David Hoffman, filmmaker.

I'm going to tell you another story that I uncovered because of something old that got found when I was a kid.

Just like the horsey story, which I hope you enjoy.

Jim Key and Bilkey.

Here's the story.

This book this book is from 18 41 and it's a hand written diary, and it's written by a girl who is part of a group of girls.

Now it says here October 19th 18 41 Miss Ellis Room.

That's where they're having the meeting.

What's going on here?

So my mother buys this book and gives it to music.

Gives his David I know it's got 70 pages of handwritten stuff.

Diary of some Girl's meeting 18 41 in Concord, New Hampshire.

What's the meeting about why I have a meeting and what are they talking about?

I read the book, and it's just amazing in the things these girls 18 1917 are talking about.

Give me a few fromthe list.

What's politeness and why should we be polite curiosity?

Is it good to be curious?

Keep listening.

When and where should the truth be told?

How far should we as women conform to the customs of society.

Does God exist?

Should lady's interest ourselves in politics?

What is love and the biggest one of all?

Marriage?

Is it essential these subjects in the diary that these girls were talking about?

Who are these girls?

What's going on in 18 41?

Are you kidding me?

That's 75 years before women had the right to vote.

You know what a woman was like a TTE that time.

Her duty was to take care of her husband to be subservient, to be a dutiful, good wife.

That was what you would do.

You kind of the weaker sex.

These girls are behaving that way.

I'll tell you what's going on, because this became the subject of a major research project for me to understand what was happening in 18 41 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in Concord, New Hampshire, just this far apart, maybe 25 to 50 miles.

So it's the height of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial revolution in New England is woolen mills and thread mills that are incredible.

Thes mills are huge, and 75% of the workers are girls and young women.

They've been taken off the farms and offered a special deal.

They say to the farmer father, Send your daughter down to where she will be safe, kept in a dormitory, educated and paid X percentage of the money will go to you for the family X percentage will go to her for the first time.

These girls had money they had money to spend.

It happens that the man who built these factories of the men built factories based on Christian values, particularly Unitarian Universalist values, that a woman should be educated, that you should know how to read that she should be treated properly and protected.

These dormitories will lock that night.

Huge places These girls were together for a year or two.

They heard speeches, lectures by 40 by Emerson and by women who were traveling the country beginning to s questions about women's rights and women's duties.

Some of them were very radical.

They also had reading groups and one of these Unitarian Universalists folks, I think it was a minister starts what's called the circle.

Have a circle.

That's what's in this diary.

The diary is called the Circle.

That's what the first page says and I looked this up and I find circles were a way that women talk to each other about things as though they were sewing.

But they weren't sewing.

They were just talking.

They were just asking questions.

They were just as his diary shows, asking really profound questions, and they then began to challenge the whole system.

In 18 36 I believe, 18 37.

There was a strike of these women for better working conditions.

They were working 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Unbelievable noise, no real security for injuries at that time.

And these women, these young women began to fight for their rights.

These strikes were very effective in 18 40 to 1 year after this diary was written, Dickins comes to the United States, and he's shocked by what he sees.

The industrial Revolution in New England is completely different from the Industrial Revolution in England.

In New England, the people are being treated better.

There is education, there's it.

Now food and other issues are being offered up toe workers.

The money is completely different.

And, he writes, that writes about this.

Dickens is thrilled to see the industrial revolution becoming what it's becoming in these mills.

The mill girls, as they were called, start a magazine.

I think it's called Lowell offering.

How did they make trouble?

Well, history shows that this is one of the major revolutions in workers rights and in women's rights.

Many of these women did not get married.

They chose instead to become teachers.

And when you look across the country at who the teachers were in the Midwest and in the West and all these cowboy towns, et cetera, it's largely mill girls coming out of the mills and going west.

That's what they're gonna do.

They also have money to spend the money to spend changed the retail businesses of these sounds, who then began to supply women with things that women wanted, not just the men controlled.

The fact that they came back to their farms with money with an education with having been with these other women profoundly changed them.

And America, some of them wrote books one ran for president would hold, I believe, was her name.

The books were cooked books some of the time, but very different kind of cookbooks with the women controlled things much more than they had before.

So what happened?

Because I read this diary because my mother got it for me.

I still love it.

Love The way it feels is that I learned about a culture and a time in New England.

That was really exciting.

Would I love to make a feature film on it?

Yep.

It's like a cold, rainy day.

And I'm discouraged by my creative efforts.

I go out there, I opened this book to really any page and I look at the writing, see what comes up.

She tells, hear about Miss Curtis having a bad day and they talk about their bad day.

I just read the book and I just feel history, time changing, great opportunity.

And this is the original.

This has got the writing.

If you have a pamphlet that sort of says something special, share it with me.

If you have a bookstore near, you'll go in there and search for the old meaningless stuff that nobody sees is valuable until you look at it closely and you look behind it.

And what you find behind it is something like what I found.