Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls.
[Labor]. Robinson, Harriet H. Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls. With a Sketch of “The Lowell Offering and Some of its Contributors... New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, (1898).
8vo.; green cloth, covers elaborately bordered in gilt; pages fresh, few corners lightly nicked, folded, else good; covers virtually as new.
First edition of this seminal memoir by one of America’s earliest female labor activists. Robinson, a strike leader and contributor to the original “Lowell Offering,” described her years as a “factory-girl” in the infamous Lowell mills, her developing political consciousness, and her role in the movement for equitable working conditions for women. An uncommon work—especially in such handsome condition—which is still looked to as an authoritative historical reference.
Robinson’s rendition of life in the mills is alternately fascinating, inspiring, and frustrating. Robinson’s densely written text includes detailed descriptions of the harrowing conditions under which she and other girls worked; yet despite this litany of horrors, Robinson is able to acknowledge the positive as well as the negative impact of factory work on women as a class:
The law [then] took no cognizance of woman as a money-spender. She was a ward, an appendage, a relic...If a woman did not choose to marry...she had no choice but to enter one of the few employments open to her, or to become a burden on the charity of some relative...In almost every New England home could be found one or more of these women...leading joyless and in many instances unsatisfactory lives. The cotton-factory was a great opening to these lonely and dependent women...For the first time in this country woman’s labor had a money value. She had become not only an earner and producer, but also a spender of money, a recognized factor in the political economy of her time. (pp. 68-9)
Loom and Spindle is Robinson’s only autobiographical work, and, by far, her most enduring publication.
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