09/04/2026
Did you know Massachusetts is home to some of the most significant sites in American labor history? Lowell's 19th century textile mills, boardinghouses, and canals, preserved today as the Lowell National Historical Park and a 500-acre National Register Historic District, tell the story of America's first large-scale industrial workforce. In the 1830s and 40s, the mostly young women who worked there, known as the "mill girls," worked 12- to 14-hour days. In 1845 they formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, one of the first women's labor unions in the country, and spent nearly a decade petitioning for a shorter workday before finally winning an 11-hour day in 1853. A few decades later, just up the river in Lawrence, the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike brought thousands of immigrant textile workers into the streets in one of the most consequential labor actions in American history.
This , we're remembering that preserving places like Lowell and Lawrence isn't only about historic architecture, it's about preserving the physical record of the American labor movement itself.
National Park Service
