"Life in the Shop" Analysis Worksheet
This worksheet helps students to determine the central ideas and information in "Life in the Shop": The Story of an Immigrant Garment Worker.
Background Essay and Worksheet on Immigrant Working Women
This is a shortened, edited version of Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars (excerpt) used in The Pay Envelope: A Role Play activity. It helps students to determine the main ideas of the text by matching summary statements to the paragraphs in [...]
Active Viewing: Daughters of Free Men
In this activity, students watch short clips of the ASHP documentary Daughters of Free Men to learn about the experiences of Lowell mill girls in the 1830s. Students follow the life of Lucy, a young girl working in Lowell in 1836. After each clip, [...]
Young Women Ask Permission to Work in Lowell
Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. [...]
Young Women Ask Permission to Work in Lowell (with text supports)
Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. [...]
Background Essay on Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl
This essay explains the significance of young female immigrants in the labor upheavals that helped define the Progressive Era.
Active Viewing: Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl
In this activity, students watch the documentary Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl in sections, with documents and exercises designed to support and reinforce the film's key concepts: workers challenging the effects of industrial capitalism, the [...]
A Mexican Immigrant Describes Her Work in Los Angeles
Elisa Silva was born in Mazatlán, Mexico and emigrated to the United States at age twenty, eventually settling in Los Angeles. In this interview, conducted during the mid-1920s, Silva describes her motivation for coming, her difficulties finding [...]
Women in the Workplace Discussion
This lesson puts two primary sources in conversation with one another and encourages students to compare the authors’ perspectives on women in various industries in the late 19th century.