I remember visiting the Lowell Mills on a middle school field trip. We walked around the entire area. The most disturbing thing that I will NEVER forget was a story about a girl who was sucked into a textile machine and literally swung around until her limbs fell off. Our tour guide told us this story on the walk from the ACTUAL PLACE it happened....to the LITERAL SHED which was the ACTUAL GIRL's sleeping quarters. I vividly remember our teacher telling the guide it was a bit much, and him saying..."you're a history teacher, this is history"
I was born in Lowell also and I also remember having field trips and that story was so horrible! It freaked me out as a kid. So this vid is wild to see lol 😂
All that stuff is gone now, it's been turned into extremely high dollar loft housing. UML basically bought all of the low income housing in the city and bulldozed that, too.
the guide was correct. history can be horrible but it's the only way us dumb apes learn. -i've heard of similar injuries on a lathe, dangly sleeves getting wrapped around the rotating assembly and pulling you into the machine. has enough torque it'd just rip you into small enough pieces to fit through. that being said ever since i watched the video of the poor guy in a russian driveshaft shop turned into chunks and splatter, i'll never wear long sleeves around machinery! something i used to be guilty of myself
Lowell is pronounced "loe-well", and so is the name of the town where he build his textile factory. My great grandmother was a "Lowell mill girl" from Ireland, and my great-grandfather had to follow the regulations for "courting" a mill girl, heavily chaperoned of course. She was something of a beauty, and rather strong-willed, and I can imagine her singing "Bread and Roses" when the Lowell Mill Strike happened.. (I inherited some of the jewelry my great-grandfather bought her as gifts - he was a carpenter from Scotland.) And my dad remembered her as an excellent cook.
I shuddered every time he mispronounced Lowell! It was making me NUTS! My Grandmother came to Manchester NH from Antigonish Nova Scotia to work in the mills.
The mindset of Lowell's successors , to get as much as possible out of the workforce, while giving as little as possible in return, still exists in American managerial staff today.
I heard one story of a head of a sales team who, every 6 months, would fire the 'worst' performing sales rep, even if they'd achieved their assigned sales targets. The rationale was that it kept all members of the sales team striving to do better. I beg to differ!
@Darlene Fraser - You've got to be kidding. Are you saying that the employees are lazy money grubbers taking advantage of the poor corporation. You really don't know how capitalism works, do you ?
Aside from wanting to cry at pronunciation (it's pronounced like Low Wool), I think this misses a major point. It wasn't that the mill girls had it "too good for too long" but that the vast number of textile mills popping up everywhere led to overproduction and a steep decline in the market price for textiles. Since there was far higher supply than demand, the profits took a dive. They wanted the city to be an intellectual beacon, but the high supply meant factory speed ups, reduction in wages, having the mill workers double up on looms, and cuts in boarding house subsidy from the mills. Accounts of the early days do talk of women taping poems to the looms to read as they worked and the youngest girls having free time to play in the yards between running bobbins to the workers. It sounds like it started the way it intended, but you can't keep those standards unless you're making profits to match. If you want another great story for this channel, there's a mill that collapses in Lawrence, I believe, that buried over half the workers alive. A dropped lantern from a rescuer caused a fire in the rubble, and no one else was able to rescue the workers. Instead the city stood by and listened as the mill girls sang like they did while working, only to hear their voices silenced slowly as the night wore on until none remained. The cause of the collapse? Factory owners taking shortcuts on building and cramming more machines on each floor than the factory could handle. So many lives were lost for the sake of maximum products.
Yeah that pronunciation is killing me. Usually I can muscle through, but he's saying it in a way that's making me disassociate from a city I used to live in
The Lowell family remain incredibly wealthy and influential to this day. There is a pretty famous ditty about two of the most powerful families in New England: And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, And the Cabots speak only to God.
I grew up in Haverhill Massachusetts not far from Lowell. I’m glad all those old mill buildings are still standing even though they’re mostly shops and apartments now. It’s an important part of history as the birthplace of the workers union and the seat of Americas turn midcentury wealth.
Yeah now they're a seat of 21st century wealth as all the aparments they turned them into start at 3 grand a month. Imagine spending 3k a month to live in lowell of all places.
My grandfather was from Lowell massachusetts. He was born in 1889 and I remember him telling his stories about how he had to keep the gas lights lit in the textile mills. My mom pointed out to me that these were not covered flames. They were exposed and there was a ton of cotton lint floating around the mill. How that did not turn into a conflagration I do not know
I have lived in Beverly Mass. all my life and never finished highschool hearing him say Lowell is Funny as hell especially because he is probably pronouncing it correctly but everyone born here for the past 300+ years calls it Low - Oal. Low as in low Oal as in Coal all 1 Syllable.
It is sad to see how the good intentions of a man got twisted and defiled by a bunch of corpos willing to use people as objects thinking that production came at the cost of life...
I read a few letters the girls had sent to their fathers, asking to work at Lowell for one history course. Unfortunately, I was sick on that day so I didn't realize how dark those innocent letters were until now
Wage slavery. I had never really understood this term until 2021 and on. I work in fast food and fast food was considered essential during the Pandemic. And yet I never felt essential. I was working 10 hr shifts at minimum wage and being called a Nazi for following the local and national health code. I've since come to understand that by paying minimum wage, companies are keeping an unofficial wage slave. Workers are working long shifts for the absolute minimum pay and are forced to get a second job. As a result people are so tired at the end of the day, most times dreading yet another job hunt. If you are kept exhausted by the job you have, you don't have the time nor energy for finding a possible job that will pay better. For some perspective, a woman who has worked at the same job as me for 20 years and is absolutely amazing. She makes only minimum wage. Is that really fair? She is one of the hardest workers and is only making minimum.
@@TheStengahThat's disgustingly common. I heard of a Walmart employee that worked diligently for 20 years or so and was never given a raise, but they made a congratulatory Facebook post about him and gave him a goodie bag...
Disgusting how seedy and slimy this mid size Massachusetts city is. I lived there and near there for a number of years. Lowell never changes. Lowell has always had a reputation for 2 things.
@@iamthefates1344 your self assurance here is a gross piece of pride. Also U.S. bills didn't say God on them until the 50's as part of anti communist propaganda to paint Soviets as godless. Religion has been successfully used to manipulate people into conflict at an alarming rate throughout known history. One way to guard against that manipulation is to keep your relationship with god personal--that is, don't use it to beat other people over the head with your sanctimonious bullshit.
Simon finally covers a human tragedy that I grew up next to, not a minute in and I already want to tear my hair out at the pronunciation of Lowell. Bless you Simon, I'm never going to be able to forget this pronunciation. It's going to be how I purposefully drive my friends insane for the rest of my life. All joking aside, growing up I, much like many commenters, took frequent field trips to the Lowell Mills. Once, they had the machines actually up and running for us while describing how the girls would work on them. We could all physically feel the speed they were going at, and we couldn't even see the bobbins. Then we got a story about how a girl wasn't careful enough with putting her hair up and how she got literally scalped by the machine. Real gruesome stuff to be told as a 12 year old, but that's history alright
Went to Lowell Mill several times for school field trips. I remember the story of a very young girl that lived and worked there who died sliding down the bannister of the stairwell during the mealtime rush. She didn’t want to miss the food and she thought she could beat everyone to dinner by sliding down the bannister. She fell off at the end and fell down a flight of stairs and I believe she broke her neck. It was very sad - I don’t believe she was more than 10 or 12 at most. Also it’s pronounced Low-ull 😂
It’s pronounced “Lole”. I have literally never heard a single person say “low-ell” and I’ve lived there for just about my whole life Where tf are people getting this pronunciation from
@@snoopdoggthecertifiedg6777 Other parts of the US probably. I'm from Ohio and would've said loe-ul. In Tennessee where I currently am, it would probably be pronounced like cowl, but starting with an L. Then again, they slur Maryville so bad it's unintelligible and Ohio has some utterly bizarre ideas about how places in other states are pronounced. Or even their own towns.
@@brandyjean7015 Simon is famous for his mispronunciations. It didn't sound quite right to me, as he pronounces it "LOWL". I've never heard of anyone called Lowl.
@@ferociousgumby I didn't know if it was a Brit thing or if this man's name was pronounced lau-L I'm fascinated by all the differences between American & Brit/Aussie English. Being from Los Angeles originally, I've been told I sound just like a commercial. So accents make me chuckle. Thanks for responding, by the way.
As you were describing the kiss of death, I had a totally different expectation of death. You mentioned the speed it came down, so I was assuming that they had to try and perform the thread weaving through the eye prior to decapitation.
@@zzycatch simple answer is yes it is a good thing, as people have to choice to do what they want. its totally ok to be "normal" and people are able to live that way no days, as opposed to being a slave or working till death, or in unsafe conditions. ALOT of people have suffered for our luxuries today so enjoy them.
@@zzycatch maybe you need some of those antidepressants mate, all of these issues have always been around we just know how to deal with them now. instead of electrocuting the gays and punishing people who use natural plants to have fun. and faith? i really hope you're not religious because you lot are the main reason for all the problems we have had for the last few thousand years.
Jobs providing tools for safety that cost time while enforcing quotas that make it impossible to simultaneously work safely and keep your job is still a thing.
Hi Simon, I grew up in Massachusetts and the correct pronunciation of 'Lowell' is 'Low - Well.' I really enjoy the work of you and your team on your various channels. Thanks.
Thats not going to come out sounding right if you use low-well. The only way that works is if you already know the cadence and what sounds are stressed beforehand. Quickly pronouncing "low-uhl" with the "uhl" sounding like if you skip pronouncing the "p" in "pull" is a better representation. Massachusetts really has some crazy names but I have to say I have never heard it pronounced like the guy in the video did. Usually people mess up Gloucester or something
@@RockyPondProductions Friend of mine would skip the "uh", coming out rapidly as LOE-wl. He lives in Billerica (BILL-rika for the curious). Hey, Simon did get WALL-thm right.
Things have not changed that much. I'm a seafarer I remember 1 trip where we had 3 fires. The captains overwhelming concern was how much the over time was going to cost them. Same ship they ran the stores crane with bad brake coils for 3 trips. When the captain found out he was getting into trouble if repair was not made before we got back to the US he had me work way past my STCW hours to get the repair done. I was out there climbing over that crane with no railing so tired I could hardly see straight. Never went back to that ship. Most companies only care money and not if you live. Matson is cool captain turned a ship around to get me back to Hawaii and into a hospital. Saved my life, also they paid a GIANT medical bill and transportation back to California. They were required by law to do this but did not fight back at all or question turning a ship around. Thanks again Matson.
"Most companies only care money and not if you live. " It's actually easier and cheaper for a company if an 'incident' kills an employee than injures them. I once cut my finger badly enough to need a couple of band-aids. The skipper wasn't pleased, not because I hurt myself, but because it meant 7 pages of reports. He told me that if I'd died, it was only 3 pages.
I lived in lowell most of my life and the museum is one of the massachusetts kids field trips we remember, due to the deafening machines they still run. My neighbors would say you knew what color fabric was coming out due to the run off in the rivers.
It's always wild hearing my state's mill history told elsewhere and seeing the reactions to what they went through. Coming from a city with a minor waterfall, I forget not everyone spent year 3-6 visiting mills and learning the history of child labor laws and unions
Eyyy, one about my hometown. The mills also used to be big museums, with all the machines still running...stories about the mill girls.... etc... Yeah...they gutted that place and turned them into 4000 dollar a month loft apartments. The mill museum is now this tiny hole in the wall not worth visiting. PS: Simon: it's pronounced "low-el" low as in low air pressure.
Doesn't matter telling him. He speaks the Queen's, erm, I mean, Kings English of the South here in England referred to as RP (Recieved Pronunciation). All the southerners pronounce it that way. Sounds rather goofy to be honest. Wait until you hear them say Maryland. Literally, Mary Land haha😉
The saddest thing is, nothing really has changed. The unions, who were created to help exploited workers are systematically being shut down so the greedy bosses and shareholders can get their dividends.
All because people are afraid of "laziness", aka some people who don't live just to work. Some people are satisfied with not always striving for more but they deserve to live well too, affording a house, family, vacation, and a car if they want. We shouldn't force everyone to make work 100% of their goals in life just to afford some fucking wood and plaster on tiny plot of land. We can go to space yet won't feed everyone or house everyone. Tragic.
Until you realize that many unions today are also fleecing the lower class. Always compromising and minimizing until they're comfortable with shit that aint much better than this. Shut them down, make new ones, keep them honest.
as someone who grew up in Lowell, Mass. They took us there yearly. Most of the mills have been made into apartments. Im convinced they have to be haunted. LOW-ELL just fyi
I lived there too. Oddly enough my 2nd cousin is Micky Ward. One of my great grandparents was Francis McMahon a Lowell councilman. I love Lowell and all of the characters I’ve seen.
It's surprising how many people listen to Simon to help them get to sleep! I don't mind which channel of his I listen to as long as its a long segment (around an hour or so) so that I actually fall asleep by the time its finished. If it's too short I'll just keep watching another one and be awake all night.
As usual great info Simon. I’ve lived in the Merrimack Valley all my life and though I never had to work in a mill all of my relatives, and there were a lot, from Canada did right up till the mills started heading south in the 50’s and 60’s. Just north of my home is Manchester which was home at one time to the largest mills in the US. Just south of here and Lowell is the city of Lawrence who experienced a horrific accident when the Pemberton Mills collapsed producing many casualties. We still all feel the influence of the mills even to this day. They were proud and hardworking people. Just an aside, Simon. The city of Lowell is pronounced in one syllable: Lole. Thanks for the vid!
I dont know what's more sad, the experiences of these poor girls or the fact that the majority of the comments focus on Simon's pronunciation of the name..... he did a fine job for not growing up in the area and hearing the pronunciation all his life like many of you, trust me, many Americans cant pronounce names outside their own country either
It’s really interesting to find out that TB was common amongst the Mill Girls. My grandma was a power loom worker in Central Scotland in the late 19teens till she died in 1929 of TB. My grandad died in a coal mining accident in 1926. That left my dad an orphan when he was only 7. I remember being heart broken for him when I found out. He was brought up with an aunt who shall we say was none to kind.
My mother worked in a sewing mill in Fall River. They had wooden floors, and oil constantly dripped from the machines into the floors. When those buildings caught on fire, they burned for a long long time. Also as far as the things named after him, we pronounce it LOW-ell (long o) 🙂
And meanwhile, actual slaves in the southern states averaged about 6 hours of work per day. No wonder many Union soldiers derided them as being the spoiled pets of their owners.
afterwards it was only parents who were able to get free/cheap labor from children. also, orphans and "criminals" were still used (and still are to this day) for free labor. no such thing as a hw!te person getting wealthy from working with their own hands..
In the 1980's, I worked at a business in downtown Boston performing repetitive low- impact manual labor. It was an indoor job, no heavy lifting required, paid better than minimum wage. One day my (Irish) boss told me that he'd like to see me pick up the pace of my production. After around ten minutes, I took my jacket off of the rack, announced "I quit", walked out the door, went to HQ, picked up my last paycheck, and never went back. BTW it's pronounced "Low- well".
I lived in the town next to Lowell, Dracut. My aunt lived in the remodeled mills buildings that werent used as museum or shut down and boarded up. The boarded up mill off the river always creeped me out
There is a james taylor song called "millworker" from an unsuccessful broadway play. One line is "yes, but it's my life has been wasted and I have been the fool to let this manufacture use my body for a tool". My job (and many others) uses my body as a tool for manufacturing
I grew up right next to Lowell in Westford, which had a few old mills/small factories, nothing like Lowell though. The first planned city of the Industrial Revolution in the US if I’m not mistaken. Visited the textile mills of several occasions during my time in school.
Being from Massachusetts it’s driving me absolutely nuts on how Simon is saying Lowell. I don’t know how the man said his last name, but that city is NOT pronounced that way in Mass. It’s more like saying lol out as a word but with a w in it, Lowl.
I live in Lowell, and even in one of the old Mills called the Counting House, which was the Administrative Center, Watch House and Transportation hub for the local mills! Love Simon & his channels and its interesting to hear him discuss this history
I love that you give girls and women the resources such as those books and lectures, and they immediately make like a little library, start a paper, create discussion groups and start asking questions then men of that era definitely wouldnt want them to ask; is marriage worth it? Is there really a god? Should women be involved in politics? Those were scary things for women to ever consider.
LOL - read some of the books that were written in the wake of the American Revolution, regarding American women. Not only were American women always up for a scrap, but the men generally liked it that way. Like Mrs Motte providing the means to burn down her own house to drive the British army out of it.
Imagine being so desperate for education and intellectual dispute that you will still seek it after a gruelling, dangerous 14 h work day, where you could hardly breath...
Yes, that's what I find uplifting I'm this story. For all their suffering, they were some of the few women of the tome that had intellectual freedom, that is if they had enough energy left over to pursue it.
@@JuMiKu perhaps uplifting is the wrong term. I was mostly referring to the spirit and perseverance of these women. Their circumstances were definitely not uplifting.
@@EmpressMermaid Yeah. Sorry. I understood. You are right. It is incredibly admirable and should be thrown in the face of anyone, who points at the times and asks why women didn't "do more".
@@JuMiKu many women chose this life, as hard as it was, because it was one of the few avenues that allowed a woman to not be under the thumb of a father or husband.
Bezos is seriously the single most dangerous human being alive today. He is striving with every inch of his will to bring western society back to these callous conditions.
Yeah the people who run companies these days are the grandchildren of those robber barons. The sickness killing America today goes back a few generations.
Quite a few people in my family, originally from Lancashire, worked in textile mills in the 1800s and 1900s in England and the in the US. I think the last person in my family to work in the mills was my father, who was an engineer and worked repairing looms at a water jet loom weaving mill literally down the road a couple of miles from Slater Mill (which is now a museum) in Rhode Island. Even when my dad worked in the mill as an engineer in the early 1970s weaving mills were considered a dangerous place to work. My father was injured on the job in the mill while carrying heavy loom parts down a ramp with another worker. The other man let his end of some large loom machinery slip and it fell on my father’s back and fractured bones in his spine and a rib. Luckily it didn’t injure his spinal cord. He had to stay lying down to let the bones heal for about 2 months. He was in his early 20s and my older brother (who was a preschooler at the time) and my mom basically had to take care of him for weeks because he couldn’t move while he healed from the injury. Luckily the mill owner took good care of his workers, or I don’t think they would have been able to survive on my mom’s income at the time as a college student (with a kid) working part time to make ends meet. My dad’s back healed, luckily, and he got a safer job not long after that. I remember being both fascinated by and terrified of big looms and factory machinery as a kid after hearing my dad tell me about working in the mills. Oh, and for reference, the town of Lowell in Massachusetts that you spoke of in this video is generally pronounced like “Lole” by locals. It literally never occurred to me that someone might pronounce it as you did in this video because I’ve always heard it said by people from Massachusetts and Rhode Island living in those states over the last 40+ years 😂
Ooooh this reminds me of one of my first Real Jobs(tm) where the business owners would casually make jokes to each other about the "wage slaves", which included me, as though we weren't there to hear them. It was very motivating!
It seems to me that the problem began when some of the girls began inviting family members to come join them and work in the mill. Can you imagine trying make a budget and then have other people come to you looking for and expecting a job and -- it's not in your budget! But, you take them on, anyway and one thing leads to another and you are overwhelmed.
The particles that you spoke of were called fluff. They were actually at least 2 novels that noted this period the one that's most notably been made into movies is North and South. There's a whole discussion about fluff and how the masters say fills the bellies of the workers. I'll let you think about that 1.
As a European... Has anything changed since then? You US Americans are still working two jobs for still not enough pay. You have sick days which you have to swap around with co-worker if you get too sick. You have no maternity leave. And you still get not much pay to survive. Aside all the other news Europeans hear about many US Americans living in tent cities because you cannot afford houses/apartments or anything. Heck many cannot even afford health care. So what makes the majority of the US Americans so different from these Girls?
It is estimated about 1 million French Canadians emigrated to the US in the second half of the XIXth century. Many of whom worked in mills. Some say if they stayed here, Québec's population would be double what it is today ,
I recommend _A Distinct Alien Race_ by David Vermette about the origins of the New England textile industry and the history of the French-Cadadians employed by the mills.
I lived in Lowell Massachusetts for about 6 years and passed by the mills that were next to the train station everyday. You should do a video on spaghettiville next to lowell
It's so sad what Lowell's vision was twisted into. I live in Massachusetts and sadly Lowell is still associated with what you describe, I never knew that his intentions were far better than what happened. It's incredible, too, how these factories influenced the entire eastern part of the state. The effect was to embrace organized crime and to treat everyone as a foe because everyone was out to exploit everyone and you had to be aggressive and "get them" first. That has remained, I always wondered how the founders of Boston were so different from reality and I think now I see how the Boston rat race was created.
Possibly a strange thing to say given how depraved the topics are, but I think this is my favorite channel hosted by Simon. Always happy to see when a new video's dropped.
I live in one of the towns next to Lowell and my grandfather worked in a sock mill on the river when he was younger. My grandmother worked in one of the fabric mills until she had my father. The mills, even in the late 1920s and 30s were still very dangerous and the work was back breaking, to say the least. But since my grandparents were not educated past the 10th grade because they had to work to help support their families, it was the mills or nothing. You do what you have to do to feed your family. And it is pronounced Low-ell not loll.
Those mills literally made me. If not for four Poles coming from Austria-Hungary to work in the Lowell Mills, or four French-Canadians coming from Quebec to work in the Lawrence mills, I would not be here. We still have tools my great grandfather used to repair machinery in the Lawrence mills.
I remember reading Lyddie as a girl and thinking "at least she got paid." I worked hard on the family farm until a few years ago, and had a job on the side, picking tobacco until I was 14 and could get a "real" job that paid the same but wasn't backbreaking work. I will say that the idea of getting hit in the face with a shuttle is terrifying.
Ya im from Massachusetts and hearing you pronounce Lowell wrong is driving me crazy 🤣 Also when I was in elementary school and middle school we would visit the mills to lear about this.
Me too and I'm living in the Midlands as an American married to an English man. Simon says it because he speaks RP (Recieved Pronunciation) English, all southerners here do. Sounds goofy.
Capitalistic slavery hasn’t really gone away, although working conditions are much better due to health and safety and technological advancement people are still working long hours. All for the sake of trying to maintain a certain lifestyle or just survive by keeping their debt at bay. That’s called the debt slave cycle which was designed on purpose to produce capitalistic slaves which is essentially a cog in the economic system. Physical slavery requires them to be housed and fed , economic slavery requires them to house and feed themselves.
If Libertarians and conservatives in the US had their way those health and safety regulations would be gutted. Wouldn't be great if we went back to the early days of the industrial revolution.
Wait... Memorizing plans for a large machine... Having your ship searched for contraband... "A long time ago across the ocean in a land far far away..."
I live an hour away from Lowell and remember visiting the mills as a middle-schooler. The people who run the museum have no qualms in sharing the horrors of working in those places. I remember a story they told us of a girl who was killed by one of the fast thread-holding shuttles when it flew off its rail and pierced her skull. The Boott Mill museum keeps the machinery running today and you can buy the fabric it makes, however the machines are kept behind thick plexiglass due to said incidents and the deafening noise.
I grew up in that area and have family from Lowell. My great great grandparents worked in the mills in Manchester NH. It's so funny that I did not know what town you were talking about until I saw it on screen. It's pronounced lo-well or lo-ell with the o being like the word soap. I thought Simon was saying Lall! Or Lael maybe? Definitely not Lowell! 😁 How do you say Worcester MA? It's Wis-ta, in case you didn't know. Thank you for telling their story!
I'm Canadian, and I just knew it was wrong because I don't know anyone named "LOWL". It just SOUNDS wrong. I've never heard the name Lowell rhymed with HOWL.
@@killman369547 Communism as practiced by the Russians and Chinese was a perversion of the true political form. These countries swapped one form of oligarchy for another. You will find that many practices which take place in the EU and the US, such as comprehensive government oversight of workers safety and conditions, universal education and basic public healthcare and supervision of child welfare etc had their origins in former Communist countries. The big no no in communism was the attempted enforcement of State endorsed atheism and a denial of religious freedom at the highest levels.
I work 101 hour work weeks on oil pads in West Texas. I sympathize with the long hours at a job which is equal parts dangerous and monotonous. The difference is I get compensated VERY well for my work
Hopefully you will be able to buy up a few houses to rent out when you are in your fifties and be able to live comfortably in your golden years. This is what a former work colleague of mine did, working on the oil-fields off Scotland and then in Ireland in a factory as a fitter and instumentation tech. He could turn his hand to anything electrical, mechanical and IT related and he was multi qualified in all these highly marketable skills. The hours are long if your work entails detailed troubleshooting and repairs and risky if mistakes could cost millions, not for the faint hearted.
I grew up in Rhode island. The bus Depot was in front of Slater Mill in Pawtucket. I have been tru the tour several times as a child. We also heard all the horror stories of child labor. Most of the old mills are now luxury lofts. I guess its better then them being boarded up Haven's for rats and pigeons.I really wish we could put things into perspective and realize how good we have it compared to others both in developing countries and years past
These are a 20 minute drive from my house. Went with school and saw them when I was a kid. Conditions were Horrific in those mills, now they are lofts/buisness spaces.
In the province of Québec in Canada, there was so many poor farmers in the 1880's going to Lowell with their families in hope of finding jobs in the textile industy in Lowell than this city was soon nicknamed "le petit Canada" (the little Canada). Those farmers were tricked by the catholic church into believing that they were to be paid to watch machines work. They got so screwed.......
Like the Irish of that period the Catholic Quebecois were denied basic knowledge of family planning and limiting number of children in a family. This led to very large population increases in a given area and is why the farmers were poor. The RC church has a lot to answer for in terms of human development in the working classes and tricking people into accepting atrocious conditions in their worklives and careers.Of course the plentiful supply of cheap compliant labour played right into the hands of the monied elite and no counter force was available in any meaningful way.
Yeah, and lets not forget that some folks today will tell you the only problem with capitalism is that it is too restrained and regulated. There are people today who either don't know about these kinds of realities (or don't care to know), or just straight up don't care if they come into being again. To forget this is at our own peril.
The work conditions of those times were due in large part to the technology of that time. The chief problem with too many regulations is that it slows down the introduction of even better, safer, and cleaner work conditions.
@@alanlight7740 . . . no? In countries where the corporations can get away with it they still lock workers in. That's not a technology problem, it's a fucking bastards in charge problem. Good regulations are designed to allow for improvements, that's kinda the whole point.
As someone who lives in the state it's so weird hearing Simon pronounce Lowell. We HIGHLY compress the syllables to the point it's essentially one "lowl".
I remember visiting the Lowell Mills on a middle school field trip. We walked around the entire area. The most disturbing thing that I will NEVER forget was a story about a girl who was sucked into a textile machine and literally swung around until her limbs fell off. Our tour guide told us this story on the walk from the ACTUAL PLACE it happened....to the LITERAL SHED which was the ACTUAL GIRL's sleeping quarters. I vividly remember our teacher telling the guide it was a bit much, and him saying..."you're a history teacher, this is history"
I was born in Lowell also and I also remember having field trips and that story was so horrible! It freaked me out as a kid. So this vid is wild to see lol 😂
All that stuff is gone now, it's been turned into extremely high dollar loft housing. UML basically bought all of the low income housing in the city and bulldozed that, too.
the guide was correct. history can be horrible but it's the only way us dumb apes learn.
-i've heard of similar injuries on a lathe, dangly sleeves getting wrapped around the rotating assembly and pulling you into the machine. has enough torque it'd just rip you into small enough pieces to fit through. that being said ever since i watched the video of the poor guy in a russian driveshaft shop turned into chunks and splatter, i'll never wear long sleeves around machinery! something i used to be guilty of myself
@@shockwavecity damn I didn't know that, that's sad. Those buildings should've been historically protected.
That guide is truly based. The good way!
Lowell is pronounced "loe-well", and so is the name of the town where he build his textile factory. My great grandmother was a "Lowell mill girl" from Ireland, and my great-grandfather had to follow the regulations for "courting" a mill girl, heavily chaperoned of course. She was something of a beauty, and rather strong-willed, and I can imagine her singing "Bread and Roses" when the Lowell Mill Strike happened.. (I inherited some of the jewelry my great-grandfather bought her as gifts - he was a carpenter from Scotland.) And my dad remembered her as an excellent cook.
My name is Lowell and I can agree one hundred percent with the pronunciation! Although this video was awkward for more reasons than just that 😂😂
My husband is named Lowell. Not pronounced like Simon says!
And Waltham has a hard a at the end, like in Ham.
I shuddered every time he mispronounced Lowell! It was making me NUTS! My Grandmother came to Manchester NH from Antigonish Nova Scotia to work in the mills.
Scrolled through the comments just to find the first person to mention this.
The mindset of Lowell's successors , to get as much as possible out of the workforce, while giving as little as possible in return, still exists in American managerial staff today.
I heard one story of a head of a sales team who, every 6 months, would fire the 'worst' performing sales rep, even if they'd achieved their assigned sales targets. The rationale was that it kept all members of the sales team striving to do better. I beg to differ!
Yup, the foundation of capitalism.
Yay capitalism
And the mindset of employees is to get as much as possible out of the company while giving as little as possible in return. Just sayin
@Darlene Fraser - You've got to be kidding. Are you saying that the employees are lazy money grubbers taking advantage of the poor corporation. You really don't know how capitalism works, do you ?
Aside from wanting to cry at pronunciation (it's pronounced like Low Wool), I think this misses a major point. It wasn't that the mill girls had it "too good for too long" but that the vast number of textile mills popping up everywhere led to overproduction and a steep decline in the market price for textiles. Since there was far higher supply than demand, the profits took a dive. They wanted the city to be an intellectual beacon, but the high supply meant factory speed ups, reduction in wages, having the mill workers double up on looms, and cuts in boarding house subsidy from the mills. Accounts of the early days do talk of women taping poems to the looms to read as they worked and the youngest girls having free time to play in the yards between running bobbins to the workers. It sounds like it started the way it intended, but you can't keep those standards unless you're making profits to match.
If you want another great story for this channel, there's a mill that collapses in Lawrence, I believe, that buried over half the workers alive. A dropped lantern from a rescuer caused a fire in the rubble, and no one else was able to rescue the workers. Instead the city stood by and listened as the mill girls sang like they did while working, only to hear their voices silenced slowly as the night wore on until none remained. The cause of the collapse? Factory owners taking shortcuts on building and cramming more machines on each floor than the factory could handle. So many lives were lost for the sake of maximum products.
Yeah that pronunciation is killing me. Usually I can muscle through, but he's saying it in a way that's making me disassociate from a city I used to live in
The triangle shirtwaist company fire?
@@BigGahmBoss Yeah, while I’ve not lived in Lowell itself, the pronunciation is killing me.
@@BigGahmBoss same here. city is still a shithole since these jobs left
@@coreyperdue37 I got my head split open at the Tsongas Arena lol
The Lowell family remain incredibly wealthy and influential to this day. There is a pretty famous ditty about two of the most powerful families in New England:
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And the Cabots speak only to God.
It’s Lodges, not Lowells. Lowell was a merchant, not an aristocrat.
I grew up in Haverhill Massachusetts not far from Lowell. I’m glad all those old mill buildings are still standing even though they’re mostly shops and apartments now. It’s an important part of history as the birthplace of the workers union and the seat of Americas turn midcentury wealth.
Yeah now they're a seat of 21st century wealth as all the aparments they turned them into start at 3 grand a month.
Imagine spending 3k a month to live in lowell of all places.
Hey, reuse is better than tearing them down.
My grandfather was from Lowell massachusetts. He was born in 1889 and I remember him telling his stories about how he had to keep the gas lights lit in the textile mills. My mom pointed out to me that these were not covered flames. They were exposed and there was a ton of cotton lint floating around the mill. How that did not turn into a conflagration I do not know
it often did. mills are built like they are because explosions and fires were too common
I have lived in Beverly Mass. all my life and never finished highschool hearing him say Lowell is Funny as hell especially because he is probably pronouncing it correctly but everyone born here for the past 300+ years calls it Low - Oal. Low as in low Oal as in Coal all 1 Syllable.
It is sad to see how the good intentions of a man got twisted and defiled by a bunch of corpos willing to use people as objects thinking that production came at the cost of life...
It still goes on today... It's just that the people responsible are better at whitewashing it...
Happens a lot, just look at johnson and johnson
Nothing has changed its just in bangladesh
I read a few letters the girls had sent to their fathers, asking to work at Lowell for one history course. Unfortunately, I was sick on that day so I didn't realize how dark those innocent letters were until now
Where did you find those?
Pü
@@vilis6262 the Lowell heritage would probably be a good place to start
@@gringa978 Alright, thank you
Wage slavery. I had never really understood this term until 2021 and on. I work in fast food and fast food was considered essential during the Pandemic. And yet I never felt essential. I was working 10 hr shifts at minimum wage and being called a Nazi for following the local and national health code. I've since come to understand that by paying minimum wage, companies are keeping an unofficial wage slave. Workers are working long shifts for the absolute minimum pay and are forced to get a second job. As a result people are so tired at the end of the day, most times dreading yet another job hunt. If you are kept exhausted by the job you have, you don't have the time nor energy for finding a possible job that will pay better.
For some perspective, a woman who has worked at the same job as me for 20 years and is absolutely amazing. She makes only minimum wage. Is that really fair? She is one of the hardest workers and is only making minimum.
You’re not a nazi if you’re just following orders
20 years? And your telling ne she's never had a raise other then when minimum wage increases?
@@TheStengahThat's disgustingly common. I heard of a Walmart employee that worked diligently for 20 years or so and was never given a raise, but they made a congratulatory Facebook post about him and gave him a goodie bag...
@@Lily-qb1xv I saw that at Wendy's or McDonald's or something. They retired and got the same thing.
But 20 years no raise, was not aware.
Working conditions in different countries/eras/industries could be a deep seam of content for this channel
Disgusting how Lowell’s kindness was exploited
I must agree
Disgusting how seedy and slimy this mid size Massachusetts city is. I lived there and near there for a number of years. Lowell never changes. Lowell has always had a reputation for 2 things.
@@iamthefates1344 your self assurance here is a gross piece of pride. Also U.S. bills didn't say God on them until the 50's as part of anti communist propaganda to paint Soviets as godless. Religion has been successfully used to manipulate people into conflict at an alarming rate throughout known history. One way to guard against that manipulation is to keep your relationship with god personal--that is, don't use it to beat other people over the head with your sanctimonious bullshit.
communism...
Simon finally covers a human tragedy that I grew up next to, not a minute in and I already want to tear my hair out at the pronunciation of Lowell. Bless you Simon, I'm never going to be able to forget this pronunciation. It's going to be how I purposefully drive my friends insane for the rest of my life. All joking aside, growing up I, much like many commenters, took frequent field trips to the Lowell Mills. Once, they had the machines actually up and running for us while describing how the girls would work on them. We could all physically feel the speed they were going at, and we couldn't even see the bobbins. Then we got a story about how a girl wasn't careful enough with putting her hair up and how she got literally scalped by the machine. Real gruesome stuff to be told as a 12 year old, but that's history alright
I grew up in the town next door (Begins with a C and has a lot of pretentious a-holes) and also got way too upset over his pronunciation, lol
The situation is still an ongoing thing in places where shitty companies can get away with it
99% of the work force in the developing world
Like half of America. 'At-will' employment means you can be fired on the spot for no reason.
Went to Lowell Mill several times for school field trips. I remember the story of a very young girl that lived and worked there who died sliding down the bannister of the stairwell during the mealtime rush. She didn’t want to miss the food and she thought she could beat everyone to dinner by sliding down the bannister. She fell off at the end and fell down a flight of stairs and I believe she broke her neck. It was very sad - I don’t believe she was more than 10 or 12 at most.
Also it’s pronounced Low-ull 😂
It’s pronounced “Lole”. I have literally never heard a single person say “low-ell” and I’ve lived there for just about my whole life
Where tf are people getting this pronunciation from
@@snoopdoggthecertifiedg6777 Other parts of the US probably. I'm from Ohio and would've said loe-ul. In Tennessee where I currently am, it would probably be pronounced like cowl, but starting with an L.
Then again, they slur Maryville so bad it's unintelligible and Ohio has some utterly bizarre ideas about how places in other states are pronounced. Or even their own towns.
@@snoopdoggthecertifiedg6777 agreed I live in Worcester and am like wtf to everyone trying to keep the W in there pronunciation explanation
@@bri_guy508 Don’t even get me started on the mispronunciation of Worcester lmao, it’s WOOSTAH, people, not that hard to figure out 😂
Born and raised in Lowell, find and read the book ""Call the darkness light" written by a local that tell a vivid story of the times.
Curious: is Simon's pronunciation of Lowell correct?
From the west coast, I've only ever heard this name pronounced low-L.
@@brandyjean7015 Simon is famous for his mispronunciations. It didn't sound quite right to me, as he pronounces it "LOWL". I've never heard of anyone called Lowl.
@@ferociousgumby I didn't know if it was a Brit thing or if this man's name was pronounced lau-L
I'm fascinated by all the differences between American & Brit/Aussie English. Being from Los Angeles originally, I've been told I sound just like a commercial. So accents make me chuckle.
Thanks for responding, by the way.
As you were describing the kiss of death, I had a totally different expectation of death. You mentioned the speed it came down, so I was assuming that they had to try and perform the thread weaving through the eye prior to decapitation.
That probably happened a few times.
Some underestimate just how bad life was for the majority of people throughout most of human history.
Oh no doubt. The past was literally the worst.
and for some reason previous generations think it was better that way???
@@daniel-it2lw they seem to forget the details. And the world is safer now, even though we hear about crime more due to the internet.
@@zzycatch simple answer is yes it is a good thing, as people have to choice to do what they want. its totally ok to be "normal" and people are able to live that way no days,
as opposed to being a slave or working till death, or in unsafe conditions. ALOT of people have suffered for our luxuries today so enjoy them.
@@zzycatch maybe you need some of those antidepressants mate, all of these issues have always been around we just know how to deal with them now.
instead of electrocuting the gays and punishing people who use natural plants to have fun.
and faith? i really hope you're not religious because you lot are the main reason for all the problems we have had for the last few thousand years.
"Even though it's better pay the conditions still made it inhumane" sounds like a rebuttal to Amazon's practices
Except for the “better pay” part, at least in my region.
It's like we somehow haven't learned a key lesson about industrialism
Jobs providing tools for safety that cost time while enforcing quotas that make it impossible to simultaneously work safely and keep your job is still a thing.
Hi Simon, I grew up in Massachusetts and the correct pronunciation of 'Lowell' is 'Low - Well.'
I really enjoy the work of you and your team on your various channels.
Thanks.
Thats not going to come out sounding right if you use low-well. The only way that works is if you already know the cadence and what sounds are stressed beforehand.
Quickly pronouncing "low-uhl" with the "uhl" sounding like if you skip pronouncing the "p" in "pull" is a better representation.
Massachusetts really has some crazy names but I have to say I have never heard it pronounced like the guy in the video did. Usually people mess up Gloucester or something
@@RockyPondProductions lol...I'm not laughing--that's probably the best pronunciation
@@racatiwood yeah you are right literally pronouncing "lol" works well too
@@RockyPondProductions Friend of mine would skip the "uh", coming out rapidly as LOE-wl. He lives in Billerica (BILL-rika for the curious). Hey, Simon did get WALL-thm right.
Things have not changed that much. I'm a seafarer I remember 1 trip where we had 3 fires.
The captains overwhelming concern was how much the over time was going to cost them.
Same ship they ran the stores crane with bad brake coils for 3 trips. When the captain found
out he was getting into trouble if repair was not made before we got back to the US he had me
work way past my STCW hours to get the repair done. I was out there climbing over that
crane with no railing so tired I could hardly see straight. Never went back to that ship.
Most companies only care money and not if you live.
Matson is cool captain turned a ship around to get me back to Hawaii and into a hospital.
Saved my life, also they paid a GIANT medical bill and transportation back to California.
They were required by law to do this but did not fight back at all or question turning a
ship around. Thanks again Matson.
"Most companies only care money and not if you live. "
It's actually easier and cheaper for a company if an 'incident' kills an employee than injures them. I once cut my finger badly enough to need a couple of band-aids. The skipper wasn't pleased, not because I hurt myself, but because it meant 7 pages of reports. He told me that if I'd died, it was only 3 pages.
What a coincidence! I just did an assignment on this exact topic yesterday and read a whole Oates reading on it. Very interesting indeed
I lived in lowell most of my life and the museum is one of the massachusetts kids field trips we remember, due to the deafening machines they still run. My neighbors would say you knew what color fabric was coming out due to the run off in the rivers.
Simon: American Wage Slavery
Amazon: *Takes notes*
It's always wild hearing my state's mill history told elsewhere and seeing the reactions to what they went through. Coming from a city with a minor waterfall, I forget not everyone spent year 3-6 visiting mills and learning the history of child labor laws and unions
Eyyy, one about my hometown. The mills also used to be big museums, with all the machines still running...stories about the mill girls.... etc...
Yeah...they gutted that place and turned them into 4000 dollar a month loft apartments. The mill museum is now this tiny hole in the wall not worth visiting.
PS: Simon: it's pronounced "low-el" low as in low air pressure.
Doesn't matter telling him. He speaks the Queen's, erm, I mean, Kings English of the South here in England referred to as RP (Recieved Pronunciation). All the southerners pronounce it that way. Sounds rather goofy to be honest. Wait until you hear them say Maryland. Literally, Mary Land haha😉
His pronunciation is slightly jarring.
@@Julia-uh4li and he doesn't give a f*#k either LOL
Typical corporate censorship. We can't have any monuments to workers rights.
Is the place haunted? I wouldn’t want to live there
Born and raised in Massachusetts. I spent most of my childhood in Lowell. Thank you for talking about this.
The saddest thing is, nothing really has changed. The unions, who were created to help exploited workers are systematically being shut down so the greedy bosses and shareholders can get their dividends.
All because people are afraid of "laziness", aka some people who don't live just to work. Some people are satisfied with not always striving for more but they deserve to live well too, affording a house, family, vacation, and a car if they want. We shouldn't force everyone to make work 100% of their goals in life just to afford some fucking wood and plaster on tiny plot of land. We can go to space yet won't feed everyone or house everyone. Tragic.
Until you realize that many unions today are also fleecing the lower class. Always compromising and minimizing until they're comfortable with shit that aint much better than this.
Shut them down, make new ones, keep them honest.
as someone who grew up in Lowell, Mass. They took us there yearly. Most of the mills have been made into apartments. Im convinced they have to be haunted. LOW-ELL just fyi
I was thinking about the consistent mispronunciation.
From school and summer camps I've probably been to those mills at least 15 times over the years I grew up there
lol
Living in one it's definitely haunted! Never believed in ghosts or spirits until I moved in. Whispering, crying and laughing and I'm home alone crazy.
I lived there too. Oddly enough my 2nd cousin is Micky Ward. One of my great grandparents was Francis McMahon a Lowell councilman. I love Lowell and all of the characters I’ve seen.
The burden of CasCrim and this channel uploading mere minutes of each other past my actual bedtime 😩 no way I can sleep without binging both first
Same!
Ohhhh, bedtime? Its just about 1 PM here on the west coast of NA, where the heck do you live?
It's surprising how many people listen to Simon to help them get to sleep! I don't mind which channel of his I listen to as long as its a long segment (around an hour or so) so that I actually fall asleep by the time its finished. If it's too short I'll just keep watching another one and be awake all night.
@@Colbio I'm from Austria (central Europe) and usually a pretty early sleeper xD
As usual great info Simon. I’ve lived in the Merrimack Valley all my life and though I never had to work in a mill all of my relatives, and there were a lot, from Canada did right up till the mills started heading south in the 50’s and 60’s. Just north of my home is Manchester which was home at one time to the largest mills in the US. Just south of here and Lowell is the city of Lawrence who experienced a horrific accident when the Pemberton Mills collapsed producing many casualties. We still all feel the influence of the mills even to this day. They were proud and hardworking people. Just an aside, Simon. The city of Lowell is pronounced in one syllable: Lole. Thanks for the vid!
I dont know what's more sad, the experiences of these poor girls or the fact that the majority of the comments focus on Simon's pronunciation of the name..... he did a fine job for not growing up in the area and hearing the pronunciation all his life like many of you, trust me, many Americans cant pronounce names outside their own country either
3:25 - Chapter 1 - The harsh reality
9:25 - Chapter 2 - Fighting back
12:40 - Wrap up
It’s really interesting to find out that TB was common amongst the Mill Girls. My grandma was a power loom worker in Central Scotland in the late 19teens till she died in 1929 of TB. My grandad died in a coal mining accident in 1926. That left my dad an orphan when he was only 7. I remember being heart broken for him when I found out. He was brought up with an aunt who shall we say was none to kind.
My mother worked in a sewing mill in Fall River. They had wooden floors, and oil constantly dripped from the machines into the floors. When those buildings caught on fire, they burned for a long long time.
Also as far as the things named after him, we pronounce it LOW-ell (long o) 🙂
Please note: the date of 1845. This is pre-civil war era. Human exploitation happened everywhere.
And meanwhile, actual slaves in the southern states averaged about 6 hours of work per day. No wonder many Union soldiers derided them as being the spoiled pets of their owners.
afterwards it was only parents who were able to get free/cheap labor from children. also, orphans and "criminals" were still used (and still are to this day) for free labor. no such thing as a hw!te person getting wealthy from working with their own hands..
I grew up in Lowell, never saw the mill inside but did see the textiles building turned into lofts lol.
In the 1980's, I worked at a business in downtown Boston performing repetitive low- impact manual labor. It was an indoor job, no heavy lifting required, paid better than minimum wage. One day my (Irish) boss told me that he'd like to see me pick up the pace of my production. After around ten minutes, I took my jacket off of the rack, announced "I quit", walked out the door, went to HQ, picked up my last paycheck, and never went back. BTW it's pronounced "Low- well".
I lived in the town next to Lowell, Dracut. My aunt lived in the remodeled mills buildings that werent used as museum or shut down and boarded up. The boarded up mill off the river always creeped me out
Love this man's channels! He does everything!
He does nothing but read scripts he buys.
@@rocketamadeus3730 even then he reads them damn well
@@rocketamadeus3730 you don't even do that
So what. Jelly?
There is a james taylor song called "millworker" from an unsuccessful broadway play. One line is "yes, but it's my life has been wasted and I have been the fool to let this manufacture use my body for a tool". My job (and many others) uses my body as a tool for manufacturing
“Here’s to the town of Boston, The land of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, And the Cabots speak only to God.”
Another good video and I learned more about my home state. Lowell, though is pronounced with a long o, so lowl, long o
My grandfather went to work in a cotton mill here in NC at age 9.
Cannon Mills?
@@benallen7704 No, it was American and Efird in Albemarle
I grew up right next to Lowell in Westford, which had a few old mills/small factories, nothing like Lowell though. The first planned city of the Industrial Revolution in the US if I’m not mistaken. Visited the textile mills of several occasions during my time in school.
Being from Massachusetts it’s driving me absolutely nuts on how Simon is saying Lowell. I don’t know how the man said his last name, but that city is NOT pronounced that way in Mass. It’s more like saying lol out as a word but with a w in it, Lowl.
I am from Texas and his pronunciation of Lowell bugged me too. It may be correct, but not how it’s pronounced in America.
I live in Lowell, and even in one of the old Mills called the Counting House, which was the Administrative Center, Watch House and Transportation hub for the local mills!
Love Simon & his channels and its interesting to hear him discuss this history
I love that you give girls and women the resources such as those books and lectures, and they immediately make like a little library, start a paper, create discussion groups and start asking questions then men of that era definitely wouldnt want them to ask; is marriage worth it? Is there really a god? Should women be involved in politics? Those were scary things for women to ever consider.
LOL - read some of the books that were written in the wake of the American Revolution, regarding American women. Not only were American women always up for a scrap, but the men generally liked it that way. Like Mrs Motte providing the means to burn down her own house to drive the British army out of it.
Don’t forget they also started a union
Imagine being so desperate for education and intellectual dispute that you will still seek it after a gruelling, dangerous 14 h work day, where you could hardly breath...
Yes, that's what I find uplifting I'm this story. For all their suffering, they were some of the few women of the tome that had intellectual freedom, that is if they had enough energy left over to pursue it.
@@EmpressMermaid It's more sad than uplifting to me... Imagine what these women could have achieved if given half a chance at a true education!
@@JuMiKu perhaps uplifting is the wrong term. I was mostly referring to the spirit and perseverance of these women. Their circumstances were definitely not uplifting.
@@EmpressMermaid Yeah. Sorry. I understood. You are right. It is incredibly admirable and should be thrown in the face of anyone, who points at the times and asks why women didn't "do more".
@@JuMiKu many women chose this life, as hard as it was, because it was one of the few avenues that allowed a woman to not be under the thumb of a father or husband.
This sounds frightingly like amazon would like to steer in that direction...
Yeah Jeff Bezos would like us to think he's any better than Elon Musk but hes just as bad
Bezos is seriously the single most dangerous human being alive today. He is striving with every inch of his will to bring western society back to these callous conditions.
Yeah the people who run companies these days are the grandchildren of those robber barons. The sickness killing America today goes back a few generations.
Already lacking in safety and rights, Tesla as well Union Union unions always. 💪🤘
Quite a few people in my family, originally from Lancashire, worked in textile mills in the 1800s and 1900s in England and the in the US. I think the last person in my family to work in the mills was my father, who was an engineer and worked repairing looms at a water jet loom weaving mill literally down the road a couple of miles from Slater Mill (which is now a museum) in Rhode Island. Even when my dad worked in the mill as an engineer in the early 1970s weaving mills were considered a dangerous place to work. My father was injured on the job in the mill while carrying heavy loom parts down a ramp with another worker. The other man let his end of some large loom machinery slip and it fell on my father’s back and fractured bones in his spine and a rib. Luckily it didn’t injure his spinal cord. He had to stay lying down to let the bones heal for about 2 months. He was in his early 20s and my older brother (who was a preschooler at the time) and my mom basically had to take care of him for weeks because he couldn’t move while he healed from the injury. Luckily the mill owner took good care of his workers, or I don’t think they would have been able to survive on my mom’s income at the time as a college student (with a kid) working part time to make ends meet. My dad’s back healed, luckily, and he got a safer job not long after that. I remember being both fascinated by and terrified of big looms and factory machinery as a kid after hearing my dad tell me about working in the mills.
Oh, and for reference, the town of Lowell in Massachusetts that you spoke of in this video is generally pronounced like “Lole” by locals. It literally never occurred to me that someone might pronounce it as you did in this video because I’ve always heard it said by people from Massachusetts and Rhode Island living in those states over the last 40+ years 😂
Omg you're covering the place where I live!
ha.. Im right in Dracut
@@Mark-hs2js Ohh cool lol unfortunately he is pronouncing the name of the city wrong but that's not a big deal. He's doing the best he can.
Taunton
Billerica
You don't want to give Bezos ideas...
Bro he probably already learned this at business school.
Ooooh this reminds me of one of my first Real Jobs(tm) where the business owners would casually make jokes to each other about the "wage slaves", which included me, as though we weren't there to hear them. It was very motivating!
The Bread and Roses Strike!
Great news! They just found children working at a factory in Minnesota...a few days ago! We really have come so far.
☹️
It seems to me that the problem began when some of the girls began inviting family members to come join them and work in the mill. Can you imagine trying make a budget and then have other people come to you looking for and expecting a job and -- it's not in your budget! But, you take them on, anyway and one thing leads to another and you are overwhelmed.
It’s funny how this video on Lowell comes right after the fentanyl ones hahaha if you know you know
The particles that you spoke of were called fluff. They were actually at least 2 novels that noted this period the one that's most notably been made into movies is North and South. There's a whole discussion about fluff and how the masters say fills the bellies of the workers. I'll let you think about that 1.
As a European... Has anything changed since then? You US Americans are still working two jobs for still not enough pay. You have sick days which you have to swap around with co-worker if you get too sick. You have no maternity leave. And you still get not much pay to survive.
Aside all the other news Europeans hear about many US Americans living in tent cities because you cannot afford houses/apartments or anything. Heck many cannot even afford health care.
So what makes the majority of the US Americans so different from these Girls?
My grandmother work in the mills after she was married. She immigrated from Quebec to work in the mills. We all lived in Lowell for 4 generations.
It is estimated about 1 million French Canadians emigrated to the US in the second half of the XIXth century. Many of whom worked in mills.
Some say if they stayed here, Québec's population would be double what it is today ,
I recommend _A Distinct Alien Race_ by David Vermette about the origins of the New England textile industry and the history of the French-Cadadians employed by the mills.
I lived in Lowell Massachusetts for about 6 years and passed by the mills that were next to the train station everyday. You should do a video on spaghettiville next to lowell
It's so sad what Lowell's vision was twisted into. I live in Massachusetts and sadly Lowell is still associated with what you describe, I never knew that his intentions were far better than what happened. It's incredible, too, how these factories influenced the entire eastern part of the state. The effect was to embrace organized crime and to treat everyone as a foe because everyone was out to exploit everyone and you had to be aggressive and "get them" first. That has remained, I always wondered how the founders of Boston were so different from reality and I think now I see how the Boston rat race was created.
It is such a shame that his name is attached to a monstrous system when he had died long before they took shape.
Possibly a strange thing to say given how depraved the topics are, but I think this is my favorite channel hosted by Simon. Always happy to see when a new video's dropped.
I live in one of the towns next to Lowell and my grandfather worked in a sock mill on the river when he was younger. My grandmother worked in one of the fabric mills until she had my father. The mills, even in the late 1920s and 30s were still very dangerous and the work was back breaking, to say the least. But since my grandparents were not educated past the 10th grade because they had to work to help support their families, it was the mills or nothing. You do what you have to do to feed your family. And it is pronounced Low-ell not loll.
Always interesting, informative and entertaining 👌 team💙
Anyone else screaming “ITS LOW-WULL SIMON!”
Those mills literally made me. If not for four Poles coming from Austria-Hungary to work in the Lowell Mills, or four French-Canadians coming from Quebec to work in the Lawrence mills, I would not be here. We still have tools my great grandfather used to repair machinery in the Lawrence mills.
I remember reading Lyddie as a girl and thinking "at least she got paid." I worked hard on the family farm until a few years ago, and had a job on the side, picking tobacco until I was 14 and could get a "real" job that paid the same but wasn't backbreaking work. I will say that the idea of getting hit in the face with a shuttle is terrifying.
Ya im from Massachusetts and hearing you pronounce Lowell wrong is driving me crazy 🤣
Also when I was in elementary school and middle school we would visit the mills to lear about this.
Me too and I'm living in the Midlands as an American married to an English man. Simon says it because he speaks RP (Recieved Pronunciation) English, all southerners here do. Sounds goofy.
i grew up near lowell. it took me a few minutes to pick up that's where you were talking about because we pronounce it with a long-o locally
Lmao this is my hometown and mind you, our famous sandwich is called…The Boott Mill Sandwich 😅
My neighbor owns Arthur's ..lol
Don't forget the owl dinner and also Eliot's hot dogs 😂
Man as a Bay Stater it really grates on my ears every time he says Loud-es instead of Low-al
Capitalistic slavery hasn’t really gone away, although working conditions are much better due to health and safety and technological advancement people are still working long hours. All for the sake of trying to maintain a certain lifestyle or just survive by keeping their debt at bay. That’s called the debt slave cycle which was designed on purpose to produce capitalistic slaves which is essentially a cog in the economic system. Physical slavery requires them to be housed and fed , economic slavery requires them to house and feed themselves.
If Libertarians and conservatives in the US had their way those health and safety regulations would be gutted. Wouldn't be great if we went back to the early days of the industrial revolution.
If you don't like your job you can always get a different one.
@@johnclaybaugh9536 oh bless your heart, you can only think linearly and suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
@@timothyhouse1622 I don't suffer from anything. But keep pretending.
@@johnclaybaugh9536 You are a naive fool!
Wait... Memorizing plans for a large machine... Having your ship searched for contraband... "A long time ago across the ocean in a land far far away..."
I know he doesn't care, but how he is pronouncing Lowell is like nails on a chalk board.
Lol, I’m from Washington State, and listening to him try to pronounce things like “Yakima” and “Sammamish” is hilarious and painful at the same time.
And in one syllable, like HOWL.
I had to stop about three minutes in. haha
if you dont get that feeling just from hearing his accent, you arent an american.
I live an hour away from Lowell and remember visiting the mills as a middle-schooler. The people who run the museum have no qualms in sharing the horrors of working in those places. I remember a story they told us of a girl who was killed by one of the fast thread-holding shuttles when it flew off its rail and pierced her skull. The Boott Mill museum keeps the machinery running today and you can buy the fabric it makes, however the machines are kept behind thick plexiglass due to said incidents and the deafening noise.
I grew up in that area and have family from Lowell. My great great grandparents worked in the mills in Manchester NH.
It's so funny that I did not know what town you were talking about until I saw it on screen. It's pronounced lo-well or lo-ell with the o being like the word soap. I thought Simon was saying Lall! Or Lael maybe? Definitely not Lowell! 😁
How do you say Worcester MA? It's Wis-ta, in case you didn't know.
Thank you for telling their story!
I'm Canadian, and I just knew it was wrong because I don't know anyone named "LOWL". It just SOUNDS wrong. I've never heard the name Lowell rhymed with HOWL.
This how the likes of Amazon will be remembered one day
Simon.. its pronounced low-ell... not lough..I live a town over..Don't forget the Boston accent.
Oh the irony! Normally Simon mangles British pronunciations for some inexplicable reason, at least this one is understandable.
It’s also wall-tham lol. But I think the point being made by these corrections is just to help the info be known.
Everyone from Massachusetts cringing each time he says LAWL 😂
*"I owe my soul to the company store.."* 🎶 😞
I gave my soul away and had it refused.
Kind of shit that only ever happens to me.
"The American way" 😂 😂 😂 😂
This video was a friendly reminder to JOIN YOUR UNION!
I'm all for Unions, just don't let communism seep in. Everybody should know by now how disastrous communism is for the ordinary person.
@@killman369547 Communism as practiced by the Russians and Chinese was a perversion of the true political form. These countries swapped one form of oligarchy for another. You will find that many practices which take place in the EU and the US, such as comprehensive government oversight of workers safety and conditions, universal education and basic public healthcare and supervision of child welfare etc had their origins in former Communist countries.
The big no no in communism was the attempted enforcement of State endorsed atheism and a denial of religious freedom at the highest levels.
I work 101 hour work weeks on oil pads in West Texas. I sympathize with the long hours at a job which is equal parts dangerous and monotonous. The difference is I get compensated VERY well for my work
Hopefully you will be able to buy up a few houses to rent out when you are in your fifties and be able to live comfortably in your golden years. This is what a former work colleague of mine did, working on the oil-fields off Scotland and then in Ireland in a factory as a fitter and instumentation tech. He could turn his hand to anything electrical, mechanical and IT related and he was multi qualified in all these highly marketable skills. The hours are long if your work entails detailed troubleshooting and repairs and risky if mistakes could cost millions, not for the faint hearted.
Imagine the workplace gore videos we would have if they had workplace cameras back then☠️
I grew up in Rhode island. The bus Depot was in front of Slater Mill in Pawtucket. I have been tru the tour several times as a child. We also heard all the horror stories of child labor. Most of the old mills are now luxury lofts. I guess its better then them being boarded up Haven's for rats and pigeons.I really wish we could put things into perspective and realize how good we have it compared to others both in developing countries and years past
These are a 20 minute drive from my house. Went with school and saw them when I was a kid. Conditions were
Horrific in those mills, now they are lofts/buisness spaces.
In the province of Québec in Canada, there was so many poor farmers in the 1880's going to Lowell with their families in hope of finding jobs in the textile industy in Lowell than this city was soon nicknamed "le petit Canada" (the little Canada). Those farmers were tricked by the catholic church into believing that they were to be paid to watch machines work. They got so screwed.......
Like the Irish of that period the Catholic Quebecois were denied basic knowledge of family planning and limiting number of children in a family. This led to very large population increases in a given area and is why the farmers were poor. The RC church has a lot to answer for in terms of human development in the working classes and tricking people into accepting atrocious conditions in their worklives and careers.Of course the plentiful supply of cheap compliant labour played right into the hands of the monied elite and no counter force was available in any meaningful way.
_A Distinct Alien Race_ by David Vermette is highly recommended about this subject.
Excellent work
Yeah, and lets not forget that some folks today will tell you the only problem with capitalism is that it is too restrained and regulated. There are people today who either don't know about these kinds of realities (or don't care to know), or just straight up don't care if they come into being again. To forget this is at our own peril.
The work conditions of those times were due in large part to the technology of that time. The chief problem with too many regulations is that it slows down the introduction of even better, safer, and cleaner work conditions.
@@alanlight7740 . . . no? In countries where the corporations can get away with it they still lock workers in. That's not a technology problem, it's a fucking bastards in charge problem.
Good regulations are designed to allow for improvements, that's kinda the whole point.
@@MySerpentine - good regulations are the exception rather than the norm.
Worked in some of the old mills being turned into condos & retail space. A lot of the slum housing is still there.
As someone who lives in the state it's so weird hearing Simon pronounce Lowell. We HIGHLY compress the syllables to the point it's essentially one "lowl".
Is that "Lowl" to rhyme with "owl", as he says it, or "LOW-ell"? It does NOT sound right as "LOWL".
@@ferociousgumby is practically pronounced "lol", not sounding the letters out but more like ~Lohl
Ah yes, the “make a complete functional mental schematic of a machine by just watching them work” trick.
Nicely done. When I was back there some years back, they had turned some of those "dark Satanic mills" into condos for yuppies. 🙂
Awesome work! Subscribed.
May we change the term "Irish potato famine" to GENOCIDE yet??? ☘
I dont think you know what a genocide is
@@MissShar I don't think you know what the potato famine was. But I hope you still feel superior
Harrisville nh still has a wool mill running beautiful up there