biography
| name: |
Bagley, Sarah G(eorge)
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1806–47)
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| biography:
| Labour leader, born in Candia, New Hampshire, USA. Daughter of a cotton mill operator, she went to work in the mills as a young woman. By 1837 she was employed as a weaver in one of the early mills in Lowell, MA, where she also contributed to The Lowell Offering, a literary magazine published by the mill women. She became increasingly unhappy with the severe conditions under which the women were working and helped found the Lowell Female Reform Association (1844). In 1845 she took on the editorship of the Voice of Industry, the weekly newspaper of the New England Workingmen's Association. Her major crusade was the so-called Ten Hours Movement, dedicated to limiting the work day to ten hours, and she was regarded as a leading speaker and writer on behalf of this cause. She also spoke out on the need for reform in other areas of society. But, sometime during 1847, it seems she dropped her crusading activities (perhaps due to illness) and by 1848 was back working in the mills. When she returned to New Hampshire on her father's death, she vanished from recorded history. |
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