ABSTRACT
On the 4th of July 1845, SARAH BAGLEY, alongtime Lowell mill worker, stood be-fore a group of workers in Woburn, Massachusetts, to demand better working conditions and a ten-hour workday. The founder and president of the newly formed Lowell Female LABOR REFORM ASSOCIATION, one of the first labor unions organized by women in America, Bagley went on to edit the Voice of Industry, a journal affiliated with the New England Workingman’s Association. The ten-hour movement collapsed less than a year later, but women continued to participate in the growing industrial workforce and in labor organizing.
