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Female Firsts: Sarah Bagley · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: I'm welcome to Stephan never told you a protection of iHeartRadio,
0:18
Speaker 2: and this time for another edition of Female First, which
0:21
Speaker 2: means we are once again joined by the wonderful, the
0:24
Speaker 2: fantastic Eves.
0:25
Speaker 1: Welcome Eves.
0:26
Speaker 3: Hi.
0:28
Speaker 2: Yes, we are so glad to have you. You've had
0:31
Speaker 2: a couple of obstacles that you have joined us. Anyway.
0:36
Speaker 1: Yes, I am here and I'm glad to be here.
0:39
Speaker 2: Yes, and we are always glad to have you, Eves.
0:44
Speaker 2: I guess a blanket question, how are you?
0:47
Speaker 1: I am doing okay today?
0:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I can say I'm anywhere
0:53
Speaker 3: above that or below that. Like, I am grateful to
0:57
Speaker 3: be here. I'm excited to share this female for today.
1:02
Speaker 3: I physically am doing okay. But I've been able to
1:07
Speaker 3: sit out in the sunlight and work outside. You know,
1:10
Speaker 3: I'm still drinking water, so I'm still sustaining my actual life,
1:15
Speaker 3: and I think that's important.
1:17
Speaker 1: It counts for.
1:18
Speaker 3: Something, at least it does. But yes, I think the
1:22
Speaker 3: challenges have been many. They've been abundant. Is what was
1:26
Speaker 3: how I'll put that?
1:29
Speaker 1: Yes?
1:30
Speaker 2: Yes, do you have anything like a silver lining that
1:34
Speaker 2: you're looking forward? To in the future.
1:37
Speaker 1: Yes.
1:38
Speaker 3: Actually, so I actually have some travel coming up that
1:40
Speaker 3: I'm pretty excited about. I'm going to a spiritual retreat
1:44
Speaker 3: and I am going to Jamaica. So even though I
1:49
Speaker 3: will probably have some work to do while I'm away
1:52
Speaker 3: in both of those places, I am looking forward to
1:56
Speaker 3: getting a little relaxing time, a little reset, and and
2:00
Speaker 3: enjoying being outdoors.
2:02
Speaker 1: Yes.
2:03
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And you know, that's kind of a good segue
2:09
Speaker 2: into who we're talking about today, because before we got
2:11
Speaker 2: a mic, we were discussing our difficulties when it comes
2:15
Speaker 2: to taking time off of work, perhaps work boundaries, and
2:22
Speaker 2: so hearing you talk about yes, I'll be doing a reset,
2:26
Speaker 2: taking a vacation, but I'll probably still be doing work.
2:30
Speaker 2: This is something a lot of us feel and a
2:32
Speaker 2: lot of us relate to, I believe, and it does
2:34
Speaker 2: relate to who we're talking about today.
2:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.
2:39
Speaker 3: That actually is a very astute of you, I mean,
2:41
Speaker 3: because I wouldn't have even thought about it that way.
2:43
Speaker 3: I think it does because we're talking about today Sarah Bagley,
2:47
Speaker 3: who was a labor activist, so she did a lot
2:50
Speaker 3: of work around working conditions and about being able to
2:53
Speaker 3: have some time for herself, you know, because her life
2:56
Speaker 3: didn't revolve I mean, it had to revolve around work
2:58
Speaker 3: because of her situtuation. But you know, she wanted less
3:02
Speaker 3: time working and for herself and for all of the
3:05
Speaker 3: other women who were working in textile meals at the time.
3:09
Speaker 3: So yeah, I too have a very hard time setting
3:13
Speaker 3: boundaries around work. It is very different today in twenty
3:17
Speaker 3: twenty four than it was for Sarah Bagley who was
3:19
Speaker 3: alive in the eighteen hundreds. But we are and yes,
3:24
Speaker 3: I think this is a good way to start this
3:26
Speaker 3: is that these issues that Sarah Bagley was dealing with,
3:30
Speaker 3: although it was about her going to a specific industrial site,
3:32
Speaker 3: this was during the Industrial Revolution, which we'll get into,
3:36
Speaker 3: it's still relevant to what we're talking about today. The
3:39
Speaker 3: ways that companies intrude on our time and pretend that
3:43
Speaker 3: the work our live shait revolve around the work rather
3:46
Speaker 3: than the work supporting our ability to live in a
3:48
Speaker 3: healthy and sustainable way.
3:50
Speaker 1: Putting profits over people still a thing.
3:54
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not funny, but the fact that we're
3:58
Speaker 3: still dealing with it is like, is pretty wild to
4:01
Speaker 3: see when you realize that, like we seemed so distanced
4:04
Speaker 3: from the Industrial Revolution, I mean, we're all holding these
4:07
Speaker 3: insane computers in our hands every day to do everything,
4:12
Speaker 3: but it.
4:12
Speaker 1: It spiritually, we're not that distant from that time, sadly.
4:22
Speaker 1: That's one way to put it.
4:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, So should we get into Sarah's story now?
4:36
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay.
4:39
Speaker 3: So Sarah was born in April of eighteen oh six
4:42
Speaker 3: and her parents were Nathan and Rhoda are Rada not
4:45
Speaker 3: sure how to pronounce it, but Widham Bagley, and they
4:48
Speaker 3: were raised in Well. Sarah was raised in New Hampshire
4:52
Speaker 3: and she had a few siblings, Thomas, Henry and Mary Jane.
4:56
Speaker 3: And her parents they farmed, they sold a land and
4:59
Speaker 3: they had a small mill, and they later moved to
5:02
Speaker 3: other places, including meredith Bridge. It seems like there's I mean,
5:08
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of information about her early life,
5:11
Speaker 3: but not an overwhelming amount of information about her early life.
5:16
Speaker 3: But the meat of her story, where we get to
5:18
Speaker 3: is in starts in the eighteen thirties and that's where
5:22
Speaker 3: her work in labor activism begins. So to put some
5:30
Speaker 3: context around this, this is the time of the industrial Revolution,
5:35
Speaker 3: you know insert you know, rainbows and progress to a measure,
5:44
Speaker 3: we have all of these technological development, all of these
5:49
Speaker 3: factories popping up. People are moving in droves from the
5:54
Speaker 3: countryside to the city. You know, I'm just imagining. You know,
5:59
Speaker 3: this is when the black and white turns to color.
6:02
Speaker 1: This is how you can think about that.
6:05
Speaker 3: And that quickly changes back to great scale because the
6:09
Speaker 3: city populations, they're growing and they're getting denser. Just imagine
6:13
Speaker 3: all of the other issues that come along with that.
6:17
Speaker 3: One of the issues is that people are working in
6:20
Speaker 3: these factories and a lot of those people are women
6:24
Speaker 3: and children. So the children thing is a whole other story.
6:28
Speaker 3: We're not really going to get into that today. We're
6:31
Speaker 3: talking about women labor today. But in terms of the
6:35
Speaker 3: women labor, women are enticed by this idea of getting
6:40
Speaker 3: cash and having boarding houses to stay in when they
6:45
Speaker 3: move from their rural locations and they go to these
6:47
Speaker 3: urban areas where the mills and the factories are.
6:52
Speaker 1: So people want.
6:53
Speaker 3: Them because the men are away and the women are
6:55
Speaker 3: there and they're like, well, we need to make money,
6:58
Speaker 3: like this is an easy way to do it. So
7:01
Speaker 3: it's similar to work that they're already doing. Like some
7:03
Speaker 3: of these women are and girls I should say it's
7:06
Speaker 3: girls and women. Some of them are actually doing work
7:10
Speaker 3: in smaller mills, but these larger mills, they have these
7:15
Speaker 3: large boarding houses and they're able to pay a little
7:19
Speaker 3: bit higher wages.
7:20
Speaker 1: And that's the case in Lowell.
7:23
Speaker 3: So women are recruited from rural towns in New England
7:26
Speaker 3: to work at the textile mills in Lowell. So Lowell
7:30
Speaker 3: is this town where that has grown up around the
7:35
Speaker 3: textile factories. The guy who opened those textile factories name
7:39
Speaker 3: was Francis Cabot Lowell, and that's where that name Lowell
7:42
Speaker 3: comes from. The town after he died, was named for
7:45
Speaker 3: him and was developed up around this factory situation. So
7:50
Speaker 3: the women who work in the mills are referred to
7:54
Speaker 3: as mill girls.
7:55
Speaker 1: I'm not really going to call them that.
7:56
Speaker 3: Because that feels a little infantilizing that they weren't all
7:59
Speaker 3: girls girls. They ranged from eighteen to like thirty was
8:03
Speaker 3: the typical age, so they weren't girls. I mean, I
8:09
Speaker 3: think on the lower end, you know, yeah, you know,
8:14
Speaker 3: if to not make somebody older than they actually are,
8:16
Speaker 3: but I mean they were old, or they were older
8:22
Speaker 3: than to call girls. It feels like so to put
8:26
Speaker 3: yourself in the shoes of these women in these factory locations,
8:30
Speaker 3: think of all the noises that are being made by
8:32
Speaker 3: the machines. They have bills that are summoning them to
8:36
Speaker 3: and from work. So it's not just women there. There
8:39
Speaker 3: are also men who are working in the factories, but
8:44
Speaker 3: women are together often housed with like more than one
8:49
Speaker 3: woman to a room when they're living in the boarding houses.
8:52
Speaker 3: Their living situations in the boarding houses are also kind
8:55
Speaker 3: of controlled, so they can get things like curfews, and
8:58
Speaker 3: they have codes of cond and the conditions and the
9:02
Speaker 3: mills as well can be pretty strict with how people
9:06
Speaker 3: are overseeing them. Also, the actual conditions of like air
9:10
Speaker 3: quality in the mills, the factories and the minds, all
9:13
Speaker 3: these kinds of places can be horrendous. The working hours
9:16
Speaker 3: are long, they're hazardous conditions. The mills are closed on
9:21
Speaker 3: Sundays because there's still this religious tenor that's hanging over everything.
9:27
Speaker 3: They have to observe the Sabbath, you know, they talk
9:30
Speaker 3: about religious instruction at the time.
9:33
Speaker 1: So that is like the.
9:35
Speaker 3: Very culti sounding situation actually now that I describe it.
9:40
Speaker 3: But that just comes from the control that the control
9:44
Speaker 3: and the regiment that is structured around the work that
9:47
Speaker 3: they do, and that they're always there together. Basically they
9:50
Speaker 3: don't leave, although during the summers sometimes the women will
9:55
Speaker 3: go back home. So at the time, there are people
10:00
Speaker 3: who are starting to organize to advocate for themselves around
10:04
Speaker 3: their working conditions and their labor to be able to
10:08
Speaker 3: help attain better conditions for everyone. But the manufacturers end
10:13
Speaker 3: up crushing these strikes, as you would imagine, they have
10:16
Speaker 3: quite a bit of power, and they have other people
10:18
Speaker 3: who will come in and work in the stead of
10:20
Speaker 3: people who are advocating for themselves. And this is where
10:24
Speaker 3: we get to Sarah. So by eighteen thirty seven, Sarah's
10:26
Speaker 3: in Lowell, Massachusetts, and she's making money to support herself
10:30
Speaker 3: and her family because I think what we do know
10:34
Speaker 3: a little bit about in her earlier life is that
10:36
Speaker 3: her family they were having some money struggles. So Sarah's
10:41
Speaker 3: supporting herself and she's supporting her family. And this wasn't
10:45
Speaker 3: unusual for women who were going to work in the mills,
10:48
Speaker 3: like they were making money to help their families because
10:51
Speaker 3: their families didn't have that much money. And at this time,
10:54
Speaker 3: working in the factory was a good way to help
10:57
Speaker 3: enhance your economic means.
11:00
Speaker 1: Working as a weaver.
11:01
Speaker 3: At the Hamilton Manufacturing company, and she's in her late
11:05
Speaker 3: twenties at this point, so she is a little bit
11:08
Speaker 3: older than I guess the majority of the women who
11:11
Speaker 3: were there working at those mills.
11:14
Speaker 1: And the money is alright.
11:17
Speaker 3: She it's better than you know, what other people are
11:21
Speaker 3: making and other mills, but the money's all right. She
11:24
Speaker 3: gets eleven dollars and seventy two cents for her first
11:27
Speaker 3: twenty four days of work, and then by her second
11:31
Speaker 3: year she's earning almost a dollar per day in the
11:34
Speaker 3: weave room. So that round about twelve dollars that she
11:38
Speaker 3: was making is about three hundred and ninety dollars in
11:42
Speaker 3: today's money, and that's for a twenty four days worth
11:45
Speaker 3: of work. But the thing is the workers are supervised
11:50
Speaker 3: very closely and they work long hours. So yes, they're
11:53
Speaker 3: making money, but this is the trade off. And this
11:55
Speaker 3: is what we were talking about earlier. That's still happening
11:59
Speaker 3: to this day. But some of the workers are at
12:03
Speaker 3: the mills in Lowell publish a magazine called The Lowell Offering.
12:07
Speaker 3: So this is written by the workers but is managed
12:11
Speaker 3: and partly funded by the mill corporations.
12:13
Speaker 1: This goes into one of those things.
12:14
Speaker 3: You got to see who's publishing the publications as well,
12:17
Speaker 3: but Bagley contributes to it, and one of her first
12:21
Speaker 3: articles for the offering is called Pleasures of Factory Life.
12:24
Speaker 3: That's published in eighteen forty, and anyone who's listening can
12:27
Speaker 3: go online and access that very easily. You can read
12:30
Speaker 3: it online. But i'll give you a quote from it.
12:35
Speaker 3: In the mills, we are not so far from God
12:37
Speaker 3: and nature as many persons might suppose. We cultivate and
12:42
Speaker 3: enjoy much pleasure in cultivating flowers and plants. A large
12:46
Speaker 3: and beautiful variety of plants is placed around the walls
12:50
Speaker 3: of the rooms, giving them more the appearance of a
12:53
Speaker 3: flower garden than a workshop. So that's the end of
12:56
Speaker 3: the quote. And in that article she also talks about
13:00
Speaker 3: how in the job there is time for contemplation. She
13:04
Speaker 3: says that they get to help elderly people, and she
13:07
Speaker 3: also said that they get to have time for a
13:09
Speaker 3: religious instruction. So this is early on. As we tease
13:15
Speaker 3: in the beginning, Sarah is a labor activist. Right now,
13:19
Speaker 3: it sounds like she's doing a lot to show how
13:22
Speaker 3: good the conditions in the factory are. But there are
13:26
Speaker 3: asterisks because there is like a despite in that article
13:31
Speaker 3: Sarah does talk about how the factory girls are not
13:33
Speaker 3: without guardian kind of loosely implying that they are closely watched,
13:41
Speaker 3: but she also says that they are placed in the
13:43
Speaker 3: care of overseers who feel under moral obligations to look
13:47
Speaker 3: after our interest. That's a lot of words to say
13:50
Speaker 3: that they are on our butts. Okay, Like it's clear that,
13:57
Speaker 3: like it really seems like this article is in it
14:01
Speaker 3: she's just making the best of a situation that now
14:05
Speaker 3: we know is bad, which is not a bad.
14:07
Speaker 1: Thing to do.
14:08
Speaker 3: Like why wouldn't we cope in that way, you know,
14:11
Speaker 3: not taking away her agency and like actually knowing that
14:14
Speaker 3: these are good things. I'm not saying that, you know,
14:16
Speaker 3: these aren't good things to have around you, but knowing
14:20
Speaker 3: how the tables turn very quickly, and how she feels
14:23
Speaker 3: about the conditions at the mills, it's like it feels
14:28
Speaker 3: in a way, you know, kind of sad to me
14:32
Speaker 3: with this hindsight that I have, because she's like really
14:36
Speaker 3: aching for something that feels bright in dark times. So yeah,
14:43
Speaker 3: that's you can read that article. It's not that long,
14:46
Speaker 3: but she talks about it, so it doesn't take long
14:48
Speaker 3: for those tables to turn. Sarah tires of her work
14:53
Speaker 3: as a weaver, she's pressured to produce more cloth. She
14:57
Speaker 3: ends up becoming a dresser where she helps prepare warp
15:00
Speaker 3: threads for weaving. But of course that work has its
15:03
Speaker 3: own pressures and hours are still long. And on top
15:08
Speaker 3: of all of that, the mills themselves are starting to
15:11
Speaker 3: make changes. So these mills are booming. Everywhere there are prices,
15:17
Speaker 3: and that's including the lowl mill. So all of the
15:19
Speaker 3: low mills we have, all of these popping up, and
15:22
Speaker 3: prices for cotton goods are going down. But the mills
15:28
Speaker 3: they have to keep production costs down too, and they
15:31
Speaker 3: want to keep their profits up because that's what they're
15:33
Speaker 3: in this for. So they start cutting wages and they
15:37
Speaker 3: increase the amount of looms that weavers are responsible for.
15:41
Speaker 1: Okay, so pay is raised for men and not for women.
15:46
Speaker 3: So if we at a certain point when it pays
15:49
Speaker 3: for at first is lower for everyone, and then when
15:52
Speaker 3: pay is raised again, it's for the men and not
15:55
Speaker 3: for the women. Now plots here for us to take
15:58
Speaker 3: a moment and realize that this is like the exact
16:01
Speaker 3: same thing that we still go through today, where wages
16:04
Speaker 3: are cut and the expectations of productivity increase. Our wages
16:10
Speaker 3: don't change at all in expectations of productivity increase. I mean,
16:14
Speaker 3: you know, this is the United States, you know, but
16:17
Speaker 3: you know in other places around the world too, And
16:21
Speaker 3: so of course people are like, this is not okay.
16:24
Speaker 3: We have to do something about this. I am unhappy,
16:27
Speaker 3: I am unsafe. We can't go on living like this.
16:33
Speaker 3: So there is a lot of labor activism that pops up,
16:37
Speaker 3: and that includes the women workers. They go on strikes
16:41
Speaker 3: in eighteen forty two women at the Middlesex Manufacturing Company mills.
16:46
Speaker 3: They are wanting the women to do more work for
16:51
Speaker 3: less pay, so seventy women walk out and they're all
16:55
Speaker 3: fired and blacklisted. And Sarah's consciousness that continues to evolve
17:00
Speaker 3: as all of this stuff is going on. She writes
17:02
Speaker 3: articles in the Lull Offering criticizing the poor conditions in
17:06
Speaker 3: the mill and how those conditions are that way while
17:11
Speaker 3: the company is steadily continuing to profit from this.
17:15
Speaker 1: So the paper doesn't really.
17:16
Speaker 3: Want anything to do with that kind of rhetoric, stops
17:20
Speaker 3: taking some of her work, and Sarah soon leaves the
17:23
Speaker 3: Hamilton Mills and goes to work at the Middlesex mills,
17:28
Speaker 3: and over time, Sarah begins to become more radical. Women
17:34
Speaker 3: in the mills they're working these twelve to fourteen hour days.
17:38
Speaker 3: They're still living in these boarding houses that are crowded
17:41
Speaker 3: and don't have great air circulation. So in eighteen forty four,
17:46
Speaker 3: Sarah and some other women meet in downtown Lowell and
17:50
Speaker 3: they form the lull Female Labor Reform Association. Sarah is
17:55
Speaker 3: voted in as the president of the association and the
17:59
Speaker 3: association rows. It gains several hundred members and it collaborates
18:05
Speaker 3: with other labor groups in the area, like the New
18:08
Speaker 3: England Workingmen's Association and the New England Labor Reform League,
18:13
Speaker 3: and it begins publishing this newspaper called The Voice of
18:16
Speaker 3: the Industry, and Sarah contributes articles to the paper and
18:21
Speaker 3: edits a column in it, and they use the paper
18:24
Speaker 3: as this vehicle to advocate for shorter working days. In
18:28
Speaker 3: eighteen forty five, there is this other publication that also
18:32
Speaker 3: advocates for this ten hour work day. It's what they're
18:35
Speaker 3: looking for. It's called Factory Tracks. I do have a
18:38
Speaker 3: quote from this publication that I like to share. When
18:43
Speaker 3: the whole system is exhausted by unremitting labor during twelve
18:46
Speaker 3: and thirteen hours per day. Can any reasonable being expect
18:50
Speaker 3: that the mind will retain its vigor and energy? Impossible.
18:55
Speaker 3: Common sense will teach everyone the utter impossibility of improving
18:59
Speaker 3: the mind under these circumstances, however great the desire may
19:03
Speaker 3: be for knowledge. And I just think that that quote
19:08
Speaker 3: is interesting from that article just because of how different
19:12
Speaker 3: that is from Sarah's earlier quote from the other article
19:16
Speaker 3: that I was telling y'all about, where she's talking about
19:18
Speaker 3: all of these other ways that she's able to be
19:21
Speaker 3: stimulated during a work day even though she's surrounded by
19:24
Speaker 3: these loud machines and for working conditions.
19:29
Speaker 1: A big part of what Sarah.
19:30
Speaker 3: Was saying in that early eighteen forty article was that
19:32
Speaker 3: she had time for contemplation while she was working. So
19:35
Speaker 3: while she was doing these other tasks or this other
19:38
Speaker 3: stuff was going around, she had great time for contemplation.
19:41
Speaker 3: So there was some intellectual stimulation that she was able
19:44
Speaker 3: to have while she was working. Versus, if you look
19:47
Speaker 3: at this quote that came from Factory Tracks, we see,
19:50
Speaker 3: how is my mind going to be able to have
19:53
Speaker 3: any vigor and energy while I'm doing this work? So
19:57
Speaker 3: definitely a switch between those two. Also, the time was
20:01
Speaker 3: the time, so people were involved in other social pursuits,
20:06
Speaker 3: so there were other people who were anti slavery advocates
20:11
Speaker 3: and then there were people who weren't anti slavery advocates.
20:15
Speaker 3: And one thing that's also interesting to me about this article.
20:18
Speaker 3: It's not that interesting because it's not like it's not
20:20
Speaker 3: a rhetoric that people didn't often use. It is just
20:24
Speaker 3: another example of that. And in this article they use
20:27
Speaker 3: the term slaves. They refer to themselves as slaves at
20:31
Speaker 3: a time when they are not at all removed from slavery,
20:34
Speaker 3: like it literally is right there, and they are referring
20:37
Speaker 3: to themselves as slaves in terms of like this is
20:40
Speaker 3: the work we're doing.
20:40
Speaker 1: We're confined to this work.
20:42
Speaker 3: They are not slaves, they are being paid, their conditions
20:46
Speaker 3: are not good. They should be advocating for themselves. However,
20:50
Speaker 3: they are not slaves, but they continuously call themselves that.
20:54
Speaker 3: In this they say that it's lowell slavery. So I
20:58
Speaker 3: just want to point out stuff like that because I
21:00
Speaker 3: think when we read this kind of stuff is easy
21:02
Speaker 3: to just I don't want it to just be like, oh,
21:06
Speaker 3: she was this great advocate. A lot of times there
21:07
Speaker 3: are complexities and a person's own ethos in the rhetoric
21:12
Speaker 3: that they use. And also, we are living in twenty
21:15
Speaker 3: twenty four and this was eighteen hundred.
21:17
Speaker 1: So they knew what they were doing.
21:19
Speaker 3: They knew what slave meant, they knew what that work meant,
21:23
Speaker 3: they knew what the institution of chattel slavery was because
21:26
Speaker 3: they were surrounded by it.
21:28
Speaker 1: They got news of it they could read.
21:30
Speaker 3: So, you know, just when you read stuff like that,
21:34
Speaker 3: and if you if anybody listening goes and looks at
21:36
Speaker 3: that article and sees that, just you know, calling attention
21:40
Speaker 3: to it. I'm sure when y'all are reading, when y'all
21:43
Speaker 3: are doing research for other episodes, y'all probably also come
21:46
Speaker 3: across stuff when you're like, we were, I was rocking
21:48
Speaker 3: with you for a while until we got.
21:51
Speaker 4: Here, Like that was too often when they're like, why
21:55
Speaker 4: why would you say this? You ruined it?
22:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:01
Speaker 3: So in eighteen forty five, Sarah and others petition the
22:06
Speaker 3: Massachusetts legislature and they're looking for that ten hour workday,
22:11
Speaker 3: and a committee determines that the legislature doesn't have power
22:16
Speaker 3: to determine hours of work and setting a ten hour
22:20
Speaker 3: day is something that they're like, y'all got to handle
22:22
Speaker 3: that between it's between y'all two, it's the companies and
22:25
Speaker 3: the textile workers.
22:26
Speaker 1: Y'all can figure that out your own.
22:28
Speaker 3: But obviously that's not good enough for all the labor
22:31
Speaker 3: activists and Sarah, and they keep getting signatures and sending
22:36
Speaker 3: petitions to the legislature to get that ten hour day,
22:40
Speaker 3: and that once again results in in action from the legislature,
22:45
Speaker 3: and in June of eighteen forty six, Voice of Industry
22:49
Speaker 3: shifts because John Allen becomes the editor and John Allen
22:54
Speaker 3: does not want Sarah involved in the Voice.
22:57
Speaker 1: Of the Industry anymore.
22:59
Speaker 3: You know, he feels like she's a troublemaker and he
23:02
Speaker 3: thinks it won't be dignified if there is a female
23:06
Speaker 3: department at the Voice of Industry.
23:09
Speaker 1: And it's just clear that he.
23:11
Speaker 3: Doesn't want her speaking on her advocacy for this ten
23:15
Speaker 3: hour day.
23:16
Speaker 1: He's like she's doing too much.
23:17
Speaker 3: So this is something that Sarah ends up saying in
23:23
Speaker 3: eighteen forty eight to another women's rights advocate named Angelique Martin.
23:29
Speaker 3: She says, I regret to say to you that the
23:31
Speaker 3: Voice of industry is quite conservative and must be with
23:35
Speaker 3: this present conductor. The present editor thinks that a middle
23:39
Speaker 3: ground or half in half in our opinions is good policy.
23:43
Speaker 3: He thinks that truth ought to be spoken in such
23:45
Speaker 3: honeyed words that if it hits anyone, it shall not
23:48
Speaker 3: affect him unfavorably. And that's the end of the quote.
23:52
Speaker 3: So she's clearly saying that John Allen is he is
23:57
Speaker 3: a moderate. I don't know what his I don't I
24:00
Speaker 3: don't know much more about John Allen. I don't know
24:03
Speaker 3: what his actual leanings were, but he clearly didn't want
24:05
Speaker 3: these things said in the paper.
24:09
Speaker 1: So Sarah looks for another job.
24:12
Speaker 3: She finds out that the telegraph office has just open
24:16
Speaker 3: and Lowell and in eighteen forty six, here's her first.
24:20
Speaker 3: She becomes the first female telegraph operator in the United States.
24:25
Speaker 3: She taps out messages. Oh, and I'm musa say that
24:27
Speaker 3: first is probably not when people would have seen coming,
24:30
Speaker 3: considering we've been talking about for activism this whole time. Yeah,
24:36
Speaker 3: not part of her trajectory that I would have imagined
24:40
Speaker 3: would become the thing that would be her first, But
24:43
Speaker 3: that is it. She taps out these messages and she
24:46
Speaker 3: helps people write their messages and letters, and there's not
24:51
Speaker 3: much movement on the whole ten hour workday thing. But
24:56
Speaker 3: in eighteen forty seven, the mills do shorten the work
25:00
Speaker 3: day by thirty minutes. Thirty whole minutes. Fifteen minutes were
25:04
Speaker 3: added to breakfast and lunch, so they got longer breaks,
25:10
Speaker 3: and that's where that thirty minutes came in.
25:12
Speaker 4: I think I've seen too many memes because between like
25:15
Speaker 4: that quote to him, she's pretty much telling y'all, you know,
25:18
Speaker 4: to like you don't know the truth, you don't want
25:21
Speaker 4: to talk about the truth, like type of thing, and
25:23
Speaker 4: then this being like a win's a win. I guess
25:25
Speaker 4: like it's kind of one of those things like fifteen minutes.
25:29
Speaker 1: Okay, well, yeah, how's that?
25:31
Speaker 3: There's that it's still not good enough though, there's still
25:35
Speaker 3: not good enough. And the other still not good enough
25:38
Speaker 3: thing is that that same year, eighteen forty seven, New
25:41
Speaker 3: Hampshire becomes the first state to pass a ten hour
25:44
Speaker 3: workday law, but workers can still voluntarily agree to a
25:49
Speaker 3: longer workday, and Lowell is in Massachusetts, so this doesn't
25:53
Speaker 3: even apply to Massachusetts there. I think Pennsylvania the next
25:56
Speaker 3: year ends up coming up with a similar law for workday.
26:00
Speaker 3: But you know it is still not happening for the
26:04
Speaker 3: Lowell girls and for Sarah. But in eighteen forty eight,
26:08
Speaker 3: you know, the money still has to be made. You
26:10
Speaker 3: still got to put food on the table. For a
26:13
Speaker 3: short period, Sarah works again at the Hamilton Mill in Lowell.
26:17
Speaker 3: She works in the weave room for five months. But
26:21
Speaker 3: you know she's still having a hard time making money,
26:23
Speaker 3: and her labor activism requires it, her sustenance requires it.
26:28
Speaker 3: But at the same time, she's still writing about healthcare,
26:31
Speaker 3: prison reform, working conditions, women's rights, those kinds of things.
26:35
Speaker 3: And she's writing letters like to people like Angelique Martin
26:38
Speaker 3: where that quote came from that I was just reading
26:41
Speaker 3: to y'all. So after leaving Lowell, Sarah teaches women how
26:46
Speaker 3: to cut dresses in Philadelphia, and in November of eighteen
26:51
Speaker 3: fifty she marries James Durno, who is a homeopathic doctor
26:56
Speaker 3: who sells medicines. I will add a side note about
27:02
Speaker 3: her marriage to James Durno. It's around this time, you know,
27:06
Speaker 3: when the researchers are digging looking for more information about her.
27:09
Speaker 1: They kind of lost track of her.
27:10
Speaker 3: When she became Sarah Durnel when her last name changed,
27:14
Speaker 3: because as we know, a lot of the times women
27:18
Speaker 3: will become the man, they will be subsumed, eaten by
27:21
Speaker 3: the man, And she became missus James Durno at the time.
27:26
Speaker 3: But once they figured out that was her name, they
27:28
Speaker 3: could start researching her again and documenting her history, and
27:33
Speaker 3: she and James in the eighteen fifties moved to Brooklyn,
27:37
Speaker 3: and they make this remedy used for things. The uses
27:41
Speaker 3: seem pretty nebulous to me. They say it's like for
27:44
Speaker 3: throw and long diseases. I think I've saw an advertisement
27:48
Speaker 3: that it could be for like head things too, so
27:51
Speaker 3: maybe that's like cold. So it's called snuff for Qatar.
27:57
Speaker 3: So it seems pretty bad, y'all, it does. I think
28:01
Speaker 3: you like it. Sniffed it and inhaled it to be
28:03
Speaker 3: able for it to be able to work. But hey,
28:06
Speaker 3: you know, this is a direction that Sarah chose to
28:09
Speaker 3: go in. It was in eighteen fifty three when Lowell
28:14
Speaker 3: ended up making the working day eleven hours, so still
28:18
Speaker 3: not ten, but they made it eleven hours. And by
28:22
Speaker 3: the eighteen fifties, immigrants were replacing the girls and women
28:26
Speaker 3: who came from the farms to work in the factories.
28:30
Speaker 3: Soon Sarah's husband dies and she travels goes back to
28:35
Speaker 3: Philly and in eighteen eighty nine that's when Sarah dies.
28:40
Speaker 3: And Yeah, during over those last decades of her life
28:45
Speaker 3: and continuing on, you know, labor organizing becomes a more
28:50
Speaker 3: prevalent thing. Labor unions are able to form and advocate
28:54
Speaker 3: for better working conditions. But that period of the loll
28:58
Speaker 3: women workers who were organizing for better working conditions kind
29:03
Speaker 3: of like they got a little bit of movement, but
29:06
Speaker 3: they weren't able to get that full, that ten hour
29:09
Speaker 3: workday like they were looking for.
29:12
Speaker 1: That's the story of Starah Bagley.
29:24
Speaker 2: It is a really interesting one because, as you said,
29:26
Speaker 2: the lead is kind of buried in her first and
29:29
Speaker 2: we're like, oh, okay, but it's all It is fascinating
29:34
Speaker 2: to looking back at this because as we started this
29:38
Speaker 2: episode off with, we are still grappling with this. We
29:44
Speaker 2: are still fighting for work life balance, work rights. Like
29:51
Speaker 2: there's so many things that we're still doing. And I
29:56
Speaker 2: feel like I talked about this a lot, but in America,
29:58
Speaker 2: I think that we've really moralized work and that can
30:03
Speaker 2: be a really messy thing where we've moralized productivity in
30:09
Speaker 2: a way.
30:09
Speaker 1: That is not helpful.
30:12
Speaker 2: And so when you look back at something like yes,
30:14
Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution, which is when like so many things
30:18
Speaker 2: did change, it comes up all the time and people seeing, Okay, wait,
30:27
Speaker 2: I don't want to work thirteen hours a day to
30:31
Speaker 2: make this small amount of money. And I think it's
30:34
Speaker 2: also interesting because recently we did an episode on May
30:39
Speaker 2: Day and I didn't know this. I didn't know about
30:44
Speaker 2: the whole kind of labor implications of May Day. But
30:46
Speaker 2: a part of it was that kind of well off
30:50
Speaker 2: white people were like, no one has time to think anymore,
30:57
Speaker 2: like let's bring back May Day holiday. But then other
31:02
Speaker 2: people were like, actually, let's just get workers, right Yeah.
31:08
Speaker 2: So it's just the history of it, the legacy of
31:11
Speaker 2: it is still around today, and I think it's worth
31:18
Speaker 2: thinking about why that is and why the fight is
31:22
Speaker 2: so hard to get what like thinking about eleven hours
31:25
Speaker 2: to me sounds ridiculous, but at the time that was
31:32
Speaker 2: an improvement, right, Yeah.
31:36
Speaker 4: And not to like jump into the other thing that
31:38
Speaker 4: we said we weren't going to talk to you, but
31:39
Speaker 4: we're going backwards on the child labor laws as well.
31:42
Speaker 1: It's kind of like what.
31:45
Speaker 4: Are we doing here? What year is this?
31:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, we really are.
31:51
Speaker 2: And again I think a part of it is because
31:53
Speaker 2: we because we're like such a capitalist society, or like
31:58
Speaker 2: that's your works, that's your activity, Go make that money.
32:03
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is This was a story I'd never heard,
32:08
Speaker 2: and it resonated with me pretty hard, honestly because I
32:11
Speaker 2: also struggle so much to not work.
32:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just not yes.
32:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's even hard to feel like
32:24
Speaker 3: any measure of progress has been made since this time
32:27
Speaker 3: that we're talking about today, just because the boundaries between
32:31
Speaker 3: work and personal life are so much more unclear today
32:37
Speaker 3: where it's actually went into they went into the well.
32:39
Speaker 1: To be fair, they also lived in.
32:41
Speaker 3: Boarding houses, so there is that very specific situation. But
32:45
Speaker 3: just like, okay, we're advocating for a four day work week,
32:48
Speaker 3: per se, and I know this is something that is
32:50
Speaker 3: often very I want to be mindful that something is
32:53
Speaker 3: often very limited to people who work in like online.
32:57
Speaker 3: They work, they use their computer, they're able to work
32:59
Speaker 3: from home. So this does not apply to everybody, But
33:01
Speaker 3: I'm just speaking for the people who do advocate for
33:04
Speaker 3: something like that. It's still like okay, but there still
33:07
Speaker 3: may be an expectation for you to be able to
33:09
Speaker 3: pick up and work on a different day.
33:11
Speaker 1: I mean, and I know, I'm sure, y'all, I know,
33:15
Speaker 1: y'all know nothing.
33:16
Speaker 3: I'm sure I know people who feel that compelled and
33:22
Speaker 3: not just compelled, I mean they really have to work
33:25
Speaker 3: on other days to be able to fulfill their duties.
33:28
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's hard to disentangle now.
33:34
Speaker 3: It's like, now the question is now we have really
33:37
Speaker 3: fully I mean, we've stepped into that place where we
33:42
Speaker 3: do associate our value with the amount and quality of
33:47
Speaker 3: the work that we do. And it's really hard to
33:50
Speaker 3: disentangle from that when you are barely trying to make
33:55
Speaker 3: ends meet, as most people are in the United States, right.
33:59
Speaker 4: And a whole like turn and flipping of language when
34:03
Speaker 4: it comes to workplaces to do that whole like, we're family,
34:06
Speaker 4: You're not doing this for work. It's not just a
34:08
Speaker 4: job for you. This is about us, you know, helping
34:10
Speaker 4: each other and realizing we've really been brainwashed and making
34:15
Speaker 4: money for people like one percent of the people while
34:18
Speaker 4: the rest of us are told and guilted that if
34:21
Speaker 4: we don't do these certain amount of things and create
34:24
Speaker 4: a certain amount of profit, then we have let other
34:27
Speaker 4: people down, Like it's such a weird gaslighting guilt trip
34:31
Speaker 4: that has happened, as well as a whole like bringing
34:34
Speaker 4: back kids back in the workplace, but the whole idea
34:36
Speaker 4: of like it's teaching ethics, but it's really not. It's
34:40
Speaker 4: once again just creating profit. Like there's this level of
34:43
Speaker 4: like conversation and I think we finally come to the
34:48
Speaker 4: point like, wait, this is this is not right.
34:52
Speaker 1: What is happening.
34:53
Speaker 4: I feel like you're lying to me and yet you're
34:56
Speaker 4: getting rich and I'm suffering. Whether it's I'm anxious because
35:01
Speaker 4: you're telling me I'm not doing enough when I'm working
35:03
Speaker 4: sixty hours a week. This is not corrupt somehow, but
35:06
Speaker 4: obviously Yeah.
35:08
Speaker 3: I also love that you brought up the word ethic,
35:11
Speaker 3: because I think that's a whole other can of worms.
35:14
Speaker 3: I think a lot of times we praise and uplift
35:18
Speaker 3: the idea of somebody having a quote unquote good work
35:20
Speaker 3: ethic without interrogating all that that means. Because the question
35:25
Speaker 3: is at the end of that work ethic, like what
35:27
Speaker 3: is the purpose and during the duration of you having
35:32
Speaker 3: this work ethic or this good work ethic, what am
35:36
Speaker 3: I doing to myself and my body, and we look
35:40
Speaker 3: to people like God knows, don't come for me behive
35:44
Speaker 3: Beyonce and are like, you know, while she has an
35:49
Speaker 3: amazing work ethic and that's aspirational without considering like the
35:55
Speaker 3: context of how we work and what we want for
35:57
Speaker 3: our own lives, right, and what's the aim is. But
36:00
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's just worthy of conversation. I'm
36:03
Speaker 3: not tearing her down. Yeah, she does her thing right,
36:07
Speaker 3: you know, I just think, you know, for us normies,
36:12
Speaker 3: we need to talk a little bit differently about.
36:14
Speaker 1: It, right.
36:15
Speaker 4: But also there's that level of like who assists her,
36:19
Speaker 4: the amount of nannies and people who like attend her
36:22
Speaker 4: to make sure this is functioning, Like the amount of
36:25
Speaker 4: things that I think of that Taylor Shipt, don't swifties,
36:27
Speaker 4: don't come after me because she is cost off, We're
36:30
Speaker 4: gonna just canceled. She is constantly touring and creating new
36:34
Speaker 4: albums and doing all these things. But again, she also
36:36
Speaker 4: has a private jet that flies her home every night.
36:38
Speaker 4: Like there's other things to this that we're not talking about,
36:41
Speaker 4: so that she can care for herself and her own
36:43
Speaker 4: comfortable home every night, no matter where she tours. Like
36:46
Speaker 4: there's this level of like, yeah, I get it, there's
36:49
Speaker 4: this worth work ethic people who push but again they're
36:52
Speaker 4: also have a lot of money already. Not not tailor swift,
36:56
Speaker 4: but Beyonce, I'm thinking about more like CEOs working off
36:59
Speaker 4: the backs of other people in order to get more
37:03
Speaker 4: essentially and telling other people to sacrifice themselves again health
37:07
Speaker 4: and whatnot, while at the same time having to figure
37:09
Speaker 4: out how to do childcare, how to correctly, how about
37:12
Speaker 4: to take time off to go to a doctor if
37:15
Speaker 4: some emergency happens, how to take time off to do that,
37:17
Speaker 4: Like all of these things that come into factors when
37:20
Speaker 4: we're talking about ethics and then wanting to do like
37:24
Speaker 4: a scrunchy face disapproval. Look for people who have children
37:27
Speaker 4: and have to take sickly because they have to take
37:29
Speaker 4: a kid to a doctor, They have to take time
37:31
Speaker 4: off to go to the school, to have meetings, you know,
37:34
Speaker 4: all these things that we don't actually allow for when
37:39
Speaker 4: we talk about ethics.
37:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, that's a lot, and I don't know the
37:45
Speaker 3: way out. If you can tell us, Samantha, please tell
37:48
Speaker 3: us now know.
37:50
Speaker 4: My thing is just to spiral out and finally be
37:52
Speaker 4: like I'm done, I'll talk to you later and just
37:54
Speaker 4: like disappear. So not a good solution either. At the
37:57
Speaker 4: same time, I'll probably be fired if you do that
37:59
Speaker 4: bad an extended amount of time.
38:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really interesting and definitely a bigger conversation,
38:09
Speaker 2: but about all of the things that we do.
38:15
Speaker 3: Just to.
38:17
Speaker 2: Just to survive, just to live, just to make money.
38:22
Speaker 2: We try just to try to go on vacation like
38:27
Speaker 2: a little bit, but also how much, Yeah, we do.
38:32
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Really look up to the work
38:35
Speaker 2: ethic and we believe if you hustle enough and heavy quotes,
38:41
Speaker 2: you could do it too right. And yeah, sorry to
38:47
Speaker 2: tell you, Sorry to tell you pretty rare.
38:52
Speaker 1: I hate that for us. One day we'll hit it big.
38:58
Speaker 1: Well that.
39:02
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Thank you so much, Eaves for coming.
39:05
Speaker 2: As always, we love having you. Where can the good.
39:09
Speaker 1: Listeners find you?
39:10
Speaker 3: You can find me on Instagram at not Apologizing. You
39:15
Speaker 3: can just go to my website Evesjeffcote dot com. You
39:18
Speaker 3: can also listen to many other episodes of Sminty where
39:22
Speaker 3: I'm doing female First. You can also listen to on Theme,
39:26
Speaker 3: which is a podcast that I co host with Katie Mitchell.
39:29
Speaker 3: It's about black storytelling in all its forms.
39:33
Speaker 2: Yes, go do all of those subscribe like whatever to
39:38
Speaker 2: all of those things. Listeners. If you have not including
39:42
Speaker 2: this show.
39:43
Speaker 1: I'm not putting that in there.
39:44
Speaker 2: If you're listening right now, well, if you would like
39:51
Speaker 2: to contact us, you can our email Stuff Media, Mom
39:54
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39:58
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40:01
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40:03
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40:05
Speaker 2: our super producer Christina or executive producer Maya and our
40:07
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40:08
Speaker 4: Thank you.
40:09
Speaker 2: Thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never told You.
40:10
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