The Working Girls of Lowell.

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The Working Girls of Lowell

In the late half of the 18th century, the United States started seeing some changes, especially in the North. The New England states slowly started industrializing and agriculture slowly started disappearing. Large industries were being built, especially textile ones. The most famous factory system at that time was the Lowell system. This system was a very real attempt to prevent the spread of the evils associated with the factory system. As magnificent as this change was, there was another startling change that was taking place, women going to work in those factories.

As the Lowell system was expanding in New England, new job opportunities were being created for women in the US, especially the young women of New England. The Lowell system acknowledged the need for a new type of working class, women, and realized that it wouldn’t be an easy task recruiting such workers due to the general ideology during that period of time. Thus that system tried to make the working conditions in its factories as respectable and attracting to young women as possible.

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As the system started to grow and more women were starting to work at the factories, opposition to the new type of work increased. One of the biggest opposers to the system was Orestes A. Brownson. During an interview with him, he dealt severe blows to the new system and referred to it as being another type of slave labor. Brownson was not the only opponent of the Lowell system, many people viewed the system as degrading to women, and to their “cult of womanhood” as historian Barbara Welter called it. The Lowell system, according to many people at that ...

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