 The " Mill Girls " were female workers who came to work for the textile corporations in Lowell , Massachusetts , during the Industrial Revolution in the United States . The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers , between the ages of 15 and 30 . ( There also could be " little girls " who worked there about the age of 13 . ) By 1840 , at the height of the Industrial Revolution , the textile mills had recruited over 8 @,@ 000 women , who came to make up nearly seventy @-@ five percent of the mill workforce . 
