Spool Room at the Continental Mill, photograph by Henri Larocque, Lewiston, Maine, 1885-1889. Courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Spool Room at the Continental Mill, photograph by Henri Larocque, Lewiston, Maine, 1885-1889. Courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Textile mills were the first workplaces to hire considerable numbers of Maine children. By 1832, an estimated two-fifths of all textile workers in New England were under 16. Children often worked long days. In 1846, ten-year-old James Smith reported working at the Laconia Textile Mill in Biddeford, Maine for 66 hours a week.
Maine passed its first child labor law in 1847. It stated that children aged 12 to 15 had to have attended school for 3 months the previous year in order to work in mills. It did not limit the hours children worked. The following year the legislature passed a law limiting children's work to 10 hours a day, but employers could, and did, contract with workers for longer days.