“These aren’t the Dark Ages,” Lucy coaxed Lydia. “There’s no Witchfinder General to come after us.”
“But Mr. Boott is sure to.”
“Hannah,” Judith urged softly, hoping her word might put an end to debate.
Instead, Hannah had a coughing fit. Judith passed her a handkerchief, and when she had done and wiped her mouth clean, she turned toward Lydia. “It will work,” she said. Though her voice was strained, her pale face had an authority that surpassed schoolmasters, overseers, and most clergymen. “I have Seen it.”
“Oh, you claim to know the future now?”
“No. But I know your soul.”
In spite of herself, Lydia gave a little shudder. She truly was the model of the mills, Judith reflected: with a little money in her pocket and a little leisure at the end of her days, she had become the belle of Lowell, coiffed, ribboned, and rational. She was the very sort of girl Mr. Boott and the Boston gentlemen would parade before capitalists and working men alike, as if to say: Behold! Modern industry shall set your daughters free!
They’d soon see how much freedom an industrious woman might claim.
Judith climbed down from the stool, offering it to Hannah, but the ginger-haired girl remained on the floor as she spoke to the ring of operatives surrounding the loom. “I’ve been in Lowell as long as anyone, and I know all of you. When we make our pledge tonight, we weave ourselves together as surely as our wages and our board. Once we act, we can’t turn our backs on one another.”
This time, as all the girls in the attic grew quiet, the shudder went through Judith as well.
In the corner, Mrs. Hanson shook her head. “A true Seer. I never thought I’d meet one in my life. If I had her gift, lambs, I’d be living in London or Paris, nice as a queen.”
At that, Georgie piped up. “We’d miss you so, Mrs. H!”
“Not her cooking,” said Sarah Payne.
Laughter having brought the girls together to one mind again, Lucy took Hannah’s directions and began lighting five candles at the five points marked on the chalk circle.
Unassuaged, Lydia slid close to Judith. “We don’t know what will happen,” she hissed. “No one’s done this before.”
“She has,” said Judith. “This very night.”
Lydia’s rosebud mouth became a tiny O.
“While the rest of you were washing up supper, we pledged, she and I, never to lie to one another, and it worked.” Judith showed Lydia where she’d tied the thin braid of dark brown and copper-colored hair—hers and Hannah’s—around her pinky finger.
At last, “We’re ready,” said Lucy, gesturing to the loom grandly, as if she were revealing it to them for the first time. Within the five candles’ glow, now the assembled workers could appreciate the motley hair-spun threads that were strung through the harnesses.
“Everyone,” Hannah called, suppressing a cough, “keep your hair loose and your arms uncrossed. No one must leave this room until it’s done. Lydia, why don’t you begin it?”
Lydia’s mouth opened again in surprise, but she stepped forward, taking the shuttle and a bobbin from Hannah. In the motion all the weavers knew well, she tucked the thread into one end of the corn husk–shaped shuttle, and raised the other end to her lips to suck it through.
She sighed like a swooning heroine. “The only man I’m allowed to kiss!”
All the girls shared a gallows laugh. In the mills they called it “The Kiss of Death” because each time, they must suck some cotton lint into their lungs along with the thread. If the whale-oil smoke and cotton dust didn’t give them a cough like Hannah’s, enough kisses would.
Lydia was already placing one foot on the pedal. “Like this?” she asked. With Lydia’s foot pressing down, one harness popped up, raising half the warp threads, leaving a gap to pass the shuttle through.
“That’s it,” said Mrs. Hanson. “Keep going.”
With more confidence, Lydia pressed her foot up and down, and the loom’s gears turned. The harnesses went up-down, up-down, pulling the warp in a familiar dance, while the weaver passed the shuttle to and fro. The operation was not so lightning-fast as the power looms inside the mills, nor so thunderously loud without a hundred others going at the same time, yet the sound and the rhythm felt the same—the music no mill girl could keep from following her home, thrumming through her dreams and all her waking hours. Ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk.
Against its accompaniment, Judith waited for Hannah to speak the spell. But Hannah shook her head gently. “You,” she said. “My voice won’t carry.”
Judith sucked her teeth. Very well. She took the page Hannah put in her hands.
“Unbound, we come
to bind ourselves.
By hair of head,
we make a vow.
We form this now:
Fact’ry Girls
Union of Lowell.
No work we’ll do,
in mill, at loom,
until our demands
are heard and met,
and sisters agree
our strike’s at end.”
“Is that it?” Sarah Payne whispered to Mrs. Hanson. “It’s not very . . . mystical.”
“It doesn’t rhyme,” remarked Lucy.
“It will do,” the matron replied. “Action and intention matter more than poetry.”
“Until our demands are weighed and met,” Judith repeated, raising her voice to be heard over the crashing loom. “To wit”—she raised the copy Lucy had written out over supper—“there shall be no increase in the cost of boardinghouses without commensurate increase in the wages of the operatives.”
The girls cheered, as Judith had thought they might. This was the fresh wound—an extra quarter that would disappear at week’s end, allegedly to pay for the costs of their board. While other boardinghouse keepers were more circumspect, Mrs. Hanson confirmed that no part of the twenty-five cents would see the matrons’ pockets but instead set out for Boston posthaste.
Around the room, Judith saw teeth biting anxious lips, alongside scowls and clenching fists. Good. She read on.
“Time must be kept fairly and honestly. Clocks shall be visible and prominently displayed, and no working girl shall be required to give over more than ten hours, out of every twenty-four, in her employment.”
“Ten?” asked Sarah Hemingway with a snort. “Why not nine? Why not eight?”
The workers laughed, some loudly and some with faces shamed by the audacity.
“Factory owners must make arrangements for the proper ventilation of work rooms so that”—she glanced at Hannah solemnly—“no operative endangers her health in pursuit of her livelihood, and so shortens her life.
“And lastly”—she smiled, for this part was most delicious—“the wages of females shall be equal to the wages of males, so that no woman shall be obliged to marry solely to maintain her own upkeep.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted Lucy. Several of the girls stamped their feet or beat on the floor to show their approval, while Lydia pedaled fast enough to make the shuttle fly. Someone passed a bag of sweets, while four girls gathered near the lone window and lit Egyptian cigarettes.
In the corner, Mrs. Hanson muttered something about the ill habits of youth. But she took the cigarette Sarah Payne offered her.