Sarah Cornell
Take a look up at this graph. It’s the retail price of a yard of cotton cloth in the 18th and 19th centuries. See how it falls? Well, really, “collapse” is probably a better word for it. That downward slope is the Industrial Revolution. The machines and the mills of New England, and the vertical integration of places like Lowell, Massachusetts drove the cost to produce a yard of cotton down, and retail prices came tumbling down too. Very quickly, people could afford to buy cotton cloth rather than making it at home. This is a really good thing. But tightly bound up inside the amazing accomplishments in textile manufacturing you can find some bad news too.
Sarah Cornell was born in 1803. Sarah moved away from home at the age of 19 to work in the textile mills of New England. Like thousands of other young women, Sarah went to the boomtown because the mill companies offered her an attractive proposition: good pay, independence, and access to education. She wanted a way to improve her prospects and the mills offered her that chance.
Sarah worked all over New England; she lived in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. She made money. She built a life for herself. It was hard work and she moved around a lot. Sarah joined a church. She lived in dormitories and boarding houses with her colleagues and peers. She even dated a little.
Sarah died in December, 1832. She was only 29 years old. She was found strangled to death in a field in Fall River, Massachusetts. In the autopsy, Sarah’s doctor discovered that she was five months pregnant.
The minister from Sarah’s congregation, Reverend Avery, was tried for her murder. There was a bunch of evidence that pointed to his guilt. Sarah had left a note the night before she died stating that if anything happened to her, people should ask Reverend Avery about it. Reverend Avery was acquitted eventually. The trial was a huge spectacle and debates raged over whether he was guilty or not. (By the way, he totally did it.)
Industrialization has two sides. It amplifies creativity, accomplishment, and hard work. We get output, low prices and wealth. But it’s all woven together with the bad treatment, the abuses of power and the violent impulses of human nature. Sarah Cornell saw both sides. Sarah enjoyed freedom to move, to work, to make her own way in the world, to express herself in her religious life and her social life. She was also a victim of cruel violence — and, if the charges against Avery were true, sickening abuse by a person with power.
I look back at the line in that graph showing the collapsing price of cotton cloth and I just think it’s amazing. Sarah’s life and her death are woven right into that line too. It’s good to remember that industrial revolutions are made by real people living real lives. Sarah’s real life struggle was with work, freedom and her pregnancy. Industrial revolutions create wealth and opportunity but real people struggle and suffer along the way. It’s okay to hold those two thoughts in your head all at the same time.
