From Teen Vogue
“The first factory strike in U.S. history began on May 26th, 1824. The New England factory system itself was still finding its footing, and its legions of poorly paid young workers were at constant risk of illness, injury, or worse during the long hours they spent wrangling its roaring machinery. When the mill owners of Pawtucket, RI collectively announced that they’d be reducing weavers’ wages and tacking on an extra hour to everyone’s 14-hour workday, the workers revolted. That day, 102 workers walked out of the mills and into the streets. The tactic was so new, so novel, and so revolutionary that those leading the charge hadn’t even settled on a name for it yet. At that point, they called it a ‘turn-out…’
“The mill workers of Pawtucket had planted the seeds for the next two hundred years of working class rebellion. It just so happened that all of them were women—and many of them were teenage girls, some as young as 15 years old. Teenagers and young adult workers have played an outsized role in American labor since such a thing even existed.”
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