Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1889-02-27
YANKEE MILL GIRLS.
The Kind of Young Women Who Watched
the Ioorns Forty Years Am

The Kind of Young Women Who Watched
the Looms Forty Years Ago.
When, at the beginning of the century the
cotton business arose it afforded the girls OF
New England the first opportunity to find
occupation outside their homes sufficiently
important to affect the destiny of any large
| number of them They rushed into the new
opening not dreaming that they were pre-
cipitating their sex into the maelstrom of
modern industry, or that they were merely
the advance guard Of great army Of female
workers, whose Instantaneous attitude
towards economic forces Is one of the most
fruitful sources of suffering in our social
body
1t was not the stupid girl who in that early
day broke away from the monotony of farm
life, or the still worse helplessness Of exist
ence with parents too poor to be farmers It
was the bright, eager young women who
went TO the mills to earn money and free
themselves from the semi-servitude engen-
dered by dependence on relatives. The story
has often been told or tho Lowell factory girls
who published paper, and in time settled to
no meaner avocation than that of author or
social reformer.
There are legends also of generation of
Yankee mill girls who sent to Preston S.
Brooks the suggestive tribute of thirty pieces
OF silver, after his assault upon Charles Sum-
uer. But the careers concerning which these
stories are related belong to late period in
the history of the Americans connection with
the manual part of cotton manufacture and
some of them were exceptionally striking
Still, such incidents indicate something
which It Is important TO understand, and
that Is that the nice girls of New England
for many years became mill operatives. OF
course, do not mean that such labor was
ever aristocfatic, but that it passed a certain
social sanction which 1t does not now COM
mand consideration of the average for
tunes of the native help leads TO the same
conclusion
The mill girl had worldly superiors then
as the dressinaker, the typewriter, the tele-
graph operator, the common school teacher
has now, but she was from exactly che same
stock and was herself just the same sort of
girl as are the ones who now follow these diff
ferent vacations She maintained her dig
nifty while in the mill, and if she left it before
she grew Old 1t was because she wanted to
leave it--usually because some man wisely
wanted 10 marry her. Her marriage was
generally sensible, and sometimes brilliant.
In studying the traditions Of the whole period,
one finds occasional hints of that romance
htSa oNIsiSLcS W uiSltTN, ds JQS
homely details one catches now and then q
glimpse OF ideal beauty, and comes upon the
trace Of some girl whose loveliuess attracted
fate quite different from that Of her village
comrades. 1t is happily due TO the purity of
New England ethics chat this fate Is more
oftsn found to be joyful than sad
suppose II would be impossible to obtain
statistics which would tell US much either of
the life OF the Americans who wore opera
tives or of the after fete of their descendants.
But every person who has been long familiar
with the native residents in the older manu-
featuring towns is necessarily acquainted
With many family histories which reveal the
essential features of that former time, when
factories were small and owners and workers
were often not only ueighbors but friends
They were all subjected TO the ancient New
England village tradition of substantial
equality. They were Of one blood, they held
TO one religion, end called each othsr very
generally by their Christian names. of
that early time" writes lady now more
than 80 years old, Il have many reconections,
when the wife Of Mr. s. met the wives Of
ove-seers not only in her church work or at
prayer meetings, but in social equality" ~
Atlantic Monthly.