Five StarsFactory Girl by Barbara Greenwood
Imagine living in a tiny two room apartment – you, your mom, baby sister, and little brother. It’s cramped and dirty, with no running water or electricity. Dinner is potatoes and water soup. If you’re lucky, there may be hard, stale bread to eat.
Emily Watson was only twelve years old. She had to drop out of school and find a job. Her family depended on her for survival. Acme Garment Factory did not care that Emily was only twelve. Underage children were good workers – cheap labor. Emily began working a backbreaking, boring job –snipping loose threads from garments. She earned four dollars a week for working ten hours a day.
If she accidentally pierced the garment with her scissors, Emily lost an entire week’s wages. If she spent too long in the bathroom, her pay was docked. She couldn’t talk to the other girls. She couldn’t smile, stretch, or even take a brief break. The factory was dirty, hot, and smoky. Her bones ached, eyes blurred, and fingers cramped.
Life in the early 1900s was miserable for the working poor. Though Factory Girl is fiction, the setting and events are very real. Before child labor laws, children like Emily worked long hours in deplorable workplaces, with little pay, and often experienced abuse under the hands of their ruthless employers. They never had a real childhood.The jobs were often dangerous, and many lost their lives as a result. The photographs in this book depict the hopelessness of their situation, the extreme poverty of the times, and the unforgettable young faces will haunt you long after you stop reading.
If you found Factory Girl as unforgettable as I did, try Margaret Haddix’s Uprising or Getzinger's The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Factory Girl is a very good book to read because it lets you know how hard life was back then. It really has two stories, of course it tells Emilys story but it also tells you how bad things really were. It has very good pictures with great captions.
ReplyDeleteEmily is a twelve year old girl who has to drop out of school and go to work a garmet factory because her father stopped sending her family money. She only gets paid four dollars an hour and almost every week someone came up short and started crying or screaming.
Factory Girl is a very exciting book. It really has two stories, the story about Emily and also it lets you know how it really was back then. It has really amzing pictures that are very discriptive, they somtimes sad when you see how those little kids had to live.
ReplyDeleteEmily has to drop out of school and start working in a garmet factory. Her job is backbreaking and she only gets paid four dollars a week! But every little bit of money helps, ever since her dad stopped sending her family money. Her, her mom, and her brother Alfie have to do anything they can to bring in a few dollars a week. Her mom sews on buttons for coats and stuff while watching her own little children at home, sometimes they had to help. Alfie bought newspapers and sold them on the street.
But then a reporter comes along and asks Emily about life workin in the factory. YOU'L HAVE TO READ IT AND FIND OUT IF SHE TALKS TO HIM AND SPILLS IT ALL OR NOT!!!!
It was a good but sad book.
ReplyDeleteFactory Girl is a very good book! I really enjoyed the "double Story"! It told about her life and it gave you some info about history. I thought it was really sad because of all the bad things that happened to children back then.
ReplyDeleteI love this book because it is about a girl that works hard and thats what we should do.It was funny to read because it is a girl my age that worked really hard.
ReplyDeleteI read about it some days ago in another blog and the main things that you mention here are very similar
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