:05:28.069 --> 00:05:31.829 strike. Yes. And economic depression hits. And 00:05:31.829 --> 00:05:35.069 the board of directors demands a 12 .5 % wage 00:05:35.069 --> 00:05:38.399 cut. Which is a massive hit to their pay. But 00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:40.720 the women don't just complain. They organize 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:43.000 a turnout. Which was their word for a strike. 00:05:43.079 --> 00:05:45.259 Right. And they were so strategic, they immediately 00:05:45.259 --> 00:05:47.759 went and withdrew all their savings. Which caused 00:05:47.759 --> 00:05:50.839 a literal run on two local banks. They weaponized 00:05:50.839 --> 00:05:53.199 their own money. Now, this strike ultimately 00:05:53.199 --> 00:05:57.079 failed after a few days, but it completely shocked 00:05:57.079 --> 00:05:59.519 management. The source notes that the company 00:05:59.519 --> 00:06:01.839 agent viewed it as a betrayal of femininity. 00:06:01.959 --> 00:06:03.939 Because they expected these young women to just 00:06:03.939 --> 00:06:06.709 be submissive. Exactly. Yeah. But two years later, 00:06:06.790 --> 00:06:09.889 in 1836, the conflict flared up again. The rent 00:06:09.889 --> 00:06:12.250 hike. The company tried to absorb their own rising 00:06:12.250 --> 00:06:15.129 costs by hiking the girls' rent in the boarding 00:06:15.129 --> 00:06:17.829 houses. Basically another wage cut. And this 00:06:17.829 --> 00:06:20.410 leads to an absolutely memorable anecdote from 00:06:20.410 --> 00:06:22.920 the source tax. Harriet Hansen Robinson. Yes. 00:06:23.339 --> 00:06:26.100 Harriet Hansen Robinson. Yeah. She was an 11 00:06:26.100 --> 00:06:29.040 -year -old doffer. A doffer is the girl who replaces 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:31.519 the full bobbins on the machines. Right. While 00:06:31.519 --> 00:06:33.300 the older girls are hesitating about walking 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:36.000 out, this child stands up on a pump in the courtyard. 00:06:36.379 --> 00:06:38.800 An 11 -year -old. And delivers a rousing speech 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:41.500 to her peers. The first time a woman had ever 00:06:41.500 --> 00:06:44.939 spoken publicly in Lowell. And it worked. This 00:06:44.939 --> 00:06:48.279 strike attracted 1 ,500 workers. They entirely 00:06:48.279 --> 00:06:51.339 shut down the mills. And it resulted in a massive 00:06:51.339 --> 00:06:54.620 victory. The company actually rescinded the rent 00:06:54.620 --> 00:06:56.939 hike. It's just incredible. And they didn't stop 00:06:56.939 --> 00:06:59.819 there. This momentum led to formal unionization. 00:07:00.040 --> 00:07:03.500 By 1845, they formed the Lowell Female Labor 00:07:03.500 --> 00:07:06.579 Reform Association. The country's first union 00:07:06.579 --> 00:07:09.019 of working women. They gathered thousands of 00:07:09.019 --> 00:07:11.240 signatures petitioning the Massachusetts legislature. 00:07:11.930 --> 00:07:14.250 for a 10 -hour workday which sparked the first 00:07:14.250 --> 00:07:16.689 governmental labor investigations in u .s history 00:07:16.689 --> 00:07:19.389 working 73 hours a week and they still managed 00:07:19.389 --> 00:07:21.790 to organize all of this and their political savvy 00:07:21.790 --> 00:07:23.949 was off the charts i actually laughed out loud 00:07:23.949 --> 00:07:26.069 at this one detail in the source scholler incident 00:07:26.069 --> 00:07:28.980 yes So the legislative committee chairman, William 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:31.360 Scholar, dismisses their concerns. He basically 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:34.139 says the state can't regulate working hours. 00:07:34.319 --> 00:07:36.540 And keep in mind, these women legally cannot 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:39.959 vote. Right. But they publicly label him a corporate 00:07:39.959 --> 00:07:42.839 tool. And then they campaign aggressively in 00:07:42.839 --> 00:07:45.199 his district to defeat him in his next election. 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:47.779 And they succeeded. They got him voted out. If 00:07:47.779 --> 00:07:50.649 we connect this to the bigger picture. What we 00:07:50.649 --> 00:07:54.750 are seeing is a profound reframing of labor as 00:07:54.750 --> 00:07:56.709 democracy. They weren't just asking for more 00:07:56.709 --> 00:08:00.029 money. No, they framed their struggle as a direct 00:08:00.029 --> 00:08:02.959 continuation of the American Revolution. The 00:08:02.959 --> 00:08:06.259 protest song lyrics from the text really capture 00:08:06.259 --> 00:08:08.699 that. They sang, I cannot be a slave, I will 00:08:08.699 --> 00:08:10.939 not be a slave. Which brings us to a specific 00:08:10.939 --> 00:08:13.540 philosophical concept covered in the source material. 00:08:13.860 --> 00:08:16.699 And we want to be clear here, we are simply reporting 00:08:16.699 --> 00:08:18.959 the arguments as they are laid out in the historical 00:08:18.959 --> 00:08:21.860 text. We're looking at this impartially. Exactly. 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:24.980 The source includes an analysis by Noam Chomsky 00:08:24.980 --> 00:08:27.459 highlighting the workers' argument against what 00:08:27.459 --> 00:08:30.579 they called wage slavery. Right. Their core philosophy 00:08:30.579 --> 00:08:33.080 was about the difference between selling a product 00:08:33.080 --> 00:08:35.519 and selling yourself. They argued that selling 00:08:35.519 --> 00:08:37.820 your labor shouldn't mean selling your personhood. 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:40.299 They felt that becoming an operative meant submitting 00:08:40.299 --> 00:08:43.759 to the absolute authority of an overseer. And 00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:46.179 they warned that this was turning free citizens 00:08:46.179 --> 00:08:50.059 into vassals in a sort of commercial feudalism 00:08:50.059 --> 00:08:53.580 ruled by private despots. So what does this all 00:08:53.580 --> 00:08:56.100 mean? It means they were fundamentally challenging 00:08:56.100 --> 00:08:58.879 the ethics of the new industrial world. They 00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:01.320 completely redefined the concept of a woman's 00:09:01.320 --> 00:09:03.919 place in America. They raised serious questions 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:05.899 about the balance of power that we are still 00:09:05.899 --> 00:09:08.279 debating today. So to recap this incredible journey 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:11.000 for you listening, these young women were lured 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.659 by the promise of economic freedom. Only to be 00:09:13.659 --> 00:09:17.000 subjected to horrific 73 -hour work weeks and 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.679 hazardous conditions. Yet they managed to use 00:09:19.679 --> 00:09:22.139 their incredibly tight living quarters to educate 00:09:22.139 --> 00:09:24.820 themselves. To organize. the first women's union 00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:27.659 in the US. And to permanently alter the trajectory 00:09:27.659 --> 00:09:30.480 of American labor relations. So the next time 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:32.879 you read a corporate brochure promising a great 00:09:32.879 --> 00:09:35.960 company culture. Or the next time you think about 00:09:35.960 --> 00:09:38.379 the balance of power between employer and employee. 00:09:38.740 --> 00:09:40.559 Think of that 11 -year -old girl standing on 00:09:40.559 --> 00:09:43.580 a pump demanding fair treatment. This raises 00:09:43.580 --> 00:09:46.000 an important question, though. A thought to leave 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:48.139 you with that builds on all of this. Let's hear 00:09:48.139 --> 00:09:51.200 it. The Lowell Mill girls were able to successfully 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:54.799 organize against massive corporate power, specifically 00:09:54.799 --> 00:09:57.679 because their employer forced them to live shoulder 00:09:57.679 --> 00:10:00.159 to shoulder in crowded boarding houses. Right. 00:10:00.259 --> 00:10:02.620 It created an unbreakable physical community. 00:10:02.759 --> 00:10:06.039 Exactly. But in today's world, as we increasingly 00:10:06.039 --> 00:10:08.899 move toward remote work. isolated in our own 00:10:08.899 --> 00:10:11.480 separate homes, how does that physical distance 00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:14.659 change our ability to build solidarity and advocate 00:10:14.659 --> 00:10:17.340 for ourselves? That is a fascinating point to 00:10:17.340 --> 00:10:19.519 ponder as you navigate your own work environments. 00:10:19.799 --> 00:10:21.779 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:10:21.779 --> 00:10:24.759 dive. Keep asking questions, keep examining the 00:10:24.759 --> 00:10:27.799 systems around you, and as always, stay curious.