Sarah Bagley

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Sarah Bagley
BornApril 19, 1806
textile mills
SpouseJames Durno (m. November 13, 1850)

Sarah George Bagley (April 19, 1806[1][dubious – discuss] – January 15, 1889) was an American labor leader in New England during the 1840s; an advocate of shorter workdays for factory operatives and mechanics, she campaigned to make ten hours of labor per day the maximum in Massachusetts.

Her activities in support of the mill workers in

middle-class reform activities, demonstrating the ways in which working people embraced this reform impulse as they transformed and critiqued some of its key elements. Her activities within the labor movement reveal many of the tensions that underlay relations between male and female working people as well as the constraints of gender that female activists had to overcome.[2]

Early life

Sarah George Bagley was born April 19, 1806, in Candia, New Hampshire, to Rhoda (née Witham) and Nathan Bagley, both members of large New England families. Nathan and Rhoda farmed, sold land, and owned a small mill to support their family. She had two brothers, Thomas and Henry, and one sister, Mary Jane.[3][4]

Adult life

Textile work

Further information: Lowell mill girls

In 1837, at the age of 31, Bagley first appeared in Lowell, Massachusetts, working at the Hamilton Mills. She worked initially as a weaver and then as a dresser, and by 1840 she had saved enough money to make a deposit on the house which her parents and siblings were living in.[5] Bagley was dissatisfied with working conditions however and published one of her first pieces of writing, “Pleasures of Factory Life”, in an 1840 issue of the Lowell Offering, a literary magazine written, edited, and published by working women.[6] These "pleasures", she wrote, were like angels' visits: "few and far between."

In late November 1842, 70 weavers at the Middlesex Mills walked off their jobs, protesting the newly introduced requirement to tend two looms instead of one. The workers were fired and blacklisted, and shortly afterwards, Bagley left the Hamilton Mills and went to work for Middlesex (some historians has described this action as "strike breaking"). Between 1842 and 1844, over 1,000 textile workers left Lowell as a result of wage cuts and stretch-outs due to an economic recession. In March 1844, under improved economic conditions, the textile corporations raised the wages of male – but not female – textile workers to the 1842 levels.[2]

Labor activism

In December 1844, Bagley along with five other women met in Anti-Slavery Hall in downtown Lowell and formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Its aim was to improve health conditions and lobby for a ten-hour day; at that time, women worked from 12 to 14 hours a day in the

Manchester, Dover and Nashua
.

With the encouragement and assistance of French feminist and Fourierist Angelique Perrine LePetit Martin (mother of American painter Lilly Martin Spencer),[7] the LFLRA purchased a printing press and published their own labor newspaper, The Voice of Industry, for which Bagley frequently contributed articles and edited a women's column.[8]

In 1845, Bagley and the LFLRA members gathered names of textile workers on petitions sent to the

Massachusetts Legislature, demanding a ten-hour workday. As a result of dozens of petitions totalling over 2,100 signatures, a state legislature held hearings to investigate the conditions of labor in the manufacturing corporations. Bagley and others testified to the long hours and unhealthy working conditions in the mills. The committee, led by Representative William Schouler, reported that the legislature did not have the power to determine hours of work and that the ten-hour day must be decided between the corporations and the textile worker. In response, they campaigned to defeat Representative Schouler in the next election.[9]

Bagley and the LFLRA continued sending petitions to the state legislature for a ten-hour day; they gathered over 10,000 names from throughout Massachusetts, more than 2,000 of which were from working women and men of Lowell. Again hearings were held to investigate working conditions, and again the Massachusetts Legislature refused to take action. However, labor and political pressure on the Lowell textile corporations was so great that in 1847 the mills shortened the workday by 30 minutes. As the labor reform movement persisted the Lowell textile companies again reduced the hours of labor to eleven in 1853 and ten in 1874.[2]

Bagley was also involved with other social justice movements. She supported the peace movement, which was developing as the

Thomas Dorr to speak in the town; Dorr had previously led a group of property-less Rhode Islanders in protest against the state's voting laws, which required voters to own property.[5] As a result of interactions with Angelique Martin, Bagley also became interested in women's rights and organised a series of lectures on the topic.[5]

In June 1846, Bagley was removed as editor of the Voice of Industry and later fired as contributing writer. She later wrote to Angelique Martin about why she thought she was dismissed. She described the newspaper as having become "quite conservative." Bagley complained that the new editor, "found fault with my communications and I would not remain on the committee of publication with him for editor. He does not want a female department [because] it would conflict with the opinions of the mushroom aristocracy that he seeks to favor, and beside it would not be dignified."[10]

In February 1847, only two years after

electric telegraph, the New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph Company opened an office in Lowell, Bagley was hired as telegrapher. Early in 1847, Bagley was contracted to run the magnetic telegraph office in Springfield, Massachusetts.[5] She was unhappy to discover she earned only three-quarters as much as the man she replaced, writing to a friend of her growing commitment to human equality and the rights of women.[11][12][13][14]

Later years

A year later, Bagley returned to Lowell, working for the Hamilton Mills and living with one of her brothers. While based in Lowell, she traveled throughout New England, writing about health care, working conditions, prison reform, and women's rights.

Aberdeen, Scotland; they married on November 13, 1850.[16]

In 1851, Sarah and James Durno moved to

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aged 82, and was buried in Lloyd Bowers Hoppin Family Lot in Laurel Hill Cemetery
. Sarah Bagley and James Durno had no children.

There is no known documented image of Sarah Bagley. The article and images about Sarah Bagley on the New England Historical Society website has many errors, in addition, there are no footnotes and no credit lines.[18]

References

  1. ^ "Alexander Street Press Authorization". Asp6new.alexanderstreet.com. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
  3. ^ Wright, Helena. "Sarah G. Bagley: A Biographical Note," Labor History. Vol 20, No. 3, 1979, p. 401.
  4. ^ Mayo, Martha. "Sarah George Bagley". library.uml.edu. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Arnesen, Eric (2004). The Human Tradition in American Labor History. Rowman & Littlefield.
  6. ^ Wright, Helena "Sarah G. Bagley: A Biographical Note", Labor History. Vol 20, No. 3, 1979, p. 404.
  7. ^ Freivogel, Elsie F. "Lilly Martin Spencer." Archives of American Art Journal Vol 12, No. 4, 1972
  8. ^ Wright, Helena. "Sarah G. Bagley: A Biographical Note," Labor History. Vol 20, No. 3, 1979, p. 408.
  9. ^ Wright, Helena. "Sarah G. Bagley: A Biographical Note," Labor History. Vol 20, No. 3, 1979, p. 409.
  10. ISBN 9781440859595
    .
  11. ^ "Industrial Revolution". Voice of Industry. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  12. ^ Mayo, Martha. "Bagley, Sarah 1846 01 01". Library.uml.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  13. ^ Mayo, Martha. "Bagley, Sarah 1846 03 13". Library.uml.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  14. ^ Mayo, Martha. "Bagley, Sarah 1847 01 13". Library.uml.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  15. ^ Wright, Helena. "Sarah G. Bagley: A Biographical Note," Labor History. Vol 20, No. 3, 1979, 411.
  16. ^ Murphy, Teresa. Sarah George Bagley, American National Biography.
  17. ^ Mayo, Martha. "Sarah George Bagley profile". Library.uml.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2016.
  18. ^ Lowell, Mailing Address: 67 Kirk Street; Us, MA 01852 Phone: 978 970-5000 Contact. "Sarah Bagley - Lowell National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved October 20, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

External links

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