A ten-year-old bobbin girl working in a textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s, must make a difficult decision--will she participate in the first workers' strike in Lowell?

Twelve-year-old Hannalee Reed, forced to relocate in Indiana along with other Georgia millworkers during the Civil War, leaves her mother with a promise to return home as soon as the war ends.

Torn apart by the separation of her family, Lyddie vows to bring them together again and save their farm by finding work at a cotton mill. When Diana, a fellow factory worker, asks for Lyddie's help in demanding better treatment, Lyddie refuses for fear of losing her job. It's not until Diana dies from conditions at the factory, and Lyddie's little sister falls ill, that Lyddie begins to consider taking a stand and making a choice that will change...

Read about the importance of cotton in America's history and learn about the lives of people who picked it and worked with it.

Examines the problem of child labor during the early twentieth century, focusing on a protest march from Philadelphia to New York City in 1903 by a group of child textile workers led by Mother Jones.

Lori Merish establishes working-class women as significant actors within literary culture, dramatically redrawing the map of nineteenth-century US literary and cultural history. Delving into previously unexplored archives of working-class women's literature-from autobiographies, pamphlet novels, and theatrical melodrama to seduction tales and labor periodicals-Merish recovers working-class women's vital presence as writers and readers in the antebellum...