Energy books

But
before the close of October, 1836, the strike was broken and the
girls were back at work on the employers' terms. Still an echo of the
struggle is heard in the following month at the Annual Convention
of the National Trades Union, where the Committee on Female Labor
recommended that "they [the women operatives] should immediately adopt
energetic measures, in the construction of societies to support each
other."
Almost every difficulty that the working-woman has to face today had
its analogue then. For instance, speeding up: "The factory girls of
Amesbury have had a flare-up and turned out because they were told
they must tend two looms in future without any advance of wages."
A pitiful account comes from eastern Pennsylvania, where the cotton
industry had by this time a footing. Whole families would be in the
mill "save only one small girl to take care of the house and provide
the meals."
Yet the wages of all the members were needed to supply bare wants.
The hours in the mills were cruelly long.


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