Mill Life

Industrial Revolution: Changes in Working Life

Mills Changed Workers Lives

• Mill owners could not find people to work in factories because other jobs were avaliable

• Slater (mill owner) began hiring entire families

  • Filled labor needs at low cost

  • Adults and children worked in mills

  • Children worked for cheap allowing a profit

  • Rhode Island System: Hiring families and dividing factory work into simple tasks​

• ​Samuel Slater and his brother created a mill town Slatersville

  • Mill working families moved there to live and work​

  • Was a fully functioning town​

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​Some text here about the topic of discussion.

​Slatersville

Fill in the Blanks

The strategy of hiring families and dividing work into simple tasks became known as the

system.

Open Ended

What problem did Slater have in his mills? How did he solve it?

​This advertisement appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper in 1823 requesting that families come work at a factory.

• The Lowell System was based on water-powered ​textile mills that employed young, unmarried women from local farms. The system included a loom that could both spin threat and weave cloth in the same mill.

  • A chance to earn their own money

  • "Lowell Girls"​

• Lived in boarding houses, room and meals provided

  Encouraged to take classes in their free time at the women's club​

• Cotton dust began causing health issues​

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The Lowell System

• Factories produced low-priced goods, hard for shops to compete.

• Worker wages dropped, immigrants from poorer countries were willing to work for less

  • Financial Panic of 1837: many unemplyed competed for jobs​

• Trade Unions: groups that tried to improve pay and working conditions

  • Employers didnt want to hire union workers= cost eliminated competition

  • ​Strikes: staged protests refusing work until demands are met

  • Police and courts generally suported factories, not those on strike​

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Workers Organize

Multiple Choice

Name of the system that employed unmarried women from family farms to run mills.

• Rhode Island System

• Lowell System

• Mill System

• Cabot System

Fill in the Blanks

Where did the "Lowell GIrls" live?