Women's Economic Roles During the Industrial Revolution: From Family Economy to Wage Labor, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga Women's Economic Roles During the Industrial Revolution: From Family Economy to Wage Labor y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! 1 Women and the Industrial Revolution HST/WMS 286 Spring 2009 Professor Lavender Lewis Hine, Photograph of a Girl Textile Worker Women in the 18th Century Economy • Part of a Family or Household Economy • Doctrine of Coverture • Dowries as Source of economic voice (but voice was not guaranteed) • Deputy Husbands acting on their husbands’ authority • Women have more access to cash (dowry, pre-marital earnings, and egg & butter money) in a cash-strapped barter-based economy Women in the 19th Century Economy • Domestic Labor Source in a Market Economy (emergent middle classes) • Doctrine of Coverture continues, altered • Dowries replaced largely by pre-marital earnings from market economy labor • Act on own (or as daughters) as singles, as part of a family wage as marrieds (or as “housewives”) • Men have most of the access to cash in this new cash-based economy. Transformation of the Economy • The emphasis in the new republic – on development, on the market, on expanding trade – put a new emphasis on self-interest, – and a new value on success, getting ahead, making money and, even, speculating. • Need to distinguish between – private “republican virtues” developed in the home and family by women • Women were supposed to be “disinterested” – public “republican virtues” developed in political and economic sphere by men • Competition, “It’s only business” attitude, self-interest. “Separate Spheres” • Male and Female Worlds • Public life must be segregated from private life – the world of home and family – the world of work • The domestic sphere – Haven of moral virtues • Piety • Purity • Selflessness/disinterestedness – Separate from the public world • Competition • Aggression • self-interest. • Spheres became gendered -- female and male. How did this happen? • Partly cultural (will discuss in coming lectures) • Partly economic • Today, the economic origins – In the emergence of an industrial market economy – In the creation of wage-based values applied to work – And the role that gender plays in shaping that world 2 Remember Martha Ballard’s House • What were the divisions of space? • To whom did the various spaces belong? • How was space used by the members of the family? • Compare the first house to the later house her husband had built (and her son and his family had purloined). Nineteenth-Century Houses • It became a cultural “norm” of the middle-class home to have dedicated spaces designed for single uses – kitchen, dining room, parlor, bedchambers – emulated even among the poorest of families • House-space was gendered and divided – The neutral meeting space was the parlor (and sometimes the library, although that tended to be masculine space) – Areas of women’s toil – kitchens, nurseries – became feminine space • And was separated from “family” space • Inside the house was domestic space, which “belonged” mostly to women (even though owned by men) A Village Cottage, 1856 A Village Cottage, 1856 LR = Living Room K = Kitchen S = Scullery (secondary kitchen) WR = Wood Room BR = Bedroom Second Story consists of Bedrooms Cottage for a Mill Hand at Chelsea, Massachusetts, 1878 Cottage for a Mill Hand at Chelsea, Massachusetts, 1878 5 Industrial Revolution • Follows from the wage economy • Second irony – starts off with women workers in a women’s industry – Spinning and Weaving • Imported from England – Application of water power and later steam power to looms allows for a rapid expansion of output – Creation of Factories = absolute separation of production from home Textile Production • Weaving and Spinning were women’s trades, both as apprentices and in the home – Martha Ballard’s daughters weaving cloth • When industrialization emerged first in textiles, it was acceptable that the first American industrial workers would be women – But this work would require them to be absent from home… – So it would be DAUGHTERS rather than wives Plan of the City of Lowell, MA Ideally located at the junction of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers Lowell became the center of textile factory production in the US from 1825 Mills at Lowell Lowell was considered a model • At the very beginning, it was characterized by – a relatively high wage scale, – good living and working conditions, – and a considerable amount of benevolent paternalism on the part of manufacturers. • In contrast to English industrial towns like Manchester, which were squalid and violent places to work and live. Later on in Lowell • However, by the late 1830s and into the 1840s and 50s, the situation at Lowell seriously deteriorated. • Lowell became an example of how – the profit motive led to the exploitation of workers • in terms of both wages • and conditions, – with little concern on the part of manufacturers for the quality of life of the work force. – And also became the birthplace of the American labor movement 6 The Labor Force • Labor recruited from among the daughters of farms in surrounding area – Daughters saw chance to earn money for dowries – Families saw chance to get some cash, which was increasingly important – Records from the Hamilton Manufacturing Co. for July 1836: • work force was 74% female; 96% native born; 80% aged 15-30; 93% unmarried. • How to assure the families that their daughters would be safe? Mill Paternalism • Workers were housed in company dormitories headed by respectable widows. • About 75% of the labor force lived in these company-owned boarding houses. • Life in the boarding houses was very regimented, as was the daily discipline of work in the factory – But it was also spent with other girls – For many, this is their first taste of female society or sisterhood outside of their own families. Why did Mill Girls go to the Mills? • Mill employment was appealing because its wages were higher than those for farm laborers or domestic servants. • Most mill girls were earning dowries. – One worked in mill for two years, then married the brother of another mill operative and settled in Worchester, Massachusetts. – Another used her earnings to set up a business as a seamstress before marrying. Other inducements • Some mill girls were drawn because of educational opportunities – Both in mills themselves and in town • One, Lucy Ann, wanted to use her wages to attend Oberlin College in 1851 (only college US then that admitted women) • Letter to her cousin: "I have earned enough to school me awhile, and Have not I a right to do so, or must I go home, like a dutiful girl, place the money in father's hands, and then there goes all my hard earnings…. [that would be] a dead loss… [of my efforts] spent in vain…. Others may find fault with me, and call me selfish, but I think I should spend my earnings as I please." Life in Lowell • Most workers stayed 2-4 years. • Broadening experience akin to going away to the city for school • Life in Lowell in the 1820s and 30s meant being part of a tight female community. – Women lived and worked together 24 hours a day, separated from their families – But also extended kinship networks operating in the Lowell mills • sisters and cousins brought family and friends from home to work with them. – There was little contact with men. Demographics of The Workroom • Typical workroom within a factory had 2 male supervisors and 80 female operators; 2 children would assist at various tasks. • Males in the factories occupied all supervisory positions and when worked as operatives, were in the more skilled jobs. • The division of labor within the mill was highly sex segregated. 7 Social Lives of the Workers • Women not only worked together, but also lived together. • Usually were about 25 women per boarding house. – They lived 4-6 to a bedroom. • Boarding Houses – Downstairs was a common room and a dining room. – Upstairs were bedrooms. • This was the center of social life for mill workers--where they spent their non-work time. – Where they ate, rested, talked, sewed, wrote letters, read books, and made friends to go shopping with, to church with, for walks on Sundays, and to public lectures and events in town. • The boarding houses did not allow for much privacy, peace, or quiet. – And women watched each other for any impropriety that would besmirch them all. Impropriety and Social Control • What becomes of the “improper girl”: • “A girl, suspected of immoralities, or serious improprieties, at once loses caste. Her fellow boarders will at once leave the house, if the keeper does not dismiss the offender. In self- protection, therefore, the patron is obliged to put the offender away. Nor will her former companions walk with her, or work with her; till at length, finding herself everywhere talked about, and pointed at, and shunned she is obliged to relieve her fellow-operatives of a presence which they feel brings disgrace." Close-Knit Female Community • Women saw their social ties to other women workers as primary (more important than ties to factory itself) • Benefited from this “sisterhood” and solidarity – It changed their expectations of and as women • And this would play a vital role when labor strife erupts at Lowell – The source for women’s liberty rhetoric Working in the Mills Working in the Mills (1820s-1830s) • Long days – 12 hours, but with many breaks for “play” and study. • The factory actually subsidized women’s education and intellectual and artistic expressions, with several worker’s literary magazines produced. • Why did factories do this? – To reassure the girls’ parents that their daughters would not be “coarsened” by factory work Intellectual Activities of Workers • Lending Library and Evening Classes for Workers • Lucy Larcom, for example, took classes in German, ethics, and botany. • The women set up self-improvement and discussion groups. – Much of the discussion centered around the moral dilemma of working on cotton products of slave labor. • The Lyceum lecture circuit regularly sent moral and scientific speakers to Lowell