The Price of Embracing the Future

In the 1820s, there were 8,000 people working in these mills at Lowell and most of them were women. The work was literally toxic because they're doing all this weaving,. They're breathing in a ton of fibers like cotton is floating through the air. A lot of them came down with white lung. Some of them lost fingers or limbs or even died Because these machines were so dangerous. In 1840, a woman named Sarah Bagley started the Lowell Female Workers' Labor Reform Association to demand better conditions for female workers.