In 1842 Charles Dickens visited the factories
at Lowell, Massachusetts and wrote glowing praise for the progressive conditions
that he found. As a child, Dickens had
labored in a London factory, and he compared the Lowell factories to the
memories of his youth as the difference between “living light and deepest
shadow.” He found the factory workers
healthy, clean and well dressed and the factory rooms had “as much fresh air,
cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the occupation would admit.” In particular, Dickens was impressed with The Lowell Offering, a collection of
stories, articles and poems written and published by the factory workers.
It’s difficult to understand the impact that The Offering had on a nineteenth century
audience. Many people in England and
Europe didn’t believe that factory workers could have the intellectual or emotional
capacity to appreciate the literary arts, much less to produce their own
work. What’s more, The Offering was the first publication written and edited entirely
by women. Some denied that it was even
possible while others celebrated it as proof of progressive ideals.
Unlike the factories in England, the factory
system at Lowell had not been built to employ a permanent class of
workers. Roughly two-thirds of the
employees were young women from New England farms who would work a few years
before returning home or getting married.
So, in order to attract a continual supply of new employees the factories
offered religious services, a lending library and lectures in science and the
arts. Many of these young women were
well educated, and they enjoyed literature and poetry. They often shared their own work with each
other, and the best of these attempts were collected into a booklet, which
became the first edition of The Lowell
Offering.
Then in 1845 another magazine
appeared in Lowell, and it painted a
very different picture of factory life.
The Voice of Industry had been
started in Fitchburg Massachusetts by the New England Workingmen’s Association,
but it soon moved to Lowell where it was taken over by the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. It described life in the factories as twelve-and-a-half
hours a day of monotonous, exhausting work that left the workers unable to take
advantage of the educational opportunities that had impressed Dickens a few
years earlier. The factory rooms were
dark, noisy and poorly ventilated, and the boarding houses were overcrowded and
poorly maintained.
Could conditions have deteriorated so much in only three years, or was
Dickens simply wrong?
Anyone who has worked for a large company knows that not all work is equal
and not all workers are treated equally.
Many of the early contributors to The
Lowell Offering worked in the spinning rooms. They held highly skilled jobs that paid an
average daily wage of 56 cents. Other jobs
in the factories, such as dressing and carding, paid as little as 37.5 cents
per day, and working conditions could vary as well. So The
Offering reflected the experiences of the best paid, most skilled workers.
On the other hand, Sarah Bagley, the president of the Lowell Female Labor
Reform Association, was a weaver. Weavers
were initially paid 67 cents per day, but that wage had been set high to
attract skilled workers. By 1840 wages
for weavers had gone down to only 50 cents per day, and in 1842 they were told
they would have to tend two looms instead of one. So by the time Bagley took over The Voice of Industry she had seen her
wages cut by 25% and her and her workload doubled.
In 1842 The Lowell Offering published
an article by Bagley that was critical of factory conditions, but that same
year The Offering was purchased by
William Schouler, a friend of the factory owners and an opponent of labor
reform. Under Schouler’s ownership The Offering would no longer publish
“controversial” material. By 1845 in the
first issue of The Voice Bagley
denounced The Offering as a
“mouthpiece of the corporations.” The Offering ceased publication later
that year
Dickens arrived in Lowell at a time of change. The high wages and progressive conditions
that had attracted workers twenty years earlier still defined the experiences
of some highly skilled workers, but for others conditions had worsened. The first protests over wage cuts had taken
place almost ten years earlier, but the factory owners had become conscious of
their own reputation. From that time
forward they would try to control which voices were heard and, presumably, what
visiting dignitaries would get to see.
