Labor Reform
Wage Labor
One byproduct of the increase in manufacturing and mass migration to the cities was the development of wage
labor. As more factories sprang up in the North, more workers were needed to tend to the machines. Rather than
learn a trade skill, these day laborers worked alongside scores of others for as many as sixteen hours a day, six
or seven days a week, for a meager hourly wage.
Though many early wage laborers (people who have only their own labor to sell, and may be exploited) were
children, often under the age of thirteen, most were men. Some factories, such as the Lowell Mills in
Massachusetts, employed only girls and young women. These factories provided room and board and attempted
to “moralize” the women with heavy doses of religious preaching and strict discipline.
Labor Strikes
Although wealthy business owners loved cheap wage labor, workers suffered, and few had any recourse to
redress their grievances. Collective bargaining was illegal, and factory owners could always hire replacement
workers, or “scabs,” if employees refused to work. Some workers, particularly women, risked prosecution and
initiated a series of strikes in the 1820s and 1830s to improve working conditions.
Labor Unions and Reforms
Union: An organization of workers formed for the purpose of advancing its members' interests in respect to
wages, benefits, and working conditions.
These labor strikes became more prominent in the national news around the same time that the National Trades
Union—one of the nation’s first unions—formed in 1834. Eventually, the government began to take action: in
1840, President Martin Van Buren succeeded in establishing a ten-hour working day for all federal employees
engaged in public works projects; in 1842, the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized unions in
Commonwealth v. Hunt . Nevertheless, it would be decades before unions gained any real power to bargain
effectively.
Dear Father,
My life and health are spared while others are cut off. Last Thursday one girl fell down and broke her neck,
which caused instant death. She was going in or coming out of the mill and slipped down, it being very icy. The
same day a man was killed by the [railroad] cars. Another had nearly all of his ribs broken. Another was nearly
killed by falling down and having a bale of cotton fall on him. Last Tuesday we were paid. In all I had six
dollars and sixty cents paid $4.68 for board. I think that the factory is the best place for me and if any girl
wants employment, I advise them to come to Lowell.
-Excerpt from a Letter from Mary Paul, Lowell mill girl, December 21, 1845.
Labor Reform
1. How many hours a day did wage labor work? How many days per week?
2. Who were the early wage laborers?
3. What would an employer do if the workers refused to work?
4. What did Martin Van Buren do in 1840? What did the Supreme Court legalize in 1842?
5. Read the letter from the Lowell mill girl on the bottom of the page. What problems did workers face
regarding safety conditions? What about their wages? Cite evidence to support your answer.
Temperance Movement
Temperance, the drive to restrict alcohol consumption, was the longest running social reform movement in the
United States, beginning in the 1740s and culminating with the Eighteenth Amendment. From 1761 to 1812,
Americans, for the first time, began to express concerns about alcohol consumption and to envision a world in
which alcohol was not permitted.
An increasing consumption of whiskey and resulting drunkenness began to lead to anxiety about the morality of
the newborn republic. When a doctor named William Clark read Rush's pamphlet about the evils of
drunkenness he showed it to his minister, who in turn shared it with influential members of their small New
York town. These citizens banded together on April 30, 1808, to establish the first formal temperance group in
the United States, the union Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland.
The success of ministers in establishing temperance groups is partly explained by the worry of the developing
middle class about finding sober workers. Businessmen also feared that increased alcohol consumption would
disrupt social relationships, particularly as employer-employee relationships changed during the early 19th
century. Until this period, employees generally lived with their employers, and employers were responsible for
the welfare of their workers. The new emphasis on family privacy and on the home as a refuge from the
workplace in the early 19th century led employers to remove workers from their homes. When Presbyterian
ministers began preaching about self-discipline and sobriety, the new business class, perhaps in order to relieve
their guilt, agreed with this message enthusiastically.
Employers discovered that the ministers' message released them from responsibility for their workers.
Employers' wives found the new message exciting because it gave them an important role in teaching selfdiscipline in the republic. Women founded organizations to curb prostitution, reform asylums and orphanages,
help widows with young children, and reduce drinking. Women's temperance efforts were more successful than
their other social reform labors. Their efforts were aided by improvements in water sanitation, which made
water safe to drink. However, the temperance movement remained in a developing stage before 1812 and
tended to emphasize moderation rather than complete abstinence. Only in the 1830s and 1840s did the
movement push for the complete abandonment of all consumption of alcohol and achieve national recognition.
Name: ________________
Temperance Movement
1. Who was William Clark? What did he do?
2. What is one reason ministers had success in establishing temperance groups?
3. What improvement aided the movement?
4. Infer what the message of the cartoon is. Cite at least two pieces of evidence from the cartoon to support
your response.
“CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT”: DOROTHEA DIX AND REFORMS FOR THE MENTALLY
Ill”
Unwed and almost 40, Dorothea Lynde Dix, by the standards of her day, was finished. In her early teens, she
had run away from difficult parents and begun a brilliant teaching career. She founded two popular schools,
experimented with teaching the poor and wrote six books—one a best seller.
When Dix volunteered to teach at the jail, her friends said the inmates would horrify her. They did, but so did
the jail itself. Before leaving Sunday, Dix took a look around. Trailed by a nervous jailer, she examined cells
and talked with prisoners. Suddenly, an eerie wail echoed down the halls.
Who was screaming? And why? Just a mad one, said the jailer. Miss Dix wondered why a lunatic would be in
jail. Surely the insane went to asylums. Oh, no, the jailer told her, most went to jail. He had several at the
moment. Miss Dix wanted to see them. He couldn’t possibly show her: they were too disgusting. She insisted.
The jailer led her to a barred door and gingerly opened it, just a crack. Out rushed a foul odor. Peering in, Dix
saw a small stone room, bare but for a few piles of rotting straw and a half dozen huddled bodies, shivering in
thin rags. She pushed at the door, but the jailer barred her way. Those people were mad, he warned. Those
people were freezing, said Dix. They needed heat and clothing and probably food. The jailer just stared. The
insane couldn’t feel heat or cold. Everybody knew that.
Just then, the scream sounded again. It wasn’t coming from the mad room. With great reluctance, the jailer
opened an adjoining cell. Even smaller than the first, this stone room had been divided with rough boards into
two pens. In one, the wild- eyed screamer, an almost naked woman, raved and raged. In the other, a normal—
looking young woman, with a hint of vagueness about her eyes, cowered. Each time the one howled, the other
whimpered in fear.
Dix demanded to know how long these two women had been locked up together. For months, replied the jailer.
But they weren’t really together. Those boards kept them apart. Otherwise the wild one would have ripped the
other to shreds long ago.
Something snapped in Dorothea Dix on that first day at East Cambridge Jail. She moved quickly to help the
inmates she’d seen. She took them food and blankets and coaxed two male reformers into confirming her
findings and forcing authorities to heat the cells. But what of those she had not seen? How, in this modern day,
in enlightened Boston, could public officials treat anyone so cruelly? Why were insane people jailed at all?
Dix began to investigate. She visited hospitals and asylums. She questioned doctors and experts on the poor.
She found out that private asylums had abandoned the “lock them in the closet” approach to the insane.
Experiments with humane care and various therapies had improved cure rates. Educated people no longer
thought that the mad and mentally retarded were possessed by devils, morally impure or unable to feel pain.
Unfortunately, most of those who ran public institutions such as poor- houses and jails were not educated and
still believed these myths.
Dix also found out why insane, simple-minded and even physically impaired people were sent to jail. Under
Massachusetts’s law, people judged unfit to stand trial had to be locked up until they proved able to handle
themselves or until someone took responsibility for them. Further, each county had to support its own poor
citizens who were insane.
“CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT”: DOROTHEA DIX AND REFORMS FOR THE MENTALLY
Ill”
1. Where were most people with mental health issues sent? Cite evidence to explain the conditions.
2. What did private asylums abandon? How else did they improve cure rates?
3. What did those who ran public institutions believe?
4. How did Massachusetts’s law contribute to those with mental health issues being sent to prison? What do
you think could have been a solution to this problem?
5. What comes to mind when you think about mental health care and mental illness in today’s society?