Equality of opportunity, knowledge, and status exists in the community: In a community with Heart in its Habits, no one person has all the answers or all the authority. There is collective wisdom regarding how best to conduct business. Such a condition clearly did not exist in the life and labor of the Mill Girls. As we will also see in the case of the Harvey Girls, these women were beholden to their bosses. Parietal rules were firmly applied for both Mill Girls and Harvey Girls. The Mill Girls had to be back home in their residences by 10 pm and had to abide by strict rules of conduct and dress not only while they were at work, but also while they were socializing in their local community. Similar rules governed the life of the Harvey Girls.
Settings exist in the community for vivid and sustained dialogue: There doesn’t seem to be much sharing of opportunity, knowledge, or status among those laboring in the mills. How would such a dialogue exist with the clatter of machines, the swirling of particles in the air, and the absolute dominance of much better-paid Male supervisors and superintendents? Even these supervisors and superintendents had little to say of any importance. I drive by large homes and mansions in Brunswick and Bath Maine where those “managing” the mills lived in former days. They were well-paid—in exchange for being obedient to dictates of the Mill owners (who typically lived many miles away from their polluting mills). There was not much to talk about, and nowhere for the conversation to occur between manager and owner. Worth was bestowed on these managers, but at the cost of their independent Head and Heart.
There was little meaningful dialogue even among members of the local community, despite the legendary “democracy” that seemed to be occurring in the town hall meetings of New England. Local issues were certainly given voice and debate. However, there was not much to say about the big economic issues. A widely shared observation left little room for dialogue or communication upwards or outwards in the community: “the Lowells spoke only to the Cabots and the Cabots spoke only to God!” The local residents were pretty much alienated from the mill supervisors and owners. There might have been habits of the heart in certain small towns that were not dominated by the mills that provided all of the economic power for the community. However, these communities were often quite vulnerable to shifts in the demands for specific products or to the vicissitudes of weather. They typically relied on the extraction of natural resources (such as food, lumber, or minerals). Even today, we find this vulnerability evident in the unstable (and often not sustainable) variability in the price of lobsters, and the impact of global climate on everything in New England, from fish stocks to tourism.
Shared interests and reasons for mutual support are to be found in the community: De Tocqueville proposed that self-interest is served by assisting others, and there must be a system-based understanding of mutual support to maintain this assistance. Worth was acquired via the generosity of Head and Heart. In New England communities, charitable organizations assisted the Mill workers and sometimes championed their rights. However, these sources of support tended to be ineffective and sporadic (often related to the injury or tragic death of a Mill Girl or a child working in the mills). There were also the early leading labor reformers, such as Sarah Bagley. Sarah began working in Lowell mills as one of the early recruits (1836) from a New England farm (prior to the recruitment of women from Ireland). She was somewhat influential in promoting workday reduction (to “only” 10 hours). She also edited a labor newspaper, The Voice of Industry. One can only imagine the struggles that Sarah Bagley endured as the Worthy advocate for her sister Mill workers.
