Questions 1. Why does Bagley compare the situation of female factory workers with slavery? 2. Why does Bagley question the idea that the "mill girls" have freely chosen factory work? 56. Sarah Bagley, Freedom and Necessity at Lowell (1845) Source: Voice of Industry, September 18, 1845. The early industrial revolution centered on factories producing cotton textiles with water-powered spinning and weaving machinery. In the 1820s, a group of merchants created an entirely new factory town near Boston, incorporated as the city of Lowell in 1836. Here they built a group of modern textile factories that brought together all phases of production from the spinning of thread to the weaving and finishing of cloth. By 1850, Lowell's fifty-two mills employed more than 10,000 workers. Closely supervised work tending a machine seemed to violate the independence Americans considered an essential element of freedom. As a result, few native-born men could be attracted to work in the early factories. At Lowell, young unmarried women from Yankee farm families dominated the workforce that tended spinning machines. The women typically remained in the factories for only a few years, after which they returned home, married, or moved west. Born to a New Hampshire farm family in 1806, Sarah Bagley came to Lowell in 1837 after her father suffered financial reverses. She soon became one of the most outspoken leaders of the labor movement among the city's "mill girls." In Chapter 9: The Market Revolution, 1800-1840

Questions 1. Why does Bagley compare the situation of female factory workers with slavery? 2. Why does Bagley question the idea that the "mill girls" have freely chosen factory work? 56. Sarah Bagley, Freedom and Necessity at Lowell (1845) Source: Voice of Industry, September 18, 1845. The early industrial revolution centered on factories producing cotton textiles with water-powered spinning and weaving machinery. In the 1820s, a group of merchants created an entirely new factory town near Boston, incorporated as the city of Lowell in 1836. Here they built a group of modern textile factories that brought together all phases of production from the spinning of thread to the weaving and finishing of cloth. By 1850, Lowell's fifty-two mills employed more than 10,000 workers. Closely supervised work tending a machine seemed to violate the independence Americans considered an essential element of freedom. As a result, few native-born men could be attracted to work in the early factories. At Lowell, young unmarried women from Yankee farm families dominated the workforce that tended spinning machines. The women typically remained in the factories for only a few years, after which they returned home, married, or moved west. Born to a New Hampshire farm family in 1806, Sarah Bagley came to Lowell in 1837 after her father suffered financial reverses. She soon became one of the most outspoken leaders of the labor movement among the city's "mill girls." In Chapter 9: The Market Revolution, 1800-1840