¶ … Subtle Disapprobation of Labor Conditions The Harbinger's magazine article, "Female Workers of Lowell," which was initially published November 14, 1836 by an unidentified author, is one of the earliest surviving accounts of conditions of labor (not associated with institutionalized, chattel slavery) in the post-Industrial era United States of America. This particular excerpt, which details the living and working quarters of an entirely female textile mill presumably in the North Eastern (New England) region of the U.S., is decidedly sympathetic to the harsh existence many young female labors were forced to endure. However, this sympathy is tempered by the powerful economic impetus of profit, or capital (as it is termed in the magazine article), which was used to justify the development and implementation of just such means of industrialization. A close read of the text illustrates the fact that the author begins the article favoring the institution of such an oppressive labor factory, yet ends his narration with a switch in partisanship in which his or her sympathetic tendencies to the laborers and their rather indecent labor conditions emerge.

There can be little doubt that the author's initial purpose in composing this document was to deliver an unbiased accounting of the textile mills and the stream of revenue they produced which was so valuable to this county's economy in...

The author begins this article in a rather removed, calculating manner which does not consider the humanity of the laborers nor the inhumane treatment in which they largely toiled in, due in no small part to the fact that he or she had yet to witness the latter at this stage of the article. The author's purpose is distinctly implied in the first sentence of the excerpt, "When capital has got thirteen hours of labor daily out of a being, it can get nothing more." This quotation precedes a comparison between slave labor in the South and paid labor in the North. Yet it is important to consider the fact that the author is merely considering these two varying means of labor; at this point the textile workers are merely operatives assisting capitalism, which the author is not concerned about in any sort of individual, humane way.
After investigating the stifling hot textile factories and the cramped, crowded quarters in which the laborers lived, however, the author shifts his or her purpose to a more humanitarian, sympathetic tone for the laborers and the ghastly conditions in which they endured. This reversal of perspective (which should not be confused with a reversal of the article's purpose, which always was to investigate the labor conditions of the textile mills in Lowell) occurred as soon as the author entered one of the mills, as the following quotation…