The Life of a Mill Worker

During the industrial era, mills were being constructed to mass produce linens along assembly lines.  Many girls from the country side went in to the cities in order to aide their families in multiple ways, such as by sending home money or simply giving them one less mouth to feed.  Being able to help their families through these tough times is what motivated girls to come to large cities and work in mills there.  

Coming to the mills had some ups and downs for the mill girls.  Some of the benefits they received were getting a place to live while they worked in the mills, even though it cost them a large portion of their salary for boarding.  However, it did help them to learn to be independent, and they were paid for it, and also received 3 months of formal education.  They were also given some free time on Sundays and at night, so they were not constantly working and could do things they wanted to do, such as go shopping for new clothes with the little money they had.  Even though life at the mills wasn't terribly bad at first, there were many costs to working the life of a mill girl.  They were not paid nearly enough, and they were forced to leave their families to work and live in the mills in the city, and not only that, the working and living conditions in the mills were very poor.  There were many girls crowded into the boarding rooms and the mills were dangerous with mean, strict overseers.  Women had to wear their hair tied up in order to prevent it getting caught in the mill and ripping their hair out, making it an extremely dangerous place because there were women working there.  During the 1800's, women who worked in the mills were thought to be improper and unclean, and were also thought lowly of because they were not with their fathers.  However, it opened up the eyes of some people who learned that women could also do work in factories instead of just men, and that they could do jobs just as well as anyone else.  Before the mills, girls didn't have many available jobs in cities, and were primarily stay at home people, and the opening of these factories gave women new opportunities in the workforce, but some restrictions on them took away their childhoods and didn't let them live the life that most girls did.  Working in the mills meant living a tough life, and it changed the way that many women were viewed in the 1800's.