Farm vs. Factory: Citing Evidence
This activity asks you to analyze three primary documents about the experiences of young women who worked in textile factories in New England
during the 1830s and 1840s. It provides worksheets to guide and support you in writing a paragraph that cites evidence about the documents.
Objectives
•
You will understand different aspects of life and work among the young women who worked in textile factories in
Lowell, Massachusetts, during the 1830s and 1840s
•
You will understand how to analyze and gather evidence from different types of primary sources
Instructions
1. Step 1. Locate the cover illustration from The Lowell Offering, and complete the Lessons in Looking: The Lowell
Offering Worksheet.
2. Step 2. After completion, analyze the image from The Lowell Offering by answering the questions below.
a.
What was The Lowell Offering?
b. What are some of the details you see in the picture? What do they stand for or represent?
c.
What do you think was the artist’s point of view about what it was like to work in the Lowell textile factories?
Positive or negative?
3. Step 3. Please locate the Farm vs. Factory: Constructing a Paragraph Worksheet. You should arrange the sentences
provided into a paragraph that interprets the meaning of the Lowell Offering picture. You can cut and paste the sections
in the appropriate order. Be sure to add labels. After completion, draft a brief (that means brief!) explanation as to how
you decided which sentence was Claim/Counterclaim and which sentence was Conclusion/Summary.
4. Step 4. You will get to see evidence for a more negative view of factory life. Please locate (1) A Mill Girl Explains
Why She is Leaving Factory Life, (2) A Former Mill Girl Remembers the Lowell Strike of 1836, and (3) Farm vs.
Factory: Finding and Citing Evidence Worksheet. Please read the two documents and fill in the Finding Evidence
portion of the worksheet.
5. Step 5. Now you will write your own paragraph interpreting the evidence from Sarah Rice and Harriet Robinson. You
will complete the Citing Evidence and Writing a Paragraph sections of the worksheet.
Historical Context
When the first American factories were built in places such as Lowell, Massachusetts, many of the workers were young women
from New England farms. The opportunity to earn wages, live independently, and experience community with other young
women was appealing. But unlike farm work, factories were governed by long hours, strict timetables, loud machines, and
repetitive work. The transition from a largely farm based economy to one where many worked for wages in factories began with
these early textile mills and proceeded to transform American society.
The Lowell Offering
The Lowell Offering was a monthly magazine written by the young women who worked in the Lowell textile mills and published from 1840 to
1845. Its contents included songs, poems, essays, and stories--both serious and humorous--about what it was like to work in the mills. It was first
organized and edited by a local minister and supported by the city's textile companies. As this cover illustration suggests, it promoted morality and
hard work among the young female workers.
SOURCE | The Lowell Offering, December 1845.
CREATOR | Unknown
ITEM TYPE | Poster/Print
A Former Mill Girl Remembers the Lowell Strike of
1836
Harriet Hanson Robinson began work in Lowell at the age of ten,
later becoming an author and advocate of women's suffrage. In
1834 and 1836, the mill owners reduced wages, increased the
pace of work, and raised the rent for the boardinghouses. The
young female workers went on strike (they called it “turning out”
then) to protest the decrease in wages and increase in rent. In
1898 Robinson published a memoir of her Lowell experiences
where she describes the strike of 1836.
Vocabulary
Advocate:
someone
who speaks and writes
in favor of a cause
Suffrage: right to
vote
Wages: money earned
Cutting down the wages was not their only grievance, nor
the only cause of this strike. [Before] the corporations had
paid twenty-five cents a week towards the board of each
operative, and now it was their purpose to have the girls
pay the sum; and this, in addition to the cut in the wages,
would make a difference of at least one dollar a week. It
was estimated that as many as twelve or fifteen hundred
girls turned out, and walked in procession through the
streets. They had neither flags nor music, but sang songs,
[including]
“Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as IShould be sent to the factory to pine away and
die? Oh ! I cannot be a slave,
I will not be a slave,
For I’m so fond of liberty
That I cannot be a slave.”
Source: Harriet Hanson Robinson, Loom and Spindle or Life Among
the Early Mill Girls (New York, T. Y. Crowell, 1898), 83–86, from
History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web,
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5714/.
by doing work
Memoir: personal
account of
experiences;
autobiography
Grievance: cause
for complaint
Operative: worker
in a factory
Turned out: went
on strike
In procession: in
an orderly way
pine away: slowly
lose your health
A Mill Girl Explains Why She Is Leaving Factory Life
Born on a Vermont farm, Sarah Rice left home at age 17 to make it on her
own. Eventually she journeyed to Masonville, Connecticut to work in
textile mills much like those of Lowell. Rice's first letter was written after
she had been weaving in the factory for about four weeks. Her second
letter was written after about nine months of mill life.
Sunday, Feb. 23, 1845
Dear Father:
...I like it quite well [here] as I expected but not as well as
housework. To be sure it is a noisy place and we are confined
more than I like to be. I do not wear out my clothes and shoes
as I do when I do housework. If I can make 2 dollars per week
besides my board and save my clothes and shoes I think it will
be better than to do housework for nine shillings. I mean for a
year or two. I should not want to spend my days in a mill unless
they are short because I like a farm too much for that. My
health is good now. And I say now that if it does not agree with
my health I shall give it up at once. I have been blessed with
good health always since I began to work out [of the home]...
Sept. 14, 1845
Dear Father:
...You surely cannot blame me for leaving the factory so long as I
realized it was killing me to work in it. I went to the factory because I
expected to earn much more than I can at housework. To be sure I
might if I had my health. Could you have seen me at the time or a
week before I came away you would have advised me as many
others did to leave immediately.
Source: Sarah Rice, “Letter to Father (Hazelton Rice),” 23 February
1845 and 14 September 1845, (Vermont History Society, Hazelton Rice
Papers), available from Center for Lowell History, University of
Massachusetts at Lowell Libraries, http://library.uml.edu/clh/All/Ric.htm.
Vocabulary
textile mills: factories
where machines
weave cloth
housework: working for
wages in someone
else’s home
board: amount paid for
a room and food
shillings: kind of
money used in 1845
agree with: be good for
Lessons in Looking: The Lowell Offering
Part 1: The Lowell Offering
Vocabulary: offering:
presentation
boarding house: a building where workers lived, but were charged for a place to sleep
and daily meals.
repository: storage area
Symbols:
Identify and label all of the following in the image:
Factory
Church
Beehive
Boarding house
Girl with book in one hand and cloth on the other
Vines, Flowers, and Trees
The artist intended many of these parts of the picture to be symbols—to represent positive
ideas or values related to the Lowell mill girls. Match the symbol with its meaning.
Beehive
Religion, moral values
Connection to nature
Girl with book in one hand
and cloth on the other
Structure created by bees symbolizing
cooperation and hard work
Church
Place where women could live safely,
under adult supervision
Vines, Flowers, and Trees
Mill worker who both produced fabric
and cared about learning
Boarding house
Emotional Impact:
Complete the following sentence.
The feeling you get from this artists’ presentation of the cover of the magazine is
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
because
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Farm vs. Factory: Constructing a Paragraph
Cut and paste the following sentences in the correct order to form a complete paragraph.
The cover of the magazine makes the girl the center of this new world. Not only was she
earning money in the factory, she could express herself in articles she wrote for the magazine.
The artist who created this cover image from the Lowell Offering magazine presents a
positive view of what life was like for the Lowell mill girls. However, some people saw
the new factories at Lowell as a threat to the values of farm life, such as independence,
family, religion, and hard work.
The symbols presented in the cover are meant to show that the factory towns where the girls lived
had a church that the girls could attend and a boardinghouse where they could live safely.
Therefore, the overall sense you get from the cover is that life for the mill girls was beneficial,
and the values the girls had on the farm wouldn’t be lost when they worked in the factories.
The feeling you get from all the nature portrayed in the cover is safety and serenity.
The message seems to say that as nature allows plants to flourish, a mill girl would be
supported by her surroundings.
[CLAIM/COUNTERCLAIM]
[DETAIL]
[DETAIL]
[DETAIL]
[CONCLUSION/SUMMARY]
Farm vs. Factory: Finding and Citing
Evidence
Part 1: Finding Evidence
Read the two documents and complete the chart below.
• A Former Mill Girl Remembers the Lowell Strike of 1836 (Harriet Robinson)
• A Mill Girl Explains Why She Is Leaving Factory Life (Sarah Rice)
Document
Harriet
Robinson says…
Harriet
Robinson says…
Harriet
Robinson says…
Sarah Rice
says…
Sarah Rice
says…
Sarah Rice
says…
What she doesn’t like about factory work
Part 2: Citing Evidence
There are two ways to cite evidence. One is to put it in your own words, known as
paraphrasing. The other is to quote directly from the document. Here are examples of both:
PARAPHRASE
Harriet Robinson described a song the girls sang that compared their working
conditions to slavery.
DIRECT QUOTE
According to Harriet Robinson, the girls sang a song that said, “I will not be a slave”
because they were being asked to do the same work for less pay.
Choose from the evidence in the chart above and write one sentence that
paraphrases that evidence:
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Choose from the evidence in the chart above and write one sentence that directly
quotes from the document:
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Part 3: Writing a paragraph
Write a paragraph about why some young women who worked in textile factories were critical of living
and working conditions in the mills.
•
•
Your paragraph must begin with a claim about the negative aspects of factory work.
Your paragraph must use at least three examples, citing evidence from the documents.
•
Your paragraph must end with a sentence summarizing your argument.
[CLAIM/COUNTERCLAIM]
[DETAIL]
[DETAIL]
[DETAIL]
[CONCLUSION/SUMMARY]