Why did textile mill owners during the industrial revolution keep their factory windows closed?
score:19
Accepted answer
The young woman quoted likely misunderstood the real reason the windows were kept shut: to keep the mills humid. This was explained to me on a recent visit to Lowell, but I found a few published sources that match what the tour guides told me. Here's one:
Work conditions in the mills were poor. To provide the humidity necessary to keep the threads from snapping, overseers nailed factory windows shut and sprayed the air with water.
And another:
Steam was constantly hissing into the room, providing the humidity essential to maintain the correct environment for the spinning and weaving of cotton. Windows were sealed shut to prevent the humidity from escaping, and temperatures would hover between 90 and 115 degrees.
One snapped thread could jam a spinning machine. If you take a look at how big these machines could be, you see why owners were afraid of snapped threads. Temporarily shutting down one of these machines could result in a significant loss of productivity:
Like the comments above indicate, inspection wasn't a concern -- there weren't any worker protection laws for the mill owners to break.
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