s made from this industry enabled the wealthy plantation owners (who sold a great deal of cotton both domestically and in foreign markets) to import large quantities of goods from overseas. However, national government policy, anxious to create a market-based economy in hopes of uniting the Union, levied high taxes and tariffs on imported goods. They did so hoping to stimulate trade between the south and north. The north was as the forefront of America’s industrialization. Textile manufacturing was one of the chief industries in the north, particularly the New England area states. One town that developed rapidly because of the influence of the textile mills was Lowell, Massachusetts. The mills employed men, but they also employed women and children because they were a cheaper source of labor “The era of the New England Mill girls began near 1820 and lasted roughly until the outbreak of the Civil War” (Reading 1). The Lowell workforce in the mills stood at 114 men and 899 women in 1860 (The Utopian 1). As is traditional in American history, men occupied the higher paying and more significant jobs in the mills, like mill manager, overseer and clerk. Women were often employed for lower wages, even if they had similar jobs and most jobs offered no advancement. Typical jobs available to women in the mills were: gauze examiners; female assistant overseers; warpers; twisters; wasters; weavers; plugwinders; drawers and doublers; winders.
Mill life was not idyllic under any circumstances. It were characterized by low pay, mostly women workers, long hours and oppressive conditions. There were between seven and eight thousand women living in Lowell in the 1830s and many of them had been the daughters of farmers from New England states who found employment in the mills as industrialization developed (An Account 1). The women worked in the mills from five in the morning until seven in the evening in summer time and from da...