Memories of Mill Girls

Susan Spano’s article “Mill Girls Were the Grist for a Gritty New England Labor Scene” (Her World, April 1) was of considerable interest to me and my family because many years ago my mother fell into that category of beleaguered worker.

In the mid-1920s she and many of her colleagues of French Canadian and Irish descent put in long hours at Nashua Manufacturing Co., known as “the largest blanket mill in the world,” in Nashua, N.H., about 10 miles north of the mills in Lowell, Mass., that Spano mentions.

From her description of the work performed by these girls, the conditions were miserable, the work laborious, the noise deafening and the pay small indeed.

Fortunately she did not make it a career.

DONALD R. TREMBLAY

Santa Monica