In May 1824, 102 women work­ers in Paw­tuck­et, Rhode Island, left their looms after the mill’s own­ers announced a wage cut. The work­ers vot­ed to refuse to return until their old wages were restored. Then, they unit­ed with oth­er fac­to­ry work­ers — chil­dren and some groups of men — as well as local farm­ers and arti­sans who joined the cause. Soon, work­ers at near­ly every one of the village’s eight mills were on strike, phys­i­cal­ly block­ing doors so that no one else could enter. For a week, the vil­lage descend­ed into chaos. Work­ers and farm­ers marched en masse to the mill own­ers’ hous­es, hurl­ing rocks and insults. It was the first fac­to­ry strike in the Unit­ed States and the first strike of any kind involv­ing women.

What the bosses failed to foresee was that the women workers could not be as easily controlled as the children.

The Slater Mill, which employed some of the strik­ers, is now a nation­al land­mark and muse­um, and a new hybrid art/​history exhib­it there—The Moth­er of All Strikes: The 1824 Tex­tile Work­er Turnout—focus­es on that week-long walkout.

Built in 1793, Slater Mill was the first tex­tile fac­to­ry in the Unit­ed States. Over the next few decades, dozens more mills were built in Paw­tuck­et, and the town played a key role in the mat­u­ra­tion of U.S. indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ism. The mill insti­tut­ed inno­v­a­tive sys­tems for con­trol­ling work­ers: high­ly reg­i­ment­ed fac­to­ry time (where­by work hours were count­ed down to the minute), fac­to­ry bells and a com­pa­ny store.

The imme­di­ate cause of the ​“turn-out,” as the strike was then called, was a deci­sion by Pawtucket’s mill own­ers to cut female mill work­ers’ wages by 25 per­cent and extend the work­ing day by one hour for all work­ers. But resent­ment of the mill own­ers had been build­ing for years, not just among mill work­ers but among oth­er towns­peo­ple as well. Even before the first mill was built, Paw­tuck­et res­i­dents tried to sab­o­tage the con­struc­tion of the dams that would pow­er the fac­to­ries. They were sus­pi­cious of the wealthy out­siders buy­ing up huge pieces of land and mak­ing mas­sive changes to the land­scape. Ten­sion mount­ed over the next decade, as the mill own­ers called on tax­pay­ers to bankroll local projects that most­ly ben­e­fit­ed the mills.

Women joined the work­forces of Pawtucket’s mills in the ear­ly 1820s with the intro­duc­tion of the pow­er loom, which allowed man­u­fac­tur­ers to weave fin­ished cloth by machine. Pre­vi­ous­ly, young chil­dren had served as the pri­ma­ry mill oper­a­tives, but these new machines required an old­er, more skilled labor force, so the mill own­ers brought in the next cheap­est source of labor: young women, usu­al­ly between the ages of 15 and 30. What the boss­es failed to fore­see was that the women work­ers could not be as eas­i­ly con­trolled as the chil­dren. They quick­ly unit­ed to take on man­age­ment direct­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. Shocked by the dis­play of unprece­dent­ed col­lec­tive action, the mill’s own­ers caved in just over a week, pre­sum­ably reach­ing a com­pro­mise that restored wages to at least close to what they had been, though the exact details of the arrange­ment are unknown.

Over the next few decades, the Paw­tuck­et strikes inspired sim­i­lar mil­i­tant labor actions through­out New Eng­land, crescen­do­ing in a gov­er­nance cri­sis spurred by a statewide upris­ing known as the Dorr Rebel­lion, dur­ing which thou­sands of Rhode Islanders vot­ed in favor of a new con­sti­tu­tion that extend­ed suf­frage and cre­at­ed a short-lived shad­ow gov­ern­ment that chal­lenged the legit­i­ma­cy of the stand­ing state.

Slater Mill’s exhib­it tells the sto­ry of the strike and its after­math, which includ­ed a fierce crack­down by mill own­ers, who intro­duced even more dra­con­ian man­age­ment styles, cre­at­ed police depart­ments, and encour­aged reli­gion and tem­per­ance soci­eties as a means of strength­en­ing the ​“moral machin­ery” of mill cities. But the exhib­it also takes a long view, using con­cep­tu­al works to explore the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of the work­force con­trol mea­sures devel­oped dur­ing this peri­od and to trace their lega­cy to the present day. Along­side his­tor­i­cal arti­facts are con­tem­po­rary artis­tic inter­pre­ta­tions of the mate­r­i­al, such as Ian G. Cozzen’s set of mas­sive pink let­ters stag­gered through­out the fac­to­ry, which spell out the word ​“Autonomía” only when viewed from a par­tic­u­lar cor­ner of the room, dis­rupt­ing the factory’s régime of dis­ci­pline. Kristi­na Brown’s ​“The Sel­vage” is a mixed-media work depict­ing women work­ers ensnared in the rigid­i­ty of fac­to­ry time and sched­ul­ing. Chelsea Carl’s ​“it’s ille­gal to com­mit sui­cide” con­nects the 1824 strike to the present, rely­ing on text to relate the fac­to­ry floor lay­out to mod­ern social jus­tice issues.

In Rhode Island today, women work­ers are still at the fore­front of the labor move­ment because they’re still the most heav­i­ly exploit­ed work­ers. Providence’s hotel house­keep­ers, who are almost entire­ly women — many of whom live in more afford­able Paw­tuck­et — are lead­ing an effort to raise their wages to $15 an hour. The exhib­it serves as a reminder that 190 years ago a small group of work­ers could lead an entire vil­lage in chal­leng­ing the will of the rul­ing class.