The purpose of this assignment is to acquire knowledge of the interconnections between industrialization, labor, gender, and workers’ rights.

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to acquire knowledge of the interconnections between industrialization, labor, gender, and workers’ rights.

The implications of the Industrial Revolution went far beyond technological and economic progress. Industrialization left a significant mark in modern society, engendering urbanization, environmental issues, the need for social reform, and workers’ rights, and prompted women to enter the workforce.

Read the materials supplied in the Week 3 Readings and Resource page and then write a 1,000-word essayconsidering the following question prompts:

1. Who were the girls who came to work for the newly opened mills in Lowell, Massachusetts?
2. For what reasons did these girls seek outside employment?
3. What prior skills and life experiences would have assisted their new work as industrial workers?
4. Describe the daily life of a Lowell mill girl. What kind of working conditions did she face? Provide at least two examples. What kind of social and educational activities did she participate in? Provide at least two examples.
5. What is the contribution of the Lowell mill girls to the larger labor movement?
6. Factory girls were not only part of revolutionizing industry; they began to revolutionize the role of women in industry. After reading Lucy Ann’s letter-An Independent Mill GirlLinks to an external site. (1851), how far this revolution goes? Did these working girls and women experience emancipation from traditional Victorian gender roles? To what extent? And how?
7. The collective experience of the Lowell girls supported women’s participation in many other social and political reforms, and became a bedrock in American women’s activism throughout the 19th and  20thcenturies, and into the twenty-first. What can we learn from the experiences, successes, and failures of the mill girls, particularly those who actively challenged the harassment, mistreatment, and oppressive restrictions targeted at their sex? Give at least three examples from the web-based sources, and relate them to the activisms of today.

Your essay should include:

• Harriet Hanson
• The strikes of 1834 and 1836
• Lowell Female Labor Reform Association
• Sarah Bagley
• Voice of Industry