Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, imagine this: the governor of Massachusetts and all the other political bigwigs? They started getting, like, seriously freaked out. Samuel Adams, the guy everyone thought was, you know, this total radical in Boston, suddenly he's all about everyone sticking to the law. He's saying that these "British emissaries" are, like, totally stirring up the farmers. But then, people in Greenwich were like, "Hey, you Boston folks, you got all the money, and we're broke! And, like, didn't *you* break the law during the Revolution, like, hello?" So, anyway, these rebels, they started getting called "Regulators," and their symbol? A sprig of hemlock, of all things.
And, um, the thing is, it wasn't just a Massachusetts problem. In Rhode Island, like, the *debtors* had taken over the whole state legislature and they were printing tons of paper money. And in New Hampshire? A few hundred guys, they surrounded the legislature in Exeter, asking for their taxes back and demanding even more paper money. They only stopped when the military threatened to get involved.
So, yeah, that's when Daniel Shays enters the scene in western Massachusetts. He was, like, this poor farmhand when the Revolution started. He joined the Continental Army, fought at Lexington, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, got wounded and all, right? But then, in 1780, he wasn't getting paid, so he, you know, quit the army, went home, and ended up in court for not paying his debts. And he saw what was happening to everyone else too. Like, one sick woman? They took her bed right out from under her 'cause she couldn't pay!
What really got Shays going was that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts met and indicted eleven rebellion leaders, including three of his buddies, as "disorderly, riotous, and seditious persons," you know, the whole thing. The court was planning to meet again soon, and, like, there was talk of indicting even more people.
So, Shays, he organized like, seven hundred armed farmers, most of them war veterans, and led them to Springfield. And guess what? There was a general there with nine hundred soldiers *and* a cannon. But Shays asked the general, "Can we, like, parade?" And the general said, "Sure," So Shays and his men marched through the square, drums and fifes blasting, getting louder. And get this: As they marched, they actually gained more people. Some of the militia even joined them! And reinforcements started pouring in from the countryside. So the judges postponed the hearings, then just closed up the court.
Now, the General Court, up in Boston, got told by the governor, like, to "vindicate the insulted dignity of government." These guys who were, like, just rebels against England? Suddenly they're all about "law and order," you know? Sam Adams even helped write a Riot Act and a resolution that suspended *habeas corpus* so the authorities could keep people in jail without a trial. At the same time, the legislature tried to make some concessions to the angry farmers, like saying they could pay certain old taxes with goods instead of money. But, well, too little too late, I guess.
So in Worcester, like, 160 rebels showed up at the courthouse. The sheriff read the Riot Act, super official, and the rebels were like, "We'll leave if the judges do." The sheriff yelled something about hanging people. Then someone stuck a sprig of hemlock in his hat. Classy. So, naturally, the judges bolted.
After that, you know, these confrontations between farmers and militia started popping up all over the place. Winter hit, and the snow started messing up everyone's travel plans. Shays tried marching a thousand guys into Boston, but a blizzard forced them back and one of his men straight up froze to death.
Then, a real army showed up, led by General Benjamin Lincoln. Some Boston merchants had, like, privately raised money for it. There was an artillery duel, and three rebels got killed. One soldier lost both arms. The winter got worse, the rebels were outnumbered and, like, on the run. Shays ran off to Vermont, and his followers started surrendering. There were a couple more deaths, then some, you know, desperate acts against authority. Barns getting burned, horses getting slaughtered. And one government soldier died in a super creepy sleigh collision at night.
The rebels who got caught went on trial, and some got sentenced to death. Some anonymous person left a note at the high sheriff's door saying, basically, "If you execute these guys, you're gonna be next." Pretty intense stuff.
Eventually, thirty-three *more* rebels went on trial, and a bunch more got the death sentence. Then there was this huge argument over whether to actually hang them or not. General Lincoln was all for mercy, but Sam Adams was like, "Treason? Death penalty. End of story." So, some people got hanged, some got pardoned. Shays, in Vermont, got pardoned and came back to Massachusetts, but died poor and obscure, much later.
Um, and get this, Thomas Jefferson, he was in France at the time, and he said that these kinds of rebellions were actually *good* for society, like medicine for government! Like, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Pretty dramatic, right?
But everyone else wasn't so thrilled. They worried about the whole thing spreading. General Henry Knox, a vet from Washington's army, started this group for army vets, maybe to remember the glory days, but also, supposedly, to keep an eye out for, you know, *radicalism*. Knox wrote to Washington about Shays' Rebellion, saying that these rebels were poor, saw the rich were rich, and they had decided to take what they wanted. He said their motto was something like, "We all fought, so we all deserve it."
And then, Alexander Hamilton, you know, Washington's aide during the war? He said that society is always divided into the rich and the poor, and the voice of the people isn't always right because people are easily swayed. He thought the rich should always have a say in the government so democracy wouldn't go crazy. He even wanted a President and Senate chosen for life!
The Constitutional Convention didn't go that far, but they didn't exactly make the government super democratic either. Only the House of Representatives was popularly elected, and even then only people who owned property could vote. So, yeah.
But, see, the problem was more than just the Constitution. It was that the rich had all the power anyway. Like, they controlled the land, the money, the newspapers, the schools, even the church. So how could voting, even if everyone voted, really change things, you know? And also, isn't it, like, in the nature of government to try to prevent huge changes?
When it was time to ratify the Constitution, there were these newspaper articles, anonymously written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. They became known as the Federalist Papers. In one of them, James Madison argued that you needed representative government to keep the peace between all these different groups with different amounts of money. The real problem was how to control a *majority* that wanted too much. And Madison said, well, make the nation *really big*, you know, spread out over thirteen states, so it's harder for people to organize and rebel! So, like, a revolt in one state won't spread to the rest of the country.
And, okay, that might sound sensible. But is the point of government *just* to keep order? Or is it to keep a certain group of people in power, you know, to protect their wealth? The government is not neutral, it serves certain interests!
Madison said it himself: "A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it." See? He wanted to keep the peace for the people who had *something to lose.*
So, the Constitution? Maybe it wasn't just wise men trying to create a good society. Maybe it was rich people trying to protect their privileges while giving just enough rights to keep everyone else happy.
Hamilton and Madison, even though they were from different parties, agreed on the main goal: to repress revolts. Hamilton wrote that the new Union would be able "to repress domestic faction and insurrection," and he even mentioned Shays' Rebellion!
And it was one of them who argued that you need a Senate to protect the people *from themselves*. They said that, sometimes, the people get all worked up over something, and they want to do crazy stuff, so you need a "temperate and respectable body" to step in and stop them from making mistakes.
The Constitution was a compromise between the slaveholders in the South and the moneyed interests in the North. The North wanted laws about trade, and the South said they'd agree if the slave trade could continue for twenty years.
So, governments aren't neutral, they represent the powerful!
Someone said, "But the Constitution protects property! Isn't that good?" Well, yeah, a lot of people owned property, but *some people had a lot more than others*. One-third of people were small farmers, but like, only three percent were truly wealthy. So sure, one-third felt like they had a stake in the government, but it's still a system that overwhelmingly benefits the few.
City workers often supported the Constitution because they wanted protection from foreign competition. So the Constitution kind of did a little something for everyone, enough to keep the whole system running.
But the Constitution got even *more* popular when they added the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, all that good stuff, right? It made the new government seem like it was protecting everyone's liberties. But what wasn't clear was that, if you're not rich, or powerful, it can be a little shakier, this freedom.
Even the stuff about protecting contracts sounds fair, until you realize that contracts usually favor the more powerful person. So by protecting these contracts, the government is actually siding with the rich, not with the poor!
And get this: The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Then, like, seven years later, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a *crime* to say anything bad about the government. Ten people were thrown in jail and all the Supreme Court justices at the time said it was totally okay! Turns out the First Amendment? Maybe not as strong as it sounds.
Turns out there was this, like, legal loophole that nobody knew about that allowed them to punish you *after* you spoke, even though they weren't supposed to stop you *before*. It's still around! You can be punished for things you say!
And guess what else was going on? Washington's Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, believed that the government should ally itself with the richest people. So they created a national bank as a partnership with banking interests, passed a tariff to help manufacturers, and agreed to pay bondholders the full value of their bonds. But all the war bonds were held by rich people. They passed a Whiskey Tax that hurt small farmers, and when the farmers rebelled, Hamilton led the troops to crush them. So, yeah, even some parts of the Constitution are definitely more protected than others.
So, yeah, the Founding Fathers? Maybe not all that they're cracked up to be. They didn't want a balance, really, except one that kept things the way they were.
You know what? Talking about the Founding Fathers, they basically didn't even acknowledge half the population of the country.
That's right, I'm talking about women. I mean, the explorers were men, the landowners were men, the political leaders were men. It's like women were invisible. You know, when people talk about history, it's like half the people don't even exist. It's like their status is underwater and that's why you don't see them.
They were kind of like black slaves, to be honest. I mean, slave women were doubly oppressed. It's like women's biology was used to, you know, treat them like inferiors. I mean, they're the childbearers, right? But that wasn't the whole story. It was like men used them. Exploited them. But also cherished them, because they were, you know, servants, sex partners, companions, and teachers for the kids.
Society's built on private property and competition. And the family's a little work unit. And it's useful to have women in this special status. It's like they're house slaves. But they're also, you know, intimate with you and they have long-term connections with the kids. So you treat them differently. And this private oppression? It's hard to get rid of.
In other societies that had communal property and big families, women were treated more equally. Like in the Zuni tribe out West, the families were based on the woman. The husbands came to live with *her* family. The women owned the houses, the clans owned the fields, and the women had equal rights to what was produced. I mean, the woman was more secure because she was with *her* family, and she could divorce the man if she wanted and keep their property!
And in the Plains Indian tribes, the women didn't farm, but they were healers, herbalists, holy people. They gave advice. Sometimes women became chieftains. They learned to shoot bows and carry knives. Because among the Sioux, a woman was supposed to defend herself against attack.
The puberty ceremony of the Sioux gave pride to the young women. "Walk the good road. Be dutiful, respectful, gentle, and modest. And proud. If the pride and virtue of the women are lost, the spring will come but the buffalo trails will turn to grass. Be strong. No people goes down until their women are weak and dishonored."
It's not that women were treated equally, but they were treated with respect, and the communal nature of the society gave them a more important place.
But when white settlers came to America, it was different. In the first settlements, it was mostly men. So women were, like, imported. As sex slaves. Childbearers. Companions. Like, in 1619, the same year that the first black slaves came to Virginia, 90 women arrived at Jamestown on one ship. "Agreeable persons, young and incorrupt. Sold with their own consent to settlers as wives. The price to be the cost of their own transportation."
Many women came as indentured servants, and their lives weren't that different from slaves except they had an end date, you know? They had to be obedient. They were poorly paid, treated harshly, deprived of food and privacy. But they could resist. They could do as little work as possible, make difficulties for their masters. The masters saw it as sullenness, laziness, stupidity.
I mean, the courts got involved. In 1645, a woman named Susan C., because she was rebellious, got sent to the house of correction and kept to hard labor and coarse diet, and had to be publicly corrected every week!
Sexual abuse by masters against servant girls was commonplace. The court records of Virginia and other colonies show masters brought into court for this. So it must have been, you know, more than the court cases showed.
In 1756, Elizabeth Sprigs wrote to her father about her servitude. "What we unfortunate English People suffer here is beyond what you could imagine. I'm toiling almost Day and Night. Whipped so much you wouldn't treat an animal that way. Almost naked. No shoes or stockings. Many Negroes are better used."
The horrors of black slaves transported to America must be multiplied for black women. I mean, slave traders reported seeing pregnant women give birth while chained to corpses! Some women went crazy.
Linda Brent, who escaped from slavery, said she was, like, approached, sexually, by her master as a teenager.
Even free white women, women who were wives of the early settlers, faced hardships. Eighteen married women came over on the Mayflower. Three were pregnant, and one gave birth to a dead child before they landed. Childbirth and sickness plagued the women, and most of them died quickly.
Those who lived worked hard, and their men gave them respect. When men died, the women took over the men's work. All through the first century, women on the frontier were treated close to equality with men.
But all women were burdened by ideas carried over from England. Laws written about women said when a woman gets married, it's like a little river flowing into the ocean. She loses her name. A married woman? "Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master."
The husband could chastise his wife, but not cause permanent injury or death. He took all her personal property. He collected wages earned by her labor.
If a woman had a child out of wedlock, it was a crime, and she was dragged into court. The father? Untouched. On the loose. There's this famous speech "of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of Judicature. Where she was prosecuted the fifth time for having a Bastard Child." It was actually written by Benjamin Franklin and it's an ironic speech. "I am a poor, unhappy woman who have no money to plead for me. This is the fifth time I've been dragged before your court on the same account! Twice I paid fines. Twice I've been brought to public punishment! But since laws are sometimes unreasonable, I take the liberty to say this law is both unreasonable and severe. I've brought five fine children into the world at the risk of my life! I maintained them! But I keep paying fines! Can this be my fault? What must young women do, when customs don't let them solicit men? And men will not marry them? But the law punishes them if they do their duty! Nature's God says, increase and multiply! And I have done it! I ought to have a statue erected to my memory!"
The father's position was expressed in The Spectator, a magazine in America and England: "Nothing is more gratifying to the mind than power or dominion; and as I am the father of a family I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments. In short, sir, I look upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty in which I am myself both king and priest."
No wonder Puritan New England was all about the subjection of women. The Reverend John Cotton said, "... that the husband should obey his wife, and not the wife the husband, that is a false principle. For God hath put another law upon women: wives, be subject to your husbands in all things."
A best-selling "pocket book," widely read in the American colonies, was called Advice to a Daughter. "There is Inequality in Sexes, and that for the better Economy of the World; the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow'd upon them; by which means your Sex is the better prepar'd for the Compliance that is necessary... Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection: Ours wanteth your Gentleness to soften, and to entertain us..."
Against all this stuff, women rebelled anyway. I mean, women rebels face special disabilities. They live under the daily eye of their master. They're isolated in households.
Anne Hutchinson was a religious woman, mother of thirteen children, and she knew a lot about healing with herbs. She defied the church fathers in Massachusetts by saying that she and other people could interpret the Bible for themselves. She held meetings and more and more women came, even a few men! The governor described her as, "a woman of a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment, inferior to many women."
Anne Hutchinson was put on trial twice, and she was sick, but she challenged her questioners with expert knowledge of the Bible. When she finally repented, they weren't satisfied. They said: "Her repentance is not in her countenance."
She was banished from the colony, and thirty-five families followed her. Then she went to Long Island, where Indians, who had been cheated out of their land, killed her and her family. Twenty years later, Mary Dyer, who had spoken up for her during her trial, was hanged by the government of the colony, along with two other Quakers, for "rebellion, sedition, and presumptuous obtruding themselves."
Women rarely participated openly in public affairs, but on the frontier sometimes it was possible. Mary Musgrove Mathews, daughter of an Indian mother and an English father, spoke the Creek language and became an adviser on Indian affairs. As the communities got more settled, though, women were pushed back.
During the Revolution, women came out into public affairs. They formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, wrote articles for independence. They were active against the tea tax. They boycotted British goods, urged women to make their own clothes and buy American. In 1777, there was a women's counterpart to the Boston Tea Party, a "coffee party."
One merchant wouldn't sell coffee under six shillings a pound. Abigail Adams wrote, "A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks, marched down to the warehouse, and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put it into the trunks and drove off. ... A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction."
Working-class women during the Revolution? Mostly ignored, unlike the genteel wives. Margaret Corbin, Deborah Sampson Garnet, and "Molly Pitcher" were rough, lower-class women, made into ladies by historians. But poor women who went to the army encampments, and helped, and fought, were represented later as prostitutes, whereas Martha Washington was given a special place in history books for visiting her husband at Valley Forge.
When feminist thoughts got written down, they were by privileged women. Like, Abigail Adams, even before the Declaration of Independence, wrote to her husband, "... in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation."
But Thomas Jefferson said American women were "too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics." And after the Revolution, no state constitution granted women the right to vote, except for New Jersey, and then that state took it away in 1807. New York's constitution actually prevented women from voting by using the word "male."
Maybe 90 percent of white men could read and write, but only 40 percent of women. Working-class women couldn't communicate well, and they couldn't record any feelings that they had. They were bearing lots of children, under hard conditions, and they were working in the home. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, four thousand women and children in Philadelphia were spinning at home for local plants! Women were also shopkeepers, innkeepers, and engaged in many trades. Bakers, tinworkers, brewers, tanners, lumberjacks, printers, morticians, woodworkers, stay-makers, and more.
So, yes, ideas of female equality were in the air. Tom Paine spoke out for the equal rights of women. And Mary Wollstonecraft's book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was reprinted in the United States after the Revolutionary War.
Wollstonecraft was responding to Edmund Burke, who said, "a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order." She wrote: "I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love ... will soon become objects of contempt...I wish to show that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex."
Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, things were changing. Population was growing. People were moving west. Factories were being developed. Political rights were being expanded for white men. Education was growing. So changes were bound to take place in the situation of women. In pre-industrial America, in a frontier society, women had equality because they were needed. They worked at important jobs-publishing newspapers, managing tanneries, engaging in skilled work. In certain professions, like midwifery, they had a monopoly! One woman, Martha Moore Ballard, on a farm in Maine in 1795, "baked and brewed, pickled and preserved, spun and sewed, made soap and dipped candles," and in twenty-five years as a midwife, delivered more than a thousand babies! Since education took place inside the family, women had a special role.
But women were being pulled into industrial life, and there was also pressure for women to stay home. The outside world, breaking into the home, created fears and tensions, and brought forth ideological controls: the idea of "the woman's place." It was accepted by many women.
Men dominated as mechanics and tradesmen, and aggressiveness was more and more defined as a male trait. Women were told to be passive. Clothing styles developed to emphasize female separation from the world of activity.
They had to develop ideas, taught in church, school, and the family, to keep women in their place. The "cult of true womanhood." The woman was expected to be pious. Men said, "Religion is exactly what a woman needs, for it gives her that dignity that best suits her dependence."
Sexual purity was supposed to be the special virtue of a woman. Men would sin, but women must not surrender. "If you do, you will be left in silent sadness to bewail your credulity, imbecility, duplicity, and premature prostitution." A woman wrote that females would get into trouble if they were "high spirited not prudent."
The role began early, with adolescence. They're supposed to be infinitely lovable. Filled to the brim with tender feelings. So they can find a husband. "Such restrictive measures as segregated (by sex and/or class) schools, dancing classes, travel, and other external controls. She is required to exert the inner control of obedience." It was like a societal chastity belt that wasn't unlocked until the marriage partner arrived.
In 1851, Amelia Bloomer suggested that women wear short skirts and pants. This was attacked in the popular women's literature. One story has a girl admiring the "bloomer" costume, but her professor warns her that they are "only one of the many manifestations of that wild spirit of socialism and agrarian radicalism which is at present so rife in our land."
In The Young Lady's Book of 1830, "... in whatever situation of life a woman is placed from her cradle to her grave, a spirit of obedience and submission, pliability of temper, and humility of mind, are required from her." One woman wrote, in 1850, in the book Green-wood Leaves: "True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood." Another book, Recollections of a Southern Matron: "If any habit of his annoyed me, I spoke of it once or twice, calmly, then bore it quietly." A book of "Rules for Conjugal and Domestic Happiness" ended with, "Do not expect too much."
The woman's job was to keep the home cheerful, maintain religion, be nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower arranger. A woman shouldn't read too much, and certain books should be avoided.
In 1808 a sermon was preached, "How interesting and important are the duties devolved on females as wives . . . the counsellor and friend of the husband; who makes it her daily study to lighten his cares, to soothe his sorrows, and to augment his joys; who, like a guardian angel, watches over his interests, warns him against dangers, comforts him under trials; and by her pious, assiduous, and attractive deportment, constantly endeavors to render him more virtuous, more useful, more honourable, and more happy."
Women were also urged to be patriotic. Since they were educating the children.
In the 1820s and 1830s there were lots of novels, poems, essays, sermons, and manuals on the family, children, and women's role. The world outside was getting harder, more commercial, more demanding. In a sense, the home carried a longing for some Utopian past, some refuge from immediacy.
Accepting the new economy easier to be able to see it as only part of life, with the home a haven. "The air of the world is poisonous. You must carry an antidote with you, or the infection will prove fetal." It was not to challenge the world of commerce, industry, competition, capitalism, but to make it more palatable.
The cult of domesticity for the woman was a way of pacifying her with a doctrine of "separate but equal"-giving her work equally as important as the man's, but separate and different. Inside that "equality" there was the fact that the woman did not choose her mate, and once her marriage took place, her life was determined. One girl wrote in 1791: "The die is about to be cast which will probably determine the future happiness or misery of my life...I have always anticipated the event with a degree of solemnity almost equal to that which will terminate my present existence."
Marriage enchained, and children doubled the chains. One woman, writing in 18)3: "The idea of soon giving birth to my third child and the consequent duties I shall be called to discharge distresses me so I feel as if I should sink." This despondency was lightened by the thought that something important was given the woman to do: to impart to her children the moral values of self-restraint and advancement through individual excellence rather than common action.
The new ideology worked. But its very existence showed that other currents were at work, not easily contained. And giving the woman her sphere created the possibility that she might use that space, that time, to prepare for another kind of life.
The "cult of true womanhood" didn't erase all the evidence of women's subordinate status. They couldn't vote, own property, and when they worked, they got one-fourth to one-half what men earned! They were excluded from the professions of law and medicine. They weren't allowed in colleges or the ministry.
Putting all women into the same category, blurred the lines of class. But there were forces that kept raising the issue of class. Samuel Slater started industrial spinning machinery in New England in 1789, and now there was a demand for young girls to work the machines in factories. In 1814, the power loom was introduced, and now the whole process, to turn cotton fiber into cloth, was under one roof. The new textile factories multiplied, and women were 80 to 90 percent of the workers, most of them between fifteen and thirty.
Some of the earliest industrial strikes took place in these mills. In 1836, women's daily average earnings were less than 37 1/2 cents, and thousands earned 25 cents a day, working twelve to sixteen hours a day. In 1824, the first known strike of women factory workers happened in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In 1834, women in Lowell, Massachusetts, when a young woman was fired from her job, other girls left their looms, and one of them climbed up the town pump and gave "a flaming Mary Wollstonecraft speech on the rights of women and the iniquities of the 'moneyed aristocracy' which produced a powerful effect on her auditors and they determined to have their own way, if they died for it."
Strikes in various cities in the 1840s, more militant than the earlier ones, were mostly unsuccessful. Strikes in the Allegheny mills near Pittsburgh demanded a shorter workday. Women armed with sticks and stones broke through the gates and stopped the looms.
Catharine Beecher, a woman reformer, wrote about the factory system. "I was there in mid-winter, and every morning I was awakened at five, by the bells calling to labor. The time allowed for dressing and breakfast was so short that both were performed hurriedly, and then the work at the mill was begun by lamplight, and prosecuted without remission till twelve, and chiefly in a standing position. Then half an hour only allowed for dinner, from which the time for going and returning was deducted. Then back to the mills, to work till seven o'clock...all the hours of labor are spent in rooms where oil lamps, togedier with from 40 to 80 persons, are exhausting the healthful principle of the air ... and where the air is loaded with particles of cotton thrown from thousands of cards, spindles, and looms."
The life of upper-class women wasn't much better. Frances Trollope wrote, "Let me be permitted to describe the day of a Philadelphia lady of the first class. This lady shall be the wife of a senator and a lawyer in the highest repute and practice...She rises, and her first hour is spent in the scrupulously nice arrangement of her dress; she descends to her parlor, neat, stiff, and silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black footman; she eats her fried ham and her salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence, while her husband reads one newspaper, and puts another under his elbow; and then perhaps, she washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is ordered at eleven; till that hour she is employed in the pastry room, her snow-white apron protecting her mouse-colored silk. Twenty minutes before her carriage should appear, she retires to her chamber, as she calls it; shakes and folds up her still snow-white apron, smooths her rich dress, and...sets on her elegant bonnet...then walks downstairs, just at the moment that her free black coachman announces to her free black footman that the carriage waits. She steps into it, and gives the word: "Drive to the Dorcas Society.""
At Lowell, a Female Labor Reform Association put out a series of "Factory Tracts." The first was "Factory Life as It Is By an Operative" and spoke of the women as "nothing more nor less than slaves in every sense of the word! Slaves, to a system of labor which requires them to toil from five until seven o'clock, with one hour only to attend to the wants of nature-slaves to the will and requirements of the 'powers that be.'..."
There were mass meetings. "Mass Meeting of Young Women," "Young women of the city engaged in industrious pursuits to the call for a mass meeting in the Park this afternoon at 4 o'clock." And men were not allowed. The men were asked "not to be present at this meeting as those for whose benefit it is called prefer to deliberate by themselves."
A story was carried that the women were meeting "in their endeavor to remedy the wrongs and oppressions under which they labor." They were in "the most interesting state and appearance."
The New York Herald, though, said, ".. we very much doubt whether it will terminate in much good to female labor of any description.... All combinations end in nothing."
That says it all, women in the early nineteenth century were trapped in the "women's sphere" at home, and when forced out to work in factories, found another kind of bondage. These conditions created a common consciousness of their situation and forged bonds of solidarity among them.
Middle-class women, barred from higher education, began to monopolize primary-school teaching. They read more, communicated more, and education itself became subversive of old ways of thinking. They began to write for magazines and newspapers. And they started some ladies' publications. Literacy among women doubled. Women became health reformers. They formed movements against double standards in sexual behavior and the victimization of prostitutes. They joined in religious organizations. Some joined the antislavery movement.
By the time a clear feminist movement emerged in the 1840s, women had become organizers, agitators, and speakers.
Emma Willard addressed the New York legislature in 1819. Just the year before, Thomas Jefferson had said women shouldn't read novels, poetry, but instead concentrate on "ornaments too, and the amusements of life. . . . These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and music."
Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women "has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty." "The taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has been made into a standard for the formation of the female character."
She said, we too are primary existences. Not the satellites of men.
In 1821, Willard founded the Troy Female Seminary, the first institution for the education of girls. She taught her students about the human body, and it upset people. "Mothers visiting a class at the Seminary in the early thirties were so shocked