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Harrisburg Area Womens News

BREAD AND ROSES

by Susan Barley

A regular monthly column on the history of women in the labor movement

Consciousness Raising in the 1840's

By the 1840's, some of the women realized they might be stuck in the mills for much longer than they had thought. Many women had. no families to return to since their fathers had lost their farms in the national depression of 1837. The deteriorating conditions in the factories had killed the dream of escape through self-improvement. By the 1840's few mill women had the money to buy church pews, or the energy to attend night classes.

Harriet Farley, editor of the Offering, still preached that selfimprovement through learning and culture would protect the workers from becoming drudges. She insisted that low wages and long hours were matters over which "workers have no control". She said improvement would "come in time as a result of the kindheartedness of the owners." She refused to print any articles submitted that criticized conditions in the mills.

About this time several women denounced the offering as a 'company mouthpiece" and began publishing their own "Factory Tracts"--papers with names such as Factory Girl, Factory Girls' Album and the most famous, the Voice of Industry. The Voice, begun in 1845 in Lowell and edited by Lowell workers for a time, was the beginning of the American

labor press. These papers encouraged

the women workers to question the inequities of the factory system. These papers helped promote a new organization among mill women--the Female Labor Reform Association. There were only twelve original members but in six months the Association had grown to over five hundred members and adopted the slogan "Try Again".

Sarah Bagley, who had worked as a weaver in the mills for eight years, was elected as the Associa-

tion's first president. She was a highly effective leader and played

WORKERS

Soon

a major role in organizing women workers all over New England. there were Associations in Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire; and Lowell and Fall River, Massachusetts. When the Lowell corporation ordered weavers to tend four instead of three looms, and at the same time reducing the piece-rate, Association members refused. They threatened to publish the names of any weavers who complied. As a result not one weaver complied, and the company was forced to rescind the order.

The Association also joined with the New England Workingman's Association to lobby for a tenhour working day. This alliance was one of the first between female and male workers in the labor movement and began as a fairly equal one.

Women attended meetings, made speeches and proposed resolutions. Women and men launched a petition campaign and lobbied before the Massachusetts legislature for the tenhour workday. Along with five other women and three men, Sarah Bagley testified that the twelve and thirteen hour workdays destroyed workers health. The Massachusetts legislature heard the testimony and agreed with it but refused to take any action. They said: "The remedy is not with us. We look for it in the progressive improvement in art and science, in a higher appreciation of man's destiny, in less love for money, and a more ardent love for social happiness."

Women in the mills of Allegheny City and Pittsburgh, PA, took more militant action to demand the tenhour work day. They went from mill to mill, smashing gates and doing battle with the police. Their purpose was not to gain control of the mills, but to get at the scabs who had remained at their machines. The strikebreakers were seized and tossed into the streets.

The companies in Pennsylvania said they would never shorten their workdays to ten hours until the New England companies did, so the women of Pennsylvania called on the mill workers of New England for help. A general strike was discussed, but in the end there was no unified action for a ten-hour workday in the 1840's. The New England labor movement leaders urged reliance on petition campaigns and legislative action. The labor movement was not yet strong enough to fight the companies through strikes. During the 1850's several states did pass legislation mandating a ten-hour workday, but employers easily got around the laws by forcing their workers to sign contracts .committing them to work

third of a series

overtime.

October, 1979

ARIES

Massachusetts did not pass a ten-hour workday law until 1873.

The Female Labor Reform Association, like most of the small, independent unions, was short-lived. Early unions were easily broken by management. Organizers in the mills were blacklisted and forced out of the industry. During the 1840's, Sarah Bagley was the victim of a smear campaign designed to break her spirit and to deter her followers. Mill women continued to offer their support, but Bagley suffered an emotional collapse and withdrew from the Association. Without her leadership the Female Labor Reform Association soon fell apart.

The mill women lacked time, money, and power to sustain their organization. Working women could not count on the support of working men or other women. The men did not consider the women equal in the struggle for economic rights.. Many men believed that economic justice would be achieved only when they could afford to keep their wives, sisters, and daughters out of the factories. Their object was to get rid of factory women rather than improve the conditions that existed for the women already in the factories. (Yet these same men would not take a mill job spinning thread or weaving cloth, because that was "women's work".) Other trade unionists were convinced that since women were paid one-third to one-half of men's wages, the women were underbidding men's salaries and threatening jobs for men. (Yet these same men would not take a mill job...) The easiest solution to this imagined threat was to drive the women out of the factories and bar them from unions. National unions began emerging about the time of the Civil War; by 1873, there were thirty such organizations, but only two admitted

women.

cont'd on p. 13