Passage Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park
Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park
During the first half of the 19th century, Lowell, Massachusetts, quickly transformed itself from a farm town to a bustling industrial city. In time, Lowell became a model of industry, gaining global recognition for its state-of-the-art technology, innovative canal and dam system, mill architecture, boardinghouses, churches, and ethnic neighborhoods. Young Yankee women, immigrant families, and European tourists all flocked to Lowell to find work at one of the many textile mills, or visit the industrious city that was becoming a popular tourist destination. As one Scottish traveler observed during his visit to America, “Niagara and Lowell are the two objects I will longest remember in my American journey, the one the glory of American scenery, the other of American industry.” Today, Lowell National Historical Park welcomes visitors to enjoy the sights of Lowell and learn about the history of one of America’s most significant industrial cities.
The Boston merchants who founded Lowell in 1821 and named it after Francis Cabot Lowell chose to locate the town along Massachusetts’s Merrimack River to take advantage of the kinetic energy offered by the Pawtucket waterfalls. Over six miles of canals powered the waterwheels of Lowell’s mills, whose massive five- and six-story brick buildings dominated the city’s landscape. . . . The most recognized of these buildings are the Lowell Manufacturing Company chartered in 1821, the Suffolk or Wannalancit Mill completed around the 1880s, the Boott Mill Company established in 1835, and the Boott Mill Boardinghouse that opened in 1838. By the 1850s, 40 textile mills employing over 10,000 workers stretched for about a mile along the river. . . .
The city’s female workforce was significant in the history of Lowell. From the early to mid-1800s, women left the constricted lifestyle of small rural towns and rural areas for independent industrial city life. Most were young single Yankee girls, who were tired of the limited opportunities offered by their domestic work. Women found that Lowell’s mills offered monthly wages for their services and provided them room and board. Although these women gained economic independence in Lowell, the mill boardinghouse keepers constantly supervised their social activities, for which they hardly had any time, considering their daily 12- to 14-hour work schedules. At the end of the day, the factory bell signaled the “mill girls” to return to their boardinghouses. They were expected to adhere to the strict code of conduct respecting curfew and attending church.
Yankee “mill girls” continued to dominate the Lowell workforce until the 1840s, when the city began to find it difficult to compete with the growing industrial development in other New England communities. As profits fell, the mill industry cut wages. These wage cuts, deteriorating working conditions, and long workdays led the “mill girls” to protest and organize strikes. When their demands went unheard, the women left Lowell, and immigrant groups replaced them in the workforce. Despite the low wages and unhealthy work conditions, immigrants were eager to find work.
The immigrants replacing the Yankee “mill girls” during the 1840s were predominantly Irish Catholics, who traveled to America during the Great Potato Famine. Although Lowell received an influx of Irish families during this time, the Irish were a part of the city’s history from its birth, and before the “mill girls” arrived, they built Lowell’s historic canals, mills, and boardinghouses. Initially, Lowell’s Protestant community was slow to welcome Irish immigrants, but the hostility between Yankee Protestants and Irish Catholics eventually disappeared. Irish immigrants dominated the industrial scene until the Civil War, when other immigrant groups began to work in the city mills.
Like the Irish, the French-Canadians, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese, Russian Jews, and Armenians who came to work in Lowell’s mills faced long work hours, low wages, and poor living conditions in the city’s crowded tenements. By the time Lowell’s industry declined, the city had become an ethnic melting pot, where each group claimed its own distinct neighborhood, like the Irish immigrants’ “New Dublin” or “Acre,” and the French-Canadians’ “Little Canada.” The city officially began to close down its mills in the 1920s and ’30s after Lowell’s outdated mills could no longer compete against the state-of-the-art cotton mills in other communities and working conditions continued to decline as Lowell’s companies stopped reinvesting in their mills. . . . Despite a brief resurgence during World War II, the city shut down its last surviving mill by the mid-1950s.
From “Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park”—Public Domain/National Park Service
Yankee: native to New England
Niagara: a town in northwestern New York State well known as the location of Niagara Falls, a series of waterfalls on the Canadian border
domestic work: household duties like cooking and cleaning
Question
Read this sentence from paragraph 3.
From the early to mid-1800s, women left the constricted lifestyle of small rural towns and rural areas for independent industrial city life.
Which statement best describes how the sentence fits into the overall structure of the passage?
- AIt provides a transition from a description of the mills to a description of the workforce in those mills.
- BIt indicates a shift in tone from positive and hopeful to negative and dissatisfied with working conditions at the mill.
- CIt presents the circumstances that led many women to leave their hometown and move to the city for work.
- DIt begins a comparison of the mill workforce between the mid-1800s and the late 1800s.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The question asks which statement best describes how the sentence in paragraph 3 fits into the overall structure of the passage.
A. CORRECT. The sentence in paragraph 3 provides a transition from the overall description of the city and the mills to a description of the women who made up the workforce in the mills. The idea that women left domestic life in favor of working in the mills is important in the passage, and the sentence serves to connect that idea to the previous discussion about the mills.
B. Incorrect. While the mill girls’ dissatisfaction with their working conditions is addressed later in the passage (“These wage cuts, deteriorating working conditions, and long workdays led the ‘mill girls’ to protest and organize strikes” [paragraph 4]), the sentence in paragraph 3 does not indicate a shift in tone from positive to negative. The sentence provides a transition to the discussion of the women who worked in the mills.
C. Incorrect. Although the sentence in paragraph 3 mentions that women became interested in working in the mills because of the “constricted lifestyle of small rural towns,” structurally this sentence serves to provide a connection between the previous discussion of the mills and the women who made up the mill workforce. The sentence “Most were young single Yankee girls, who were tired of the limited opportunities offered by their domestic work” (paragraph 3) provides more detail about the circumstances that prompted women to leave their hometown.
D. Incorrect. The sentence in paragraph 3 focuses on the choices women made to leave rural towns to work in the city in the early to mid-1800s, not the mid-1800s to the late 1800s. The sentence does not create a comparison between the workforce in the mid-1800s and that in the late 1800s.
Question analysis
This question about text structure quotes the sentence in paragraph 3 of the National Park Service’s history of Lowell, Massachusetts, that describes women leaving small rural towns for life in an industrial city. Students judge the role the sentence plays in the article as a whole, which covers more than a century of the city’s history.
- NYS standards
- 7R5 structure and genre features
- Grade level
- Grade 8 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Above grade 7 Typical grade 7 structure work looks at how sections build an article. Judging the job of one sentence is finer: students must keep the article’s whole sequence in mind and weigh four broadly worded roles against it.
- Estimated difficulty
- Hard: combines ideas, needs a plan, and has more than one tempting wrong answer.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 3, strategic thinking · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- How, not what moderate
- Evidence in several places moderate
- Reading between the lines minor
- Evidence
- Answered from the whole text
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 15, 764 words; question and choices: about grade 9, 117 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The answer depends on seeing the passage’s plan, the mills first and then the people who worked in them, and on placing this sentence at that seam. In this printing the most tempting wrong choice says only that the sentence presents the circumstances that sent women to the city, which is close to true, so students must weigh which description of its role is best. The later strikes also lead some to find a darker tone starting here.
How, not what moderate Working it out
The question asks what the sentence does in the passage, and its content, women leaving a “constricted lifestyle” for “independent industrial city life,” is easy to restate, so a summary of it feels like an answer. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Evidence in several places moderate Working it out
The sentence’s role shows only from its neighbors: paragraph 2 closes on 40 mills and over 10,000 workers, and paragraph 3 turns to the women who came from rural towns to work in them. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)
Reading between the lines minor Working it out
Paragraph 3 opens with “The city’s female workforce was significant,” which already names the new subject, so students must see the quoted second sentence as part of that turn rather than a fresh point. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Strategy: Give each paragraph a two- or three-word label, mark where the quoted sentence falls among them, then compare each choice with that outline rather than with the sentence alone.
Traps
- Wrong purpose or structure: Names a purpose, structure or effect that the part does not serve, or describes what a part says when the question asks what it does.
- Wrong tone or attitude: Misjudges the tone, attitude or point of view, such as reading admiration as criticism, or taking a character's or subject's feelings for the author's.
The wrong answers, classified
B Wrong tone or attitude (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Expects a turn toward complaint because the mill girls strike later, but this sentence is hopeful about “independent industrial city life,” and the protests do not come until paragraph 4.
C Wrong purpose or structure (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Describes what the sentence says, women leaving a “constricted lifestyle” for the city, rather than what it does in the passage; the next sentence gives those circumstances more fully.
D Wrong purpose or structure (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Sees the dates “early to mid-1800s” and expects a contrast with later decades, though the sentence begins the mill girls’ story and the passage sets up no such comparison.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This is a structure question. Structure is how a passage is put together. You need to say what job this sentence does in the whole passage. Don’t just restate what it says. Ask what comes before it and what comes after it.
Look at what comes before
Paragraphs 1 and 2 are about Lowell and its mills. Paragraph 2 ends with “40 textile mills employing over 10,000 workers.” Then paragraph 3 begins: “The city’s female workforce was significant in the history of Lowell.” A workforce is the people who do the work. The sentence in the question comes right after that.
Look at what comes after
Constricted means tight and limited. So the sentence says women left limited small-town lives to live on their own in the city. After this, the passage stays with the workers. Paragraphs 3 and 4 tell about the mill girls’ wages, rules, strikes and leaving. Paragraphs 5 and 6 tell about the immigrants who replaced them. So the passage turns here, from the mills to the people who worked in them.
Weigh the closest choice
Choice C says the sentence “presents the circumstances that led many women to leave their hometown.” Circumstances are the conditions someone lives with. C is partly true, since the sentence mentions a “constricted lifestyle.” But C tells what the sentence says, not what it does. The next sentence gives the women’s reasons more fully: they were “tired of the limited opportunities offered by their domestic work.”
Check each choice
- A is right. The sentence carries the reader from the mills to the workforce in those mills.
- B is wrong. The tone isn’t turning negative. “Independent industrial city life” sounds hopeful. The protests and strikes don’t come until paragraph 4.
- C is wrong. It names the sentence’s content, not its role.
- D is wrong. The passage never compares workers of the mid-1800s with workers of the late 1800s. The dates only tell when the women came.
Choose the answer
The sentence moves the passage from the mills to the women who worked in them. So the answer is A.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
C is the closest wrong choice, and it is partly true. The sentence does mention the “constricted lifestyle” women left. But C names what the sentence says, not the job it does. The next sentence gives the women’s reasons in more detail. A names the job: the sentence links the story of the mills to the story of the mill workers.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Massachusetts: Lowell National Historical Park” as printed (page 50)
