This is the third and final installment of “Goliath” by Sharon Chou. Read part one here and part two here.
Sarah burns her candle long past midnight writing for the association. Shadows take permanent residence under her red-rimmed eyes. The thin cuts on her cheek heal, and while Sarah still occupies the same room as Ida, she studiously ignores her.
Lucy, who has finished reading all the older girls’ window gems, stays up to write poetry. She hands a draft to Ida one night, gnawing on her nails as Ida reads.
“What do you think?” she breathes.
“Allow me to finish them first,” Ida laughs.
“Sorry, keep reading, keep reading.” Lucy bounces on the mattress.
Ida sets down the paper. “This is wonderful, Lucy.” It really is. Ida wonders if Mrs. Kemp ever worked as a school teacher. Lucy’s literary form is impeccable.
Ida turns to Lucy. “In fact, you should submit one of your poems to The Lowell Offering. You could be their youngest contributor.”
Lucy brightens. “You truly think so?”
“I do,” Ida says. She smiles at Lucy and ignores Sarah scribbling on the next bed, though she can feel the weight of her gaze.
*****
Lowell Slavery
It has been asked, and doubtless will be again, why, if the evil conditions of factory life are so aggravating, have they been so long and so peacefully borne? Ah! and why have they? It is a question well worthy of our consideration, and we would call upon every operative in our city, aye, throughout the length and breadth of the land, to awake from the lethargy which has fallen upon them, and assert and maintain their rights. We call upon you for action—united and immediate action.
But, says one, how shall we act? we are but one amongst a thousand, what shall we do that our influence may be felt in this vast multitude? We answer there is in this city an Association called the Female Labor Reform Association, having for its professed object, the amelioration of the condition of the operative. Enrolled upon its records are the names of five hundred members—come then, and add thereto five hundred or rather five thousand more, and in the strength of our united influence we will soon show these drivelling cotton lords, this mushroom aristocracy of New England, who so arrogantly aspire to lord it over God’s heritage, that our rights cannot be trampled upon with impunity.
—Sarah B.
Voice of Industry, April 16, 1844
*****
The loom’s metallic jaw splits open wide and chomps down again and again and again. Over its clattering rods, Ida catches a glimpse of familiar brown hair. Since when was Sarah working on the first floor?
Place. Shove. Bang! Suck. Drop. Snatch.
Lucy delivers a fresh basket of bobbins and moves to leave, swift and sure on her feet now. Ida stops her, raising her brows and gesturing towards Sarah. Why is she here?
Lucy tips her head at Mr. Randall and mimes writing. He must’ve read the article in The Voice of Industry. All the mill girls certainly had.
Ida squints. Mr. Randall has moved Sarah from the carding machines to the drying beams, a job usually reserved for the most desperate Irish laborers. As Ida watches, Sarah struggles under the weight of wet cloth as she attempts to drape it over the beam. Steam obscures her figure for a moment. Sarah jerks back, clutching her bright-red arm.
Ida shudders in sympathy. The steam scalds her lungs as she sucks in the thick air from twenty feet away. She cannot imagine what it feels like to breathe from mere inches away, what it feels like on skin.
Sarah has not been fired, but there are worse things.
*****
Lucy drags Ida to the weekly Lyceum lecture. The corporations built the theatre along with the factories, its gleaming white spires reassuring many a New England family that factory life would refine rather than degrade their precious daughters. Perhaps that had been true at the height of Lowell’s fame, but by the time Ida arrived, the walls had faded to a grubby gray. Ida had never ventured inside its sweeping arches, too busy with thoughts of home.
Their guest lecturer’s face sours the moment he surveys the audience and finds only a smattering of heads here and there. Ida wonders if he had been expecting the full, eager auditorium that had surely greeted Emerson, Dickens, and Adams all those years ago.
Beside her, Lucy struggles to keep in a yawn. Ida flexes her aching feet. He is lucky they resisted the call of their beds and came at all, after fourteen hours of relentless toil.
The lecturer unveils a poster of the human body. Ida leans forward. A doctor training girls on anatomy! Ida exchanges an awed glance with Lucy. She imagines they’ll never have this opportunity again.
She squints at the drawing and tries to commit his droning words to memory. The workings of the arms. Her eyelids droop. The composition of the legs. She props up her heavy head. The anatomy of the stomach. She pinches herself, then Lucy, who has wilted in her seat. But when Lucy succumbs to sleep half an hour in, Ida lets her be. It would do her good.
When he stops speaking, the silence stretches before they register that he has finished. Weak applause echoes through the hall.
The next week, he gives a scathing interview to The Boston Gazette about how the character of the Lowell girls has deteriorated. Slothful. Dimwitted. Frivolous. Ida reads the article a second time, fury burning like hot coals, and crumples it. She picks up a pen.
Sarah sneers when Ida approaches her. “I thought you wanted me to leave you alone.”
Her brows rise when Ida shoves the draft into her hands. By the time she finishes flipping through the papers, she is smirking. She cocks her head. “I thought it was too risky to be involved?” she says dryly.
“I want to be anonymous,” Ida says.
Sarah crosses her arms. “And here I thought you finally grew a spine—”
“I’m not as brave as you are, alright?” Ida cuts her off.
Sarah steps closer, serious as Ida has ever seen her. “I am not doing this because I am brave, or because I have nothing to lose. I am doing this because I cannot bear to do nothing anymore.” She folds the papers. “And so are you.”
*****
To Our Distinguished Guest.
To those who deride the operatives as indolent and uninterested in mental improvement, let me ask you this. Who, after fourteen hours of steady application to monotonous work, can sit down and apply her mind to deep and long continued thought? We are so constituted, that we need relaxation, and if this cannot be obtained during working hours it must be in those hours in which we are not required to work.
What time has the operative to bestow on moral, religious or intellectual culture? When the whole system is physically and mentally exhausted by unremitting labor, can any reasonable being expect that the mind will retain its vigor and energy? Impossible! With the improvement of machinery, we tend to double the number of looms, and looms that are twice as quick, as our predecessors. Common sense will teach every one the utter impossibility of improving the mind under these circumstances, however great the desire may be for knowledge.
—An Operative
Voice of Industry, May 05, 1844
*****
Every mill in Lowell buzzes with the news of the planned strikes.
Operatives whisper about it while dressing in the morning, while taking their meals, while hanging off beds in the evenings. Shall we turn out? What will happen to us? Is it worth it?
In every debate, it seems a member of the association pipes up. We will not be treated fairly unless we fight. Technology will never advance our interests unless we demand it. Progress is not progress until it is progress for all. They stir the city into a frenzy.
A line Ida has no doubt came from Hannah is whispered in every corner.
Goliath was felled by a single stone.
Sarah develops a wet, rattling cough. She wobbles to her feet the morning of the strike, swaying. “I am fine,” she snaps. “It is merely the air near the beams, it does not agree with me.”
Ida eyes her worriedly. Perhaps it had started with the air, but her ailment has clearly progressed into something else. It is Lucy, though, who pushes her down with a firm hand.
“The turnout will manage without you,” Lucy says. “Do not worry.”
Lucy’s reassurance proves hollow. When the time comes, the operatives hesitate. Ida clutches a bobbin and watches as they eye each other nervously. For a moment, no one moves as the looms clatter. Sarah will be bitterly disappointed.
A lone figure heads toward the door. As she comes closer, Ida makes out blonde hair and blue eyes. Lucy.
Ida imagines grabbing her as she walks past. She doesn’t understand the stakes, she thinks this is a game, she thinks this is a story and she is the invincible hero.
Ida imagines joining her.
She doesn’t move.
Lucy marches past her and out the door. One by one, half the room follows her.
Ida watches them go. This turnout is too extreme. There is too much to lose. The articles and the tracts that have been republished in every New England newspaper will be enough. Their criticism cannot be ignored forever. After all, the corporations need them. The evils of the factory system are merely growing pains, to be resolved in due time.
Mr. Randall meets her eyes from across the room. He gives her a slimy smile, nods.
She feels sick.
*****
They hold out for a fortnight. Then, the operatives trickle back in. They need the wages, they need the jobs, and Goliath may have been toppled by a single stone, but they are not David.
The corporations fire and blacklist Hannah and Clumena. They also fire Mrs. Kemp, for not keeping control of her daughter. Ida strokes Lucy’s hair as she cries and glares at Sarah. Sarah digs her fingers into the mattress, face rigid and furious and still flushed with the remnants of fever.
“I hate them,” Lucy sobs.
Ida hushes her. “Do not say such things. You do not mean it.”
“I do!” Lucy says viciously. She scrubs roughly at her eyes. “I wish them dead!”
Ida looks at her, pale and gaunt and lean. The farm tan has long washed out. So has the softness. The scar on her palm has healed dark and crooked. Ida believes her.
Ida corners Sarah afterward. “Will you stop this nonsense now? Have enough people suffered the consequences?”
Sarah’s eyes blaze. “I will not abandon their cause,” she says hoarsely. “We will try something else. And we will keep trying until something works.”
Ida throws her hands in the air. “What else could you possibly do?”
Sarah warps her cracked lips into a smile.
*****
Petition to the Massachusetts Legislature
We the undersigned peaceable, industrious and hardworking men and women of Lowell, in view of our condition—the evils already come upon us, by toiling from 13 to 14 hours per day, confined in unhealthy apartments, exposed to the poisonous contagion of air, vegetable, animal and mineral properties, debarred from proper Physical Exercise, Mental discipline, and Mastication cruelly limited, and thereby hastening us on through pain, disease and privation, down to a premature grave, pray the legislature to institute a ten-hour working day in all of the factories of the state.
—Signed, Sarah G. Bagley, President of the LFLRA,
and 2,000 others mostly women
Voice of Industry, July 15, 1844
*****
Place. Shove. Bang! Suck. Drop. Snatch.
Ida keeps glancing in Sarah’s direction as she works. With the strike over, Sarah has returned to work, still brittle and shaky and unstable on her feet. Operatives who are too ill to work are simply fired. Sarah is lucky the turnout lasted as long as it did.
Place. Shove. Bang! Suck. Drop. Snatch.
Ida checks on Sarah again. This morning, news of William’s dismissal sent Sarah into a coughing fit so violent that she vomited on the floorboards. Sarah had wiped her mouth with hatred in her eyes. Thankfully, she had known better than to confront Mr. Randall directly.
Thread tangles in one of Ida’s looms. She curses internally, jamming her finger inside to fix the strands. Once she straightens them out, she watches closely for further mishaps.
The loom grinds to a halt.
Ida blinks, looking up. All the looms have stopped.
Over the ringing in her ears, someone screams.
A crowd is collecting in the corner. The girls at the front clasp their hands to their mouths. Someone retches.
Ida looks for Sarah and does not find her.
Her heart pounds. She starts forward, elbowing her way through the crowd. Her eyes scan the room. She thinks of what a clouded head, a shaky hand, or wobbly legs can cost on the factory floor.
Her heart rabbits in her throat. Where was Sarah?
She reaches the final row of girls. One turns. Sarah.
Ida stumbles, heady with relief. “Sarah!” she calls. “Thank god.”
“Ida,” Sarah says. She trembles, white.
No. No.
Ida shoves past.
The first thing she sees is bone. White, jagged ribs jut out of crimson fabric. Bile rises in her throat. She looks at the face, coated in blood, but cannot make out any features.
Sarah is wrong. It can’t be Lucy.
A hand is splayed out on the stained floor. The palm is pale, with a crooked scar.
*****
An hour later, the looms groan back to life. The next day, Ida goes back to the boardinghouse to see a girl storing her things on the other side of her bed. The next week, Mr. Randall gives an interview to The Massachusetts Globe. Accidents were rare. They were the price of progress. It was not a mechanical error, of course, the Boott Mill mechanics keep the looms well-maintained. Miss Lucy Kemp was a good and careful worker, always regular in her attendance, and a regular at church services. She will be missed.
Ida reads the article, rage making her hands shake. Was that all their lives amounted to? Good workers and regular churchgoers. Lucy was not the price of progress. She was a poet. She wanted to be a poet.
They do not care. They do not care at all.
*****
They bury Lucy in her best dress, made from the machines that mauled her, in the Lowell City Cemetery. Ida and Sarah linger long after the other girls have gone, but eventually, Sarah allows her to be alone. “I will be across the hall if you need me,” Sarah tells her.
Ida stares at the modest headstone, paid for by money donated by the operatives, for so long that her vision blurs. She cannot find a single word.
When she climbs up the stairs, swaying, she hears muffled voices coming from her right. From Laura’s room. Warm light seeps underneath the door. A meeting of the association, no doubt.
She wavers in the hallway.
She looks left. Through the open door, she catches sight of the new girl’s belongings scattered across Lucy’s side of the bed.
She turns right.
*****
Reply to Petition, Boston, February 6, 1845
To S. G. Bagley and others: A petition relative to a reduction of the hours of labor has been referred to the Committee on Manufactures, of which I am Chairman . By a resolution passed by the House, instructing said committee to send for such persons and papers as may be necessary to make an investigation of the claims of said petitioners to an interference in their behalf, I would inform you that as the greater part of the petitioners are females, it will be necessary for them to make the defence, or we shall be under the necessity of laying it aside.
—William Schouler, Chairman
Voice of Industry, August 12, 1844
*****
When Ida and Sarah walk in to testify, fellow operatives waving at them from the gallery, Ida thinks she catches a glimpse of blonde hair, blue eyes, and a palm with a crooked scar.
*****
March Boldly On
Sisters, let us be encouraged to labor yet more abundantly! Let the thought that we are engaged in a good work nerve us on to duty. The battle is not to the strong, alone, nor the race to the swift—but to the righteousness of the cause. In the strength of Elijah’s God, the God of Right, let us march boldly on to the conquest. Let us take no rest until the shout shall rend the earth and heavens—“Goliath is fallen!”
—Ida W., Vice President of the LFLRA
Voice of Industry, December 08, 1844
*****
Author’s Note
Both primary and secondary sources helped me get a sense of who the mill girls were. I learned about why they left home, their economic situation, daily life in the mills, educational opportunities, the labor movement in Lowell, dreadful working conditions, common factory accidents, the mechanical workings of the machines in the mills, and the gradual shift of the worker population from native New Englanders to immigrants. I also researched textile history to better understand the impact of the Industrial Revolution. In particular, autobiographies by Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson and Lucy Larcom taught me about culture and lifestyle among mill girls, including details such as window gems. Lucy’s name is borrowed from Larcom, who went on to become a poet. Sarah’s namesake is Sarah Bagley, a famous Lowell labor organizer. While the characters are not meant to represent the real people, the names are small nods.
Some plot points were directly inspired by primary sources. The fact that Lucy’s mother was a house-mother, fired in retaliation after she walked out in a strike, was taken from Harriet Robinson’s autobiography. A portion of Lowell’s organizing history was also compressed and carried out in the story. The early strikes against wage cuts failed, so later organizers turned to political action in their fight for the 10-hour workday. They founded the LFLRA. The petition to the Massachusetts legislature, their reply, and the mill girls testifying before the committee all happened as portrayed.
The articles, petitions, and Congressional material included in the story as well as Hannah’s speech are taken word for word from the The Voice of Industry archive, though the articles have been shortened considerably and doctored slightly.
