A Former Lowell Girl Remembers Working in the Mills

Lucy Larcom worked in the mills at Lowell as a young woman. In her memoir, written more than forty years later, she remembered how she and other young female mill workers felt about their jobs.

I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very wearisome to me. In the sweet June weather I would lean far out of the window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside…. 

I regard it as one of the privileges of my youth that I was permitted to grow up among these active, interesting girls…. They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing…. They gave me a larger, firmer idea of womanhood…. 

Country girls were naturally independent, and the feeling that at this new work the few hours they had of every-day leisure were entirely their own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred it to going out as ‘hired help.’ It was like a young man’s pleasure in entering upon business for himself. Girls had never tried that experiment before, and they liked it.