Student Activity Packet

Activity #11:Women, Work, and Protest: A Scholarly Article with Questions


(Thomas Dublin, "Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: 'The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us,'" Labor History 16 (1975): 99-116.)

Description

Use this piece of historical writing as a basis for discussion or an essay assignment.

Questions

  1. What does the author mean by the "culture of female operatives?" Find examples of this culture in work and on-work situations. Are there both positive and negative examples of this culture?

  2. How did mill owners, or "corporations," help foster the community of mill workers?

  3. How did the culture of female operatives help the mill operatives to protest and "turn out?" Why would living together help workers strike?

  4. Turn to the statement of principles, entitled "Union is Power," circulated by striking mill girls in 1834. Read this excerpt closely, underlining patriotic words and ideas. Why did the mill girls use this language? What does it remind you of? Where have you heard these words and ideas?

  5. What made the mill operatives strike in 1834? In 1836? Why did they turn their attentions to the Ten Hour Movement in the 1840s? Is this a form of political activism?

  6. Where did the author find the voices of the mill girls? What are his sources and evidence?

  7. Why does the author tell us so much about the culture of the mill operatives? Why does this matter to a historian? What does leisure or nonwork time have to do with protest and strikes? What does it have to do with history?

    Copyright © 1998 The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.

    Comments and questions to the Lemelson Center:lemcen@si.edu

    Last Revision: 6/5/98