Working in a Factory

Working in a Factory

Working in a Factory
Reading Level

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

Vocabulary

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

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Working in a Factory
By Cathy Pearl

¹     Factories were starting all over the United States. The owners needed people to work in them. There weren't any rules about who could be hired. The workers had to work for long hours. People couldn't argue, or they would be fired. There were always new workers who wanted to work in the factories.

²     Mill owners hired a lot of women and children. The owners would pay them less than they would pay the men. The owners saved money if they hired more women and children.

³     Children who were only 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 would change the spindles where the thread was held. Sometimes the spindles were bigger than they were.

⁴     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, there was another one ready to take his or her place.

Paragraphs 5 to 12:
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