Labor Leader

Lowell Girl. Like thousands of Francis Cabot Lowell's "mill girls," Sarah Bagley grew up in rural New England. Born into a New Hampshire farm family, Sarah left home at twenty-one to become a mill operative in the Hamilton Manufacturing Company mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1837 Lowell still retained something of the original optimistic spirit with which Francis Cabot Lowell had set out to create an ideal factory town for the young republic.

Changes. Bagley seemed to thrive in the surroundings. She organized an after-work school and wrote articles for the company newspaper, Lowell Offering, titled "Pleasures of Factory Life." But conditions were beginning to change. A vast expansion in the number and size of Lowell's textile mills (as well as similar mills throughout the region) had begun to saturate the market for cheap cotton goods, driving down prices. The managers of the Lowell...