“And that’s how we did in the mill” Women in the Lowell Textile Mills

A film by Martha Norkunas

“And that’s how we did in the mill” is based on excerpts from oral histories with the last generation of women to work in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills. It is divided in to three parts: Stories of Immigrating to the United States, Stories of Living in the Ethnic Neighborhoods, and Stories of Work in the Textile Mills.

In 1983 Martha Norkunas co-created a series of oral history interviews with twenty-two women who worked in the Lowell textile mills in the first half of the twentieth century. The women identified ethnically as Irish, Greek, French-Canadian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Italian. Some months later Norkunas returned to Lowell with a camera crew and shot video footage for the film. In 2010 Norkunas digitized and re-edited the film at the University of Texas at Austin.

The project was funded by Humanities Massachusetts, the Theodore Edson Parker Foundation, and sponsored by the Lowell Museum Corporation, with support from the Lowell National Historical Park, The Indiana University Folklore Institute, and the Indiana University Oral History Research Center. All interviews and video footage are available to the public at the Center for Lowell History at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Brochure
Introduction
“Lowell, Massachusetts began as a textile city in the 1820s. The original workers, Yankee farm girls, were replaced by immigrants: Irish, Greeks, French-Canadians, Polish and others. Each group settled in distinct districts within the city, yet men, women, and children from all the groups worked in the textile mills. The mills began to close in the 1920s and most were gone by the 1950s. This is a look at the lives of some of the last women to work in these mills.”

Part One: Stories of Immigrating to the United States
What was it that made people leave their homelands and come to Lowell? Many immigrants came from farmlands, hoping to leave behind the long hours and hard work of farm life. The passage over was difficult—many speak of being sick and lonely on the week-long boat trip from Europe to the United States. They came to someone they knew in Lowell, either a relative or a friend from the old country. Many hoped to return to their homeland, but as the years passed and they married and had children, they realized that Lowell was their permanent home. It was challenging for new immigrants to adjust to life in such a different environment. Some literally believed the stories that “the streets of New York are lined with gold” and were surprised to find that their new lives could be a struggle. As Vasiliki Tsoumas remembered, “They didn’t mind the work but there were times they didn’t have the jobs.”

Part Two: Stories of Living in Ethnic Neighborhoods
When the immigrants arrived in Lowell they settled in distinct ethnic sections of the city. Over time, each section of Lowell became associated with a particular ethnic group. In the early years people stayed in their own section and married within their own group. Many of their activities centered around their church. Dancing was popular and was the primary way to meet a husband or wife. Many factors contributed to the weakening of the ethnic communities: World War II, building housing projects in the districts, and increased intermarriage. Over time, members from all nationalities could be found throughout Lowell. Lowell however, continued to maintain strong ethnic connections. The emphasis on ethnicity led many Lowellians to experience a dual identity--both American and Greek, or American and Irish, etc. For some this dual identity caused emotional tension, leading one woman to proclaim, “When you know two countries you’re not happy anymore.”

Part Three: Stories of Working in the Textile Mills
People originally worked in the textile mills from “six in the morning to six at night” six days a week. Just as they came to someone they knew so too did a friend or relative get most of them a job in the mill. It was noisy in the mills, oily and dusty, and the rooms were kept hot and humid to keep the threads from breaking. Many women worked only for the paycheck, while others took pride in the quality of the textiles their mill produced. Children were cared for by neighbors or relatives, and when they reached the ages of twelve to sixteen they too began mill work. The mills often closed for three months a year, leaving the workers without paychecks. Beginning in the 1920s the mills began to close for good, moving ‘south’ or simply going out of business. The huge empty mill buildings dotted the Lowell landscape. Few women seem to resent their working lives—they may have been poor but so was everyone around them. The “money’s clean” one woman said, and another felt that it “gives you a protection which a poor doesn’t.” As women have done for generations, they did what they had to do to get by, stating simply, “And that’s how we did in the mill.”