Life among the early Mill Girls

Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson was one of the key figures of the Loom and Spindle: Life Among The Early Mill Girls autobiography. She played a vital role in the women's suffrage in the United States.

           Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, was born on February 8, 1825 and died on December 22, 1911. Harriet, like many other women, wanted to work. She felt an urge to work, she wanted to earn money for herself as an individual and felt it would be a valuable experience for her. She also knew that earning the extra money would be of great aid to her mother. In 1834 at the age of ten, Harriet began working as a doffer in the Merrimack Mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. The job of a doffer was to "doff" or replace full bobbins, or reels of thread with empty bobbins.  The hours were long and exhausting. The noise of the machinery was deafeningly loud, the belabored levers and the moiling gears were the worst part.  Little Harriet was obligated to work from as early as five in the morning and often until seven at night. Harriet worked six days a week and was paid $2, averaging three cents per hour. This was considered a fair amount of money to be paid, especially as women during this time period. The owners of the factories needed cheap labor . As this franchise grew the Lowell company was filled with "Mill girls," as they were called. Earning a customary wage for the first time in their lives was empowering to the Mill girls, it gave them a sense of confidence.
          Harriett arrived in Lowell as a young child. Her mother, widowed in Boston with her four young children, was barely able to feed them, let alone afford to care for herself. With an optimistic outlook as her first priority, she and her family traveled by canal to Lowell. She took a job of managing one of the boarding houses where the Mill girls resided. Compared to the conditions the family was living in while in Boston, this new life would hopefully be much more preponderant. But authentically, that "more preponderant life," never transpired the way she had orchestrated it to. An example of this,when Harriet was 11. The Merrimack Mills took a shot at saving money. In the process, they  cut part of the stipend that paid to board homes. This concluded that the people working would need to pay for their rooms and board out their own wages. A vast number of the people working were very enraged when they found out. They considered this a pay cut. There for they held a strike against this act.

          In the cessation, Harriet preached to her co workers her objections to the unfair terms that the company placed them in by having to  pay for their room and board.  She explained to them that they could do what they felt was right, but she would take a stand. She did in fact proceed to march and by her side were many of her fellow co- workers.  The crowd of girls  went to fight for what they believed in.
          
           More than 60 years later, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson described this as the proudest moment of her entire life. Despite the fact that the strike was not a success, she still walked away feeling proud because she fought for what she believed in and never gave up.

         Nowadays, things are a lot different. I don't know if I would have ever been able to withstand that kind of work. In comparison to my day, the amount of hours that I spend at school compared to how many they spent working in the mills very different. For example, I spend on average around 7 hours at school, where as these mill girls spent close to 15 hours at work. Not only is this harder having to be there for so long, but I can guarantee ,that they didn't have a lot of free time. At school, we have lots of fun and exciting activities to participate in and even the subjects alone are engaging. There is almost always a new thing waiting for you in each class. On top of that, these kids were younger than I am and had a much more strenuous life on both their bodies and brains. I feel extremely thankful to be so privileged I couldn't possibly ask for anything better.

Work cited:
- "Harriet Hanson Robinson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Feb. 2017. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.
- Harriet Robinson on Lowell Mill girls. Retrieved February 22, 2017, from http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/robinson.html
- Harriet Hanson Robinson facts (1983). In . Retrieved from http://biography.yourdictionary.com/harriet-hanson-robinson
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Harriet_Hanson_Robinson.png
- http://lowellmillgirls1.weebly.com/uploads/4/3/8/9/4389227/7560943.jpg?425
- http://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/mill-girl.jpg