The Lowell Factory Girl (David Rovics)

Young women in the textile mills of Massachusetts died at an average age of 26, constantly inhaling cotton dust, working long hours in unventilated rooms lit by oil lamps. Before their struggles for safer working conditions and better pay bore fruit, often a mill worker's best hope at a decent life was to marry a farmer, if she could find one who hadn't lost his land and ended up as a factory hand himself.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lowell
• Factory
• Textile
• Spinners
• Workers
• David
• Rovics
• Industrial
• Revolution
• New
• England

[Elkahatchee9]

I worked in a textile mill for 10 years. It was rough but nothing compared to what these poor girls endured. Awful.

[nowellian]

David Rovics, folk singer, revolutionary extraordinaire!

[crawfordviolin]

great voice



[sharifox]

I worked as a "coil winder" for a year or so for $2.10/hr, and then held various jobs in the mills, and the warehouses that filled those spaces, but my three years with the National Park Service in Lowell were by far the most informative, as I helped convert the remaining mills into educational exhibits. I'm just a kid from Lowell. Long live immigration and the promise of self sufficiency.

[lessthan427]

A very good video. Thank you for posting. from Japan.

[JoMoMoss]

Same conditions here in the UK mill towns back in the day.

But now we have the likes of Nike using the sweat shops of the third world… same greed, same attitude, similar conditions.

[Sc0p3ZxI2xuS]

chelsea's a loner

[smeejit]

Still too many preventable deaths in industry!

[littledrizz]

I saw these lowell girls in my text book. Those poor girls and women..working long shifts sun up to sun down...and living in such poor conditions in those boarding houses.....

[paulineprojectlove]

great song and thank you for this historic video.