US History

U.S. History Study Guide

The Lowell System In the early days, the Lowell System became a popular way to staff the New England factories. Young women were hired from the surrounding countryside, brought to town and housed in dormitories in the mill towns. They were paid low wages for hard work under poor conditions, but they were only working for a short time, to earn dowry or to bolster with the family income. They would soon return back home. This “rotating labor supply” was ideal for the owners, since the girls were not going to fight for better wages and conditions. Labor was always in short supply in the country, consequently the system depended on technology to increase production. This situation always placed a premium on innovation in machinery and technique. The Growth of Unions The Factory system separated the owners from the workers and thus depersonalized the workplace. It also made the skilled artisan less important, since the repetitive processes of the mill could be performed by relatively unskilled laborers. Although, the first organization strike took place in 1828, in Paterson, New Jersey, by child workers, periodic economic downturns helped keep workers relatively dependent and passive until the 1850’s. A major goal of early unions was the 10-hour day, and this effort sparked a period of growth in organized labor, which was later effectively quenched by the depression of 1837. 9.16 Education Educational Development Before 1815, there were no public schools in this country. Some states had endorsed the idea of free schools for the people, but they shrank from the task of financing such a system. Jefferson had outlined such a plan for Virginia, but it came to nothing. Schools were primarily sponsored by private institutions in the Northeast and religious institutions in the South and Middle States. Most were upper-class institutions, training the nation’s leaders, with few having any interest in schooling the children of the poor. Women were considered unfit for academic training and those female schools which existed concentrated on homemaking skills and the fine arts which would make “ornaments” of the young ladies enrolled. The New York Free School, one of those rare examples of a school for the poor, experimented for a time with the Lancastrian system, in which older students tutored younger ones, thus stretching the scarce budget dollars.

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