Data Literacy for Social Studies, Number of Employees in U. S. Cotton Factories, 1831-1860

We created this stacked area graph using a table from the 1882 U.S. Census report, The Factory System of the United States, to show the number of employees in U.S. cotton factories from 1831 to 1860. Southern cotton production nurtured the growth of industrialization in the antebellum United States and changed the nature of work, labor organization, and gender roles. The report described the "factory system" as resting on the principle that "each laborer, working separately, is controlled by some associating principle which directs his producing powers to effect a common result, which it is the object of all collectively to attain." It goes on to explain, "Factories are...the legitimate outgrowth of the universal tendency to association which is inherent in our nature, and by the development of which all industrial success has been gained; and from this principle springs the necessity for subdivision of labor, without which the factory system would have met with but feeble growth" (p. 533). Despite the report's reference to "men," however, most of the employees contributing to the cotton textile factory system were  women, known as "mill girls," who worked to earn wages for themselves or to supplement the low wages of male family members. As is indicated by the number of children working in the cotton factories in 1831, child labor was also common in cotton factories because children were cheaper and thought to be easier to manage.