Mill and factory owners in the textile industry generally solved their employment problems in one of two ways. Under the Rhode Island system, they hired whole families, assigned father, mother, and children to tasks suitable to their strength and maturity, and housed the families in company-constructed tenements. South of Boston, the Rhode Island system was used almost exclusively, partly because child labor was first introduced there in imitation of English methods, and partly because the mule spinning typical of the area required both heavy and light work. A second system, called the Waltham system, was introduced in Waltham, Massachusetts, by Francis Cabot Lowell and the Boston Associates. It employed women in their late teens and early twenties who worked in large factories. Housed in dormitories or boarding houses, they remained under the careful supervision of matrons who kept any taint of disreputability from the young women. (Recall Economic Reasoning Propositions 1, scarcity forces us to make choices; 2, choices impose costs; and 4, laws and rules matter in Economic Insight 1.1 on page 9).
A key impetus to the Waltham system was the low female-to-male wage ratio in agriculture in the New England area. This argument was introduced by Claudia Goldin and Ken Sokoloff (1982), and it has been buttressed by Lee Craig and Elizabeth Field-Hendry (1993). By contrast, the female-to-male wage ratio was higher and more steady in the South, which did not industrialize until much later. In the North, using the Waltham system, rapid advances in productivity in the mills raised the value and earnings of the women working there. The initially low female-to-male wage ratio rose as industries dominated by female labor experienced above-average productivity increases from 1815 to 1860. During these 45 years, female earnings rose from about one-third to nearly one-half of male wages. In short, low-cost female labor contributed significantly to the initiation of industrialization, and in turn, women’s earnings in New England rose relative to men’s in the antebellum period because of industrialization. Moreover, by drawing women away from agriculture in the North, the Waltham system and other female work opportunities in industry increased the relative value and earnings of women who remained in farming. The weekly wage of farm women more than doubled from 1830 to 1860.
Child labor in spinning was common, especially in areas south of Boston; a family-based labor system known as the Rhode Island system developed there.
Hours of work in the early factories were long. A 12-hour day was considered reasonable, and half an hour off for meals was standard. From sunrise to sunset, it was possible to operate machinery without artificial light, and in wintertime, candles furnished enough illumination to permit operation into the evening. Because of the slow speeds of the early machines, the work pace was not great; for this reason, women and children could work 72 hours per week without physical breakdown.
The life of a New England textile worker was tiresome and drab, although it was not noticeably worse than the life of a poor New England farmer, whose dawn-to-dusk regimen left little time for pleasure and other pursuits. As noted, the factory offered young women an escape from the low pay, boredom, and isolation of farm life. Their next best alternative for work (Economic Reasoning Proposition 2, choices impose costs) was typically farm work or to join their mothers in handweaving or making straw hats, palmleaf hats, or shoes. Taking another perspective, New England factory workers generally escaped the harshness subjected to English workers during the first decades of the factory system. Undoubtedly, largely because of greater labor scarcity, American manufacturers were compelled to maintain a certain standard of decency to attract and hold the labor they wanted. Nor does evidence show that American factory owners were as cruel to children as some English employers.
It was in the cities that the most negative aspects of industrialization were first witnessed, both in England and the United States. The worst conditions were in the so-called sweatshops, where workers worked 14 to 16 hours a day in the garment industries of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. And common laborers who sold their services to
Transportation companies, urban building contractors, or factory and mill owners found themselves in an unenviable position when stiff competition from immigrant labor retarded the growth of real wages. For most workers, however, the antebellum period was one of rising wages and higher standards of material well-being.
World History
