A Brief History of American Labor

We did not call ourselves ladies. We did not forget that we were working-girls, wearing coarse aprons suitable to our work, and that there was some danger of our becoming drudges.

—Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood, 1889

How they get you is first they give you moreto do by rolling out two more machinesbut slowing down each loom to 100 beatsa minute to mitigate the impact of workingtwo looms at once and this is what they calledback then the stretch out and once they stretch you outonce you get good at working four at oncethen comes of course the speed up to over120 beats a minute and lookhow good you've gotten making almost twobucks more a month up from 14.50 hellthat's a 16 percent raise for increasingoutput 70 percent and now the bosscan cut back labor and still linger alongthe river summer evenings with his wifeand watch blue herons dollar-sign their necksthen fall into flight above the humming bricks.