In Lyddie by Katherine Paterson, what job does Lyddie's younger sister get at the factory?

's little
sister, Rachel, becomes a doffer at the Concord Corporation. When Rachel first comes to Lyddie,
Rachel is silent and withdrawn. Lyddie, who has been so intent on saving money so she can
reunite her family at their farm, can't abide the thought of having to put her hard-earned money
into supporting Rachel, especially if she were to go to school. Considering how hard she has
worked since she was Rachel's age, Lyddie entertains the idea of Rachel working as a doffer.
From Lyddie's perspective, being a doffer is an easy job. The children work about fifteen
minutes out of an hour; they simply have to take full spools off the machines and put empty
spools on. Lyddie has been able to see the doffers playing in the mill yard while she herself is
working on her looms. To her, being a doffer seems like a life of comparative ease, and she is
more than ready for Rachel to take that role.

When Lyddie first suggests to
Mrs. Bedlow that Rachel could be a doffer, Mrs. Bedlow says that Rachel is too young and too
weak to do that job. However, after Rachel proves herself by nursing Lyddie back to health, Mrs.
Bedlow advocates for her with the factory agent, and Rachel is hired. Rachel herself wanted the
job, even though by the time Lyddie had recovered from her fever, she was leaning toward sending
Rachel to school instead. Unfortunately, despite Rachel's positive attitude about working at the
factory, the job takes its toll on her health. She develops a cough, and Lyddie fears that it
will become a serious health issue for Rachel like it did for Betsy. Lyddie decides to let
Rachel go live with the Phinneys so that she will no longer have to work as a doffer and so she
can go to school.

At the link below, you can see pictures of children working
as doffers in a factory about 70 years after the time period of Lyddie.
Although the machinery in these photographs is more modern than what Rachel would have worked
on, the concept is the same. Child labor was still an issue in the early decades of the 20th
century.