Story Advice

Read a letter from your friend, Mattie

Dear Friend,

What you hear is true: They want us each to tend a second loom and cut the amount we get paid for each yard of the cloth we weave. The mill owners tell us we'll earn more, and maybe we will, but I wonder how they'd like to work as hard as we do, day after day, from dawn till night, and then, every two or three years, have their wages reduced. I guess it wouldn't set very well.

There is no telling what they'll do next. I've worked in the mills ten years and things have always gotten worse, never better. We must protest. I don't care what they say about proper behavior for women, we must all go to the rally on Saturday. If we all go, the agents cannot dismiss us - they will have no one to tend the machines and make their profits!

Mattie