Lowell Offering and Magazine, The.
[Labor]. The Lowell Offering and Magazine. Written and edited by Female Operatives. Lowell: William Schouler, October 1842-December 1845.
36 vols., wrappers, bound into marbled boards.
The final three years of this landmark periodical which had begun collecting verse, fiction, drama, translations, and essays by the Lowell Mill Girls in 1840; in 1842 mill worker Harriet Farley took over the editorial reins from A.C. Thomas.
The Lowell Mill concept garnered attention worldwide soon after its inception in 1822, first as an innovative industrial idea and cultural phenomenon, and later as the genesis of a labor movement.
In 1813, Francis Cabot Lowell designed and established the prototype in Waltham, Massachusetts, for the Boston Manufacturing Company. As adapted for the Lowell Mills, all elements of manufacture were housed under one roof and labor was drawn from local New England girls, “pious and thrifty” but eager to experience some excitement and to attain some degree of independence while earning support for their farming families. Among the lures were “[t]he well-supervised, adjacent boarding houses for the girls, a lending library, a lyceum lecture series, diverse churches, wages paid in cash, and a bank for saving…” In addition, “[t]he socialization, independence, and ‘esprit de corps’ derived from their respectable adventure in Lowell heightened their awareness of their abilities and resulted in ‘Improvement Circles’ and a flowering of creativity in their poems and articles for the Lowell Offering, a periodical created to demonstrate the intellectual capabilities of the mill girls” (HAWH, pp. 337-40).
The historical importance of the Mill Girls—apart from the inspirational creative spirit that won them the attention of Dickens, Hawthorne, congressmen, senators, and three American presidents—is rooted in their 1840s labor union which grew out of the economic upheaval of the 1830s: “[I]ncreased competition in the textile industry brought decreased wages, loom speedups, additional looms per worker, and less time for intellectual pursuits even before the panic of 1837, which brought on a national economic depression.” An 1834 pay-cut resulted in a farcical one-day strike, the “Lowell Proclamation” by the Girls that their fair labor policy demands must be met—and, for most, an immediate return to the mills. A month-long strike two years later—brought on again by a pay cut—successfully established their solidarity, but the loss of income and housing inevitably forced most either back to their homes or back to work. A decade later, the newly-formed and short-lived Lowell Female Reform Association would attempt further organization for labor reform, with more success.
Throughout the 1830s the Lowell Girls maintained cultural circles and improvement societies, and in the 1840s funneled their writings into the Lowell Offering. They found their primary audience not in the mills but in the surrounding towns, and even interested a national and international readership “in Lowell as a social experiment and in the Offering as a unique phenomenon.” But as working conditions worsened, mill management sought to politicize the Offering: “The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association attempts to organize the mills brought Farley into conflict with those who wanted the Offering to represent the interests of mill operatives rather than mill owners. Farley refused to change the magazine’s focus or to include any discussion of current conditions in the mills. Subscriptions declined, and the Lowell Offering ceased publication in 1845.” It came back as the New England Offering (1847-50), published in the spirit of its predecessor but with an open membership of contributors. (HAWH, pp. 337-40)
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