Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources Reading Comprehension Worksheets A New Nation (1776-1830)

Working in a Factory A New Nation (1776-1830)

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Working in a Factory
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Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	high interest, readability grades 4 to 5
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	3.89

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		textile, mills, jobs, boring, freedom, mill, working, lived, hire, saved, thread, become, thousand, fight, dangerous, company
	content words:		United States

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Working in a Factory By Cathy Pearl

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¹     Factories called textile mills were starting all over the United States. Machines in the mills spun cotton fibers into thread. Then other machines used thread to make cloth. The cloth was used to make clothes of all kinds. Mill owners needed people to work in their factories. There weren't any rules about who could be hired. There were no rules about how much workers should be paid or how many hours they should work.
 
²     Mill owners hired a lot of women and children. The owners paid them much less than they paid men. The owners saved money if they hired more women and children. Children as young as seven years old worked in the mills. The owners of textile mills really liked to hire children. They were small enough to get around the large machines. They changed the spindles that held the thread. Sometimes the spindles were bigger than they were! There weren't any safety rules in the factories. Children were hurt and sometimes killed working in the mills. Their little hands and bodies could get caught in the machines. There wasn't anything that parents could do about it. When one child left a factory job, there was another one ready to take his or her place. Children who were working couldn't go to school. They didn't learn how to read or write. This made it hard for the children to find other jobs when they were older. Many families needed the money that the children earned. School didn't seem as important as working.
 
³     In 1821, a town was built in Massachusetts just for the textile factories there. When the town first started, there were very few people that lived there. In a little more than ten years, it was home to more than ten thousand people.

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A New Nation
(1776-1830)

A New Nation (1776-1830)

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Special Education United States History Materials for Teachers

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United States

United States

American Government         Black History and Blacks in U.S. History         Children in History         Government Careers         Hispanic Heritage         How Can I Help?

Immigration         National Parks and Monuments         Native Americans         Presidents of the United States         Women's History

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United States History

A Nation Divided (1840-1861)         A New Nation (1776-1830)         After the Civil War (1865-1870)         American Revolution         Cold War (1947-1991)         Colonial America (1492-1776)         Lewis and Clark (1804-1806)         Pearl Harbor         Spanish American War (1898)         The 1890's         The 1900's         The 1910's         The 1920's         The 1930's

The 1940's         The 1950's         The 1960's         The 1970's         The 1980's         The 1990's         The 2000's         The Civil War (1861-1865)         The Great Depression (1929-1945)         The United States Grows (1865-1900)         The War of 1812         Wild, Wild West         World War I (1914-1918)         World War II

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