Recollections of Dorcas Nutter, born 1822 and printed in the Biddeford Record on July 26, 1912, when she was 90. She began work in the York Mills on Factory Island in 1835 at age 13.

I finished my education at the age of 13 years and came to Saco (from Buxton) where I secured a place in the spooling department. I received the munificent wages of 60 cents a week, or 10 cents a day. That was back in 1835. The corporation paid $1.25 for my board each week at the corporation boardinghouse (or dormitory). This made my total earning $1.85 per week. Most of the help boarded in the corporation boardinghouse. There was not a single foreigner in the mills. They were all Yankee girls and boys. All the time I worked in the cotton mills I never saw a foreigner employed.

The board was nothing to brag of. For dinner we had broth and water, for supper “applesass” and bread and butter. They had some meat and some fish occasionally, but no one who lived at one of the mill boardinghouses ever suffered to any extent from indigestion.

Shortly after I came to Saco smallpox broke out and I returned to the home of my father in Buxton. The contagion frightened many of the mill hands away but the factory did not shut down. Many people were stricken with the dread disease. 

They had strikes in those days same as now. The first strike in the York plant occurred after I had been there for some four years. 

Times were dull and Squire Batchelder the agent (or manager) had cut down our wages, promising to restore them after things got better.

With the return of prosperity to the cloth mill, the agent neglected to fulfill his promises, we went to him and asked him to put our pay back and he refused to do so. It was at this juncture that the girls held a meeting and agreed to strike. One day we all marched out in a body. This was the first time labor war was ever inaugurated in these parts and the rest of the textile operation hardly knew what to make of it. Their eyes stuck out, you can bet. We marched the principal streets with flags and banners flying. 

One day Squire Batchelder sent word to us that if we did not return the next day we could not come back at all. A few went back but the majority of the young women proved loyal and went elsewhere to work. We did not win. As a matter of fact, I don’t think the strikers win very often. We had a just grievance but that did not make any odds. The corporation was too strong for us. They were able to hire help to take our places at the wages we were getting.

– From “Mills and Mill Hands: Exploring the Industrial Heritage of Biddeford and Saco,” published in 1988 by York Institute Museum/Dyer Library