Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (February 8, 1825 – December 22, 1911) worked as a bobbin doffer in a Massachusetts cotton mill and was involved in a turnout, became a poet and author, and played an important role in the women's suffrage movement in the United States.

[7] At the invitation of Harriet's maternal aunt, Angeline Cudworth, also a widow, the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, a center of the textile industry.

The companies built boardinghouses managed by older women, often widows to provide meals and safe places to live.

"[13] In her autobiography, she recounted it with pride:[14] When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down.

[20] The pay was on a piecework basis and so Harriet could work at her own pace, and while the looms were operating, she could find a quiet room away from the machinery in which she was able to read.

At the age of 15 she left the mills for two years to study French, Latin, and English grammar and composition at Lowell High School.

[21] The titles of two of her compositions have survived: "Poverty Not Disgraceful" and "Indolence and Industry", reflecting her opinion that there was nothing wrong with the honest labor of poor people.

Betsey Guppy Chamberlain (1797–1886), one of Harriet's companions in the mills, became a noted contributor of sketches and stories to the Lowell Offering.

[22] Harriet said that "the fame of The Lowell Offering caused the mill girls to be considered very desirable for wives; and that young men came from near and far to pick and choose for themselves, and generally with good success.

Also from a poor background, Robinson was a writer for a newspaper and a supporter of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories and made it hard for him to keep a job.

In her early writings, she described the pleasure of having a husband to handle worldly problems, and her job was to take care of him and said that for that reason she did not want to vote.

[26] The couple had a large garden, grew fruit and vegetables, and made some money by raising chickens and selling the eggs.

[27] In 1868 Harriet joined the American Woman's Suffrage Organization, led by Lucy Stone, and founded the Malden women's club.

[24] Harriet's book Loom and Spindle (1898) portrayed the industrial town of Lowell in her childhood and youth as a time of great opportunity for mill girls, who learned the discipline of labor and gained broader ideas about the world from their experiences.

[33] When the National Woman Suffrage Association opened on 26 May 1881 at the Tremont Temple in Boston, Harriet Robinson welcomed the delegates and guests.

"[35] Harriet Robinson wrote enthusiastically in 1881, Never, in the history of civilization, has woman held the political, legal or social position that she does in Massachusetts today!

[25] The poet Lucy Larcom, a friend of Harriet who had also worked in the mills as a child, wrote of her, "Mrs. Robinson is deeply interested in all the movements, which tend to the advancement of women, and uses her pen and her voice freely in their behalf.

Here is an excerpt from the annual report written by Harriet Robinson: They [the mill girls] went forth from their Alma Mater, the Lowell Factory, carrying with them the independence, the self-reliance taught in that hard school, and they have done their little part towards performing the useful labor of life.