American History

After the death of her father, Harriets mother was left to struggle alone. She tried to earn enough to fill the hungry mouths of her children but to no avail. Harriet left schools to help her mother. She worked in one of the weaving factories in the city. According to Robinson herself, the working hours of women workers in the factory extended from five oclock in the morning to seven oclock in the evening. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen hours a day.  Harriet remembered that everything about the Lowell textile factory was hardship.

Life at the Lowell Mills was hard and cruel. Workers labored for more than 14 hours (from 5 oclock in the morning to seven oclock in the evening). Young workers often lost sleep at a young age. They were paid two dollars per week  a salary which could hardly sustain any growing family. Life at the Lowell Mills was also degenerative and repetition. Tasks assigned to workers were repetitive by nature. Most of the time, work was boring, as the same activities were repeated over and over again.

The women workers at the Lowell Mills were a class of factory operatives- a set of persons who earned their daily bread, whose condition was fixed, who needed to spin to sustain life itself. Nothing was expected out of them because they were assumed to be not capable of social or mental improvement. In England and France, the character of women workers had been subjected to cruelty and hardship. Overseers saw women laborers as nasty, brute individuals to be beaten and oppressed. In the United States, women workers fared better, but still faced long working hours and bad working conditions.

There were plans to cut the wages of women workers. After the proposed wage cut was implemented, 1500 girls walked out and marched in the streets. The strike was so powerful that one of the mills was shut down. The authorities watched this development and mediated for negotiations.