Accidents were frequent. Worst of all, mills were unventilated. Many workers were stricken with brown lung disease, a life threatening illness caused by breathing in cotton dust. Women's Response to ...

Young women from all over New England started coming to Lowell in the late 1820s to work in the textile factories. Known as “mill girls,” these women operated machines in the mills, lived in company ...

As the railroad expanded in the South, production of cotton, wheat ... to the countryside once they saved some money. Many young women went because they saw farm life as a dead-end while the mills ...