Lyddie gets paid per piece once a week, but most of her pay goes to her board until she is discharged and paid full wages.
Lyddie works at the mill after she loses her job at the tavern. At the tavern, she never actually gets paid her wages personally. They are supposedly sent to her mother directly. When she goes to work at the factory she has a little more control of her money, but some of it is directly paid to the boardinghouse. Lyddie gets paid once a week.
The pay reflected her proficiency. She was making almost $2.50 a week above her $1.75 board. While the other girls grumbled that their piece rates had dropped so that it had hardly been worth slaving through the summer heat, she kept her silence. (Ch. 12, p. 86)
Lyddie is just happy to be making money. She wants to be able to save enough to send money home to pay off her family’s debts so that they can get the farm back. She wants more than anything to get her family back together.
Everything falls apart when Lyddie catches Mr. Marsden trying to assault Brigid and stops him, hitting him with a bucket full of water. After this incident, she gets paid all of her money because she loses her job.
They paid her wages full and just, but there was no certificate of honorable discharge from the Concord Corporation, and with no certificate, she would never be hired by any other corporation in Lowell. (Ch. 21, p. 168)
If Lyddie had been given a certificate, she could have taken her money and gone to another factory. However, because Mr. Marsden lied about what happened she got her money only. She would not be able to get another job at a factory. She was blacklisted.
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