1. The changing workplace
Chapter 8
Section 4

2. Industry Changes Work Rural Manufacturing
Cottage Industry- manufacturers provide materials for goods to be produced in the home.
Women completed most of the work
Bring finished product back to manufacturer to get paid by the piece, and receive more material
Replaced by the power looms in textile factories like Waltham and Lowell MA.

3. Industry Changes Work Early Factories
Factories replaced the cottage industries as a mean of manufacturing
Made household items drastically cheaper
New machines allowed unskilled workers to perform tasks that would previously be done by skilled artisans
Unskilled laborers shifted from farm work to repetitive factory work.

4. Farm Worker to Factory Worker
The Lowell Mill & the Lowell Girls
9/10 of work force in NE mills were women
Mill owners hire women so they can pay them less then men
Better job then alternatives for women:
Sewing, teaching, and domestic work
Most women only worked in the mills for a couple of years

5. Farm Worker to Factory Worker
Conditions at Lowell
Started at 5am
Heat, darkness, and poor ventilation led to illnesses
Windows would be nailed shut to keep in humidity
Made the mills in the summer like ovens and in the winter filled with smoke from the oil lamps
1830s conditions got worse
Faster work pass, less break time, higher fines, and lower wages
Led to the women of Lowell to strike

6. Farm Worker to Factory Worker
Strikes at Lowell
“UNION IS POWER”
1834 women refuse to work for reduces wages
Management threaten to hire new local girls so they return to work for reduced wages and, fire the strike leaders
1836- women strike due to board charge raises (equal to a 12.5 % pay cut)
Company prevails again….

7. Workers Seek Better Conditions
Conditions for all workers declined in the 1830s
Strikes were ineffective due to strike breaker who would work long hours for little money
Usually immigrants who were escaping an even worse situation

8. Workers Seek Better Conditions
Immigration Increases
European immigration drastically increases between
; 3 million immigrants added to the 20million population, most coming from Germany and Ireland
Immigrants avoided the South
Slavery limited economic potential

9. Workers Seek Better Conditions
The Famine
Irish potato famine drove nearly 1 million immigrants to the US and killed another 1 million
Irish immigrants faced harsh discrimination
Catholic and poor
Protestants feared a Catholic take over of the US