American History Teachers’ Collaborative Learning Trip to Boston

Kyle Sondgeroth

Summer, 2009

This trip to Boston, MA was an amazing learning adventure! It was filled with historical sites, sounds, and most of all experiences that make our past truly come alive! One of the locations where I felt that I was actually living a historical period was our trip to the Lowell Mills. Our 4th grade curriculum touches upon the Lowell Mills in our unit on the Industrial Revolution. As we visited the Mill, it became evident that our curriculum (and perhaps history in general) has grossly overlooked the importance that this Mill played in shaping our country’s history. Not only was it the site where water power and mass production were first utilized, but it also helped shaped the history of women, economics, and labor in the United States.

Therefore, for my reflective paper I chose an interesting primary source found in the book Mill Girls of Lowell edited by Jeff Levinson. The source is an “Account of Charles Dickens” which was originally printed in Dickens’ travel journal American Notes in 1842. The source is accompanied by a short “Response to Mr. Dickens from the Lowell Offering” which was originally printed in the Lowell Offering in 1843. American Notes for General Circulation was a travel journal kept by Dickens as he traveled the Eastern coast and Great Lakes portions of the United States in early 1842. He kept this journal, likely both for the use of profit (which he did publish) and inspiration (using it for later works such as Martin Chuzzlewit.) The response in the Lowell Offering is a short rebuttal printed in the monthly periodical of the Lowell Mills. Both would have been intended for the public to read as an audience.

Dickens’ account of the Lowell Mills is quite flattering! He describes nearly everything that he saw at the Mills and gives glowing reviews of it all. He gives an account of the girls themselves saying:

“These girls...were all well dressed: and that phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness...They were healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had the manners and deportment of young women: not degraded brutes of burden” (p. 30)

Dickens is very impressed with how the girls look and act as they work about the mill. They do not seem to be the oppressed tools of labor that were so often linked to factories of Europe at the time of his visit. Dickens was in awe of how healthy, clean, and well kept these women were.

Dickens then goes on to praise the working conditions of the factory. Again, this must have been a stark contrast to the grimier conditions in European factories at the time. He is even impressed with the green plants and general environment of the factory saying:

“In the windows of some, there were green plants, which were trained to shade the glass; in all, there was as much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort as the nature of the occupation would possibly admit” (p. 30)

Again, Dickens likens the factory to a pleasant working environment. He then goes on to discuss the working conditions of the children in the factory. Dickens justifies their toils, by saying that they only have to work 9 months of the year and are “educated” the other 3 months of the year. He also discusses the “boarding house for the sick” (p. 31) saying that

“it is the best house in those parts...The principal medical attendant resides under the same roof; and were the patients members of his own family, they could not be better cared for” (p. 31)

As the account goes forward, there are not too many things that Dickens does not find attractive about the Lowell Mills. The reader of this account soon begins to wonder if Dickens is writing this as a travel journal or an advertisement for the Mills themselves? The response from the Lowell Offering sheds insight into Mr. Dickens’ account.

In his account Charles Dickens offers 3 facts that “will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic (the European side) very much.” (p. 31) He states:

“Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called THE LOWELL OFFERING” (p. 31)

When looking at these facts, it is obvious that they would “startle” readers on the European side of the Atlantic because factory workers do not enjoy these luxuries. Dickens is again taking a progressive shot at European working conditions. He goes on to relate how enjoyable their periodical is and that he has read 400 pages of it. His point of contention is that the women of Lowell have these things because they do not see themselves as “working class” but instead see themselves as a class working toward bettering their life. Dickens uses the word “station.” Saying that the European idea of a “working class station” is to be simply that: work, eat, sleep, and do nothing else. Dickens asserts that the women of Lowell do not see themselves in that same “station.” They come to Lowell to earn a good wage, save their money, and go back to their family farm in a few years better off than when they came to Lowell. In the mean time, they learn piano, write poetry, read classic literature, and generally better their “station” in life.

The response to Dickens’ account is perhaps even more interesting. While there are a select few who do play piano, read from the circulating library, and write for the Lowell Offering, the response suggests that this is not a wide-spread practice among the women. In response to the pianos in the boarding houses, the Lowell Offering declares “That is true, but not in a great proportion of them.” (p. 33) In response to his second “fact” about the circulating libraries, the Lowell Offering maintains “We fear that nearly all do not thus subscribe, though very many are supporters of other libraries.” (p. 33) Finally, in response to the Lowell Offering itself, with which Dickens was such an ardent admirer, the periodical states “The Offering was got up by individuals from among themselves, and they perhaps are worthy of our author’s (Dickens’) applause, but the proportion of those factory girls who interest themselves in its support is more than one in fifty.” (p. 33) One in fifty is hardly a wide-spread interest in the paper that Dickens so proudly read 400 pages of after visiting the Mill!

The response spreads light on the true reality of life in the Mills. Dickens romanticizes life in the Lowell Mill in order to bring about some sort of social change in the European factories of his homeland. In all likelihood, life in the Mills was not as clean, healthy, green, or classical as Charles Dickens accounts it to be. It was a hard job and that “fact” cannot be denied. The response seeks to correct a few of these opinionated errors from Dickens. Most boarding houses did not have a piano. Most of the women were not reading books from a circulating library. Finally, only a few of the most enterprising women at the factory made the Lowell Offering a functioning periodical.

I think that this document has enormous potential in my classroom. It could be used to display how some people of the middle 19th century romanticized the working conditions of those in the factories. Charles Dickens’ account is not an entirely truthful painting of life in the Lowell Mills. It is more an exaggerated portrait aimed at improving the conditions of factory workers in Europe. Children understand exaggeration when they see it and this would be a wonderful example to ask why Dickens is using it and do they think it would help change life in the European factories? The answers would vary and it would be a great critical thinking activity. Using the Lowell Offering response would be a fantastic way to introduce them to “real” working conditions in these factories. Using this response would likely help students to understand that factory life was not always clean, healthy, and well-kept as Dickens would have one believe. It was a difficult existence and made for a hard life. I think that this piece would be an excellent accompaniment to some primary source photos of the Mill. I would also use Dickens’ discussions about children working in the Mill 9 months a year and being educated 3 months a year to elicit a discussion about the working conditions of children in the Mill. There is a multitude of ways to use this primary source in a 4th grade classroom when teaching about the Industrial Revolution.

This document helped me to gain some more insight into one of my favorite parts of our experiential learning trip: our tour of the Lowell Mills. It was a great opportunity to see how one 19th century, foreign author viewed the Mill and how a response from the Mill girls themselves was totally different. It shows history is always a story of multiple sides. Being able to go on this trip and absorb those sides of history first-hand was an amazing opportunity!