Unequivocally, for women in the northeast, the textile industry was the single biggest agent for change in their lives. Being able to work carried with it a heavy price for women to pay.
Regina wrote, "Indeed, the working conditions were deplorable and super unhygienic." This point is true of textile mills in both England and America. Though American mills were at first built with better ideals in mind, the mill owners quickly realized it cost them a lot of money to treat their female workforce well. The owners would have rather simply given the jobs to men, I'm sure, but there simply weren't enough men to go around.
Moira said, "There was a demand for low skilled operators and women were readily accepted to fill in these new roles."
Textile mills tried hard to only hire single women, but women in other city-based factories could have a family. The caveat for women accepting these jobs is that they still had to fulfill their responsibilities at home. Either way, though, Natalia pointed out, "Unsupervised young ladies far from home created societal fears over their destiny." Men were used to getting certain things from women in their lives, so their concern was merely a mask for their concern over loss of control.
In other words, as Azure wrote, "The women were faced with a double burden between the factory work and by domestic chores and child care." Go ahead and take that job if you want, but you still have to take care of the family is the message being sent to these women. Why is it that taking care of ones family, even.