Voice of Industry

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The Voice of Industry was a worker-run newspaper published between 1845 and 1848, at the height of the American Industrial Revolution. The Voice was centrally concerned with the dramatic social changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, as workers came to depend on corporations for a wage.

The Voice, a small four-page newspaper, started publication on May 29, 1845, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts under the auspices of the New England Workingmen's Association, with the young mechanic William F. Young at the helm. While primarily concerned with land and labor reform, the paper addressed a number of other social issues, including war, education, women's rights, religion, slavery, and prison reform. All of the writing was done by the "workingmen and women," who, Young wrote in his inaugural editorial, "can wield the pen with as much perfection as the instruments of their respective vocations," and to whom he extended "a hearty welcome ... whether they agree with us on all points or not."^[1]

Shortly after it was established, the paper moved from Fitchburg to Lowell, where it was adopted by the first union of working women in the United States, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association led by the young labor leader Sarah Bagley.