"But the half can never be told" : the lives of Cannelton's Cotton Mill women workers

Abstract

From 1851 to 1954, under various names, the Indiana Cotton Mills was the dominant industry in the small town of Cannelton, Indiana, mostly employing women and children. The female industrial laborers who worked in this mill during the middle and end of the nineteenth century represent an important and overlooked component of midwestern workers. Women in Cannelton played an essential role in Indiana’s transition from small scale manufacturing in the 1850s to large scale industrialization at the turn of the century. In particular, this work will provide an in-depth exploration of female operatives’ primary place in Cannelton society, their essential economic contributions to their families, and the unique tactics they used in attempts to achieve better working conditions in the mill. It will also explain the small changes in women’s work experiences from 1854 to 1884, and how ultimately marriage, not industrial work, determined the course of their later lives.