Lowell Offering

Lowell Offering

The "Lowell Offering" was a monthly periodical collected contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female textile workers (young women [age 15-35] known as the Lowell Mill Girls) of the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills of the early American industrial revolution. It began in 1840 and lasted until 1845. It was first organized and edited by the minister of the First Universalist Church, Reverend Abel Charles Thomas.

Thomas first organized the publication in October 1840. As its popularity grew, workers contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction – often using their characters to report on conditions and situations in their lives. [Dublin, Thomas (1975). [http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u2ei/u2materials/dublin.html "Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: 'The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us'"] , "Labor History". Online at [http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/index.html Whole Cloth: Discovering Science and Technology through American History] . Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved on 27 August 2007] The contents of the magazine alternated between serious and farcical. In the first issue, "A Letter about Old Maids" suggested that "sisters, spinsters, lay-nuns, &c" were an essential component of God's "wise design". ["Betsy" (1840). "A Letter about Old Maids". "Lowell Offering". Series 1, No. 1. Online at the [http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/lo_40_10.pdf On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics] . Retrieved on 27 August 2007.] Later issues – particularly in the wake of labor unrest in the factories – included an article about the value of organizing and an essay about suicide among the Lowell girls. [Farley, Harriet (1844). [http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/primarysources/lowell/docs/suicide.html "Editorial: Two Suicides"] . "Lowell Offering". Series 4, No. 9. Online at "Primary Sources: Workshops in American History". Retrieved on 27 August 2007.] One of its contributors was Lucy Larcom.

The University of Massachusetts Lowell currently uses the title for its student literary magazine as an homage.

See also

* Lowell system

References

* [http://library.uml.edu/clh/Offering.htm Lowell Offering at the Center for Lowell History, UMass Lowell]

External links

* [http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/Low-offr1.html "Tales of Factory Life"] as collected in the "Lowell Offering", 1841.


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