Lowell Mills

Last updated April 20, 2019

Lowell Mills refers to the 19th-century mills that operated in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, which was named after Francis Cabot Lowell, who introduced a new manufacturing system called the "Lowell System", also known as the "Waltham-Lowell System".^[1]

Lowell is a city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Located in Middlesex County, Lowell was a county seat until Massachusetts disbanded county government in 1999. With an estimated population of 109,945 in 2014, it is the fourth-largest city in Massachusetts, and the second-largest in the Boston metropolitan statistical area. The city is also part of a smaller Massachusetts statistical area called Greater Lowell, as well as New England's Merrimack Valley region.

Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. The state is named after the Massachusett tribe, which once inhabited the east side of the area, and is one of the original thirteen states. The capital of Massachusetts is Boston, which is also the most populous city in New England. Over 80% of Massachusetts's population lives in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, a region influential upon American history, academia, and industry. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing and trade, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution. During the 20th century, Massachusetts's economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Modern Massachusetts is a global leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.

Philosophical context

Francis Cabot Lowell sought to create an efficient manufacturing process in the United States that "differed from what he saw in Great Britain". His vision relied on his "great faith in the people of New England" and employees "would be housed and fed by the company and remain employed only a few years rather than form a permanently downtrodden underclass".^[2]

New England is a region composed of six states of the northeastern United States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Boston is New England's largest city as well as the capital of Massachusetts. The largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston with nearly a third of the entire region's population, which also includes Worcester, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Providence, Rhode Island.

After a trip to London in 1811 during which he memorized the design of power looms, Lowell founded the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1813 along with the Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, and the other so-called "Boston Associates". This group of Boston-area merchants were "committed to the ideals of the original Protestant ethic and Republican simplicity" but were nevertheless "shrewd, far-sighted entrepreneurs who were quick to embrace...new investment opportunities".^[3]

London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km²) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated the first factory in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership a group of investors known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.

Nathan Appleton American merchant and politician

Nathan Appleton was an American merchant and politician and a member of "The Boston Associates".

The Boston Manufacturing Company built its first mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814.^[1] Unlike the prevailing system of textile manufacturing at the time—the "Rhode Island System" established by Samuel Slater—Lowell decided to hire young women (usually single) between the ages of 15 and 35, who became known as Mill Girls. They were called "operatives" because they operated the looms and other machinery.^[4]

The Charles River is an 80-mile-long (129 km) long river in eastern Massachusetts. From its source in Hopkinton the river flows in a northeasterly direction, traveling through 23 cities and towns before reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston. The Native-American name for the Charles River was Quinobequin, meaning "meandering".

Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning, spawning what became known as the Waltham-Lowell system of labor and production. The city is now a center for research and higher education, home to Brandeis University and Bentley University. The population was 60,636 at the census in 2010.

Samuel Slater was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" and the "Father of the American Factory System". In the UK, he was called "Slater the Traitor" because he brought British textile technology to America, modifying it for United States use. He memorized the designs of textile factory machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. He designed the first textile mills in the US and later went into business for himself, developing a family business with his sons. A wealthy man, he eventually owned thirteen spinning mills and had developed tenant farms and company towns around his textile mills, such as Slatersville, Rhode Island.

The Lowell System

The Lowell system, also known as the Waltham-Lowell system, was "unprecedented and revolutionary for its time". Not only was it was faster and more efficient, it was considered more humane than the textile industry in Great Britain by "paying in cash, hiring young adults instead of children, and by offering employment for only a few years and providing educational opportunities to help workers move on to better jobs".^[1]

For the first time in the United States, these mills combined the textile processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, essentially eliminating the "putting-out system" in favor of mass production of high-quality cloth. It completely revolutionized the textile industry and "eventually became the model for other manufacturing industries" in the United States.^[1]

The putting-out system is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the work in off-site facilities, either in their own homes or in workshops with multiple craftsmen.

The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.

Lowell mill girls

Lowell solved the problem of labor by employing young women (usually single) between the ages of 15 and 35, who became known as "mill girls". Unlike European industries, which had access to "large, landless, urban populations whose reliance on the wage system gave them few economic choices", American companies had to grapple with a small labor supply because the population was small and most preferred farming their own land and the economic independence that came with it. Additionally, many Americans viewed the European factory system as "inherently corrupt and abusive".^[5]

In order to persuade these young women to work at a mill, they were paid in cash once "every week or two weeks".^[6] Additionally, Lowell devised a factory community: women were required to live in company-owned dormitories adjacent to the mill that were run by older women chaperones called "matrons". In addition to working 80 hours a week, the women had to adhere to strict moral codes (enforced by the matrons) as well as attend religious services and educational classes. Despite being "highly discriminatory and paternalistic compared to modern standards, it was seen as revolutionary in its day".^[7]

Indeed, hiring women made good business sense; not only did women have experience weaving and spinning, they could be paid less than men, thereby increasing the profits of Lowell's Boston Manufacturing Company, and were "more easily controlled then men". Additionally, his tight rein on his employees "cultivated employee loyalty, kept wages low, and assured his stockholders accelerating profits".^[7]

In line with the Boston Associates' worldview, the mill girls were encouraged to educate themselves and pursue intellectual activities. They attended free lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Quincy Adams and read books they borrowed from circulating libraries. They were also encouraged to join “improvement circles” that promoted creative writing and public discussion.^[3]

Decline

Economic instability in the 1830s as well as immigration greatly affected the Lowell mills.

Overproduction during the 1830s caused the price of finished cloth to drop and the mills' financial situation was exacerbated by a minor depression in 1834 and the Panic of 1837. In 1834, the mills cut wages by 25%, which led the girls to respond by staging an unsuccessful strike and organizing a labor union called the Factory Girls Association. In 1836, they went on another unsuccessful strike when their housing rates were increased. Conditions continued to deteriorate until 1845, when the mill girls formed the Female Labor Reform Association, which joined forces with other Massachusetts laborers to pass laws aimed at improving working conditions in the state, which the mills simply ignored.^[1]

The women responded by going out on strike and published magazines and newsletters like the Lowell Offering . They even petitioned the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a law limiting the workday to ten hours. The petition was unsuccessful but it mill owners that their employees had become too troublesome.

By the mid-1840s, a "new generation of mill managers was in charge", for whom "profits rather than people seemed their primary, even sole, concern".^[3]

Furthermore, mill owners, who were convinced that their employees had become too troublesome, found a new source of labor in the Irish immigrants who were flocking to Massachusetts in 1846 to escape Ireland's Great Famine. These immigrant workers were mostly women with large families who were willing to work longer for cheaper wages. They also often forced their children to work as well. This reliance on immigrant workers slowly turned the mills into what they were trying to avoid—a system that exploited the lower classes and made them permanently dependent on the low-paying mill jobs. By the 1850s, the Lowell system was considered a failed experiment and the mills began using more and more immigrant and child labor.

In the 1890s, the South emerged as the center of U.S. textile manufacturing; not only was cotton grown locally in the South, it had fewer labor unions and heating costs were cheaper. By the mid-20th century, all of the New England textile mills, including the Lowell mills, had either closed or relocated to the south.^[1]

Legacy

By 1840, Lowell, Massachusetts, had 32 textile factories and had become a bustling city. Between 1820 and 1840 the number of people who worked in manufacturing increased eightfold.^[3]

Although most of the original Lowell Mill Girls were laid off and replaced by immigrants by 1850, the grown, single women who had been used to earning their own money ended up using their education to become librarians, teachers, and social workers. In this manner, the system was seen as producing "benefits for the workers and the larger society".^[7]

Related Research Articles

Lowell National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of the United States located in Lowell, Massachusetts. Established in 1978 a few years after Lowell Heritage State Park, it is operated by the National Park Service and comprises a group of different sites in and around the city of Lowell related to the era of textile manufacturing in the city during the Industrial Revolution. In 2019, the park is scheduled to be included as Massachusetts' representative in the America the Beautiful Quarters series.

Francis Cabot Lowell was an American businessman for whom the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, is named. He was instrumental in bringing the Industrial Revolution to the United States.

The Lawrence textile strike, also known as the Bread and Roses strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. Starting January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government started to enforce a law that allowed women to work a maximum of 54 hours, rather than 56 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours.

Paul Moody was a U.S. textile machinery inventor born in Byfield, Massachusetts. He is often credited with developing and perfecting the first power loom in America, which launched the first successful integrated cotton mill at Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814, under the leadership of Francis Cabot Lowell and his associates.

The Boston Associates were a loosely linked group of investors in 19th-century New England. They included Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Abbott Lawrence, and Amos Lawrence. Often related directly or through marriage, they were based in Boston, Massachusetts. The term "Boston Associates" was coined by historian Vera Shlakmen in 1935.

Completed in 1796, the Pawtucket Canal was originally built as a transportation canal to circumvent the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. In the early 1820s it became a major component of the Lowell power canal system. with the founding of the textile industry at what became Lowell.

The factory system is a method of manufacturing using machinery and division of labour. Because of the high capital cost of machinery and factory buildings, factories were typically privately owned by wealthy individuals who employed the operative labour. Use of machinery with the division of labour reduced the required skill level of workers and also increased the output per worker.

The Waltham-Lowell system was a labor and production model employed during the rise of the American textile industry in the United States, particularly in New England, amid the larger backdrop of rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution the early 19th century.

In labor disputes, a walkout is a labor strike, the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace as an act of protest.

The Lowell Offering was a monthly periodical collected contributed works of poetry and non-fiction by the female textile workers of the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills of the early American industrial revolution. It began in 1840 and lasted until 1845.

Patrick Tracy Jackson was a United States manufacturer, one of the founders of the Boston Manufacturing Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, and later a founder of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, whose developments formed the nucleus of Lowell, Massachusetts.

The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was a textile manufacturer which founded Manchester, New Hampshire. From modest beginnings in near wilderness, it grew throughout the 19th century into the largest cotton textile plant in the world. At its peak, Amoskeag was unrivaled both for the quality and quantity of its products. But with great size came an inability to adapt. In the early 20th century, the business failed to adapt to changing economic and social conditions.

The Lowell Mill Girls were young female workers who came to work in industrial corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, typically between the ages of 15 and 35. By 1840, the height of the Industrial Revolution, the textile mills had recruited over 8,000 women, who came to make up nearly three-quarters of the mill workforce, at a very slow rate, most were forced to work faster than they could.

The History of Lowell is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization.

Sarah George Bagley was a labor leader in New England during the 1840s; an advocate of shorter workdays for factory operatives and mechanics, she campaigned to make ten hours of labor per day the maximum in Massachusetts.

Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation is a museum of the American Industrial Revolution located on the Charles River Bike Path, near the intersection of the Charles River and Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts. It houses and displays machinery and artifacts of the industrial revolution from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The building was originally built as part of the Boston Manufacturing Company, Francis Cabot Lowell's seminal, fully integrated textile mill. The museum, which was incorporated in 1980 and opened to the public in 1988, takes up only a small portion of the previous mill building complex.

The Voice of Industry was a worker-run newspaper published between 1845–1848, 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.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (25 January 2017). "What Was the Lowell System Used in the Lowell Mills?". History of Massachusetts Blog. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
↑ Rosenberg, Chaim M. (2010). The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell, 1775–1817. Lexington Books. p. 179. ISBN 978-0739146835 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
1 2 3 4 Shi, David E. (1985). The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. pp. 93–98. ISBN 978-0195034752 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
↑ "Lowell Mill Girls and the factory system, 1840". History Now. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
↑ Harris, Skylar (2014). Kenneth E. Hendrickson III, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History, Volume 3. 3. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 1024–1025. ISBN 9780810888883 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
↑ Walton, Perry (2017). The Story of Textiles: A Bird's-Eye View of the History, of the Beginning and the Growth of the Industry, by Which Mankind Is Clothed. Forgotten Books. p. 199. ISBN 978-1330295052 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
1 2 3 Paul G. Pierpaoli (2012). Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812: A Political, Social, and Military History, Volume 1. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 429–430. ISBN 978-1851099566 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

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[homblog-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (25 January 2017). "What Was the Lowell System Used in the Lowell Mills?". History of Massachusetts Blog. Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[chaim-2] Rosenberg, Chaim M. (2010). The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell, 1775–1817. Lexington Books. p. 179. ISBN 978-0739146835 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[shi-3] 1 2 3 4 Shi, David E. (1985). The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. pp. 93–98. ISBN 978-0195034752 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[gilder-4] "Lowell Mill Girls and the factory system, 1840". History Now. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[kenneth-5] Harris, Skylar (2014). Kenneth E. Hendrickson III, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History, Volume 3. 3. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 1024–1025. ISBN 9780810888883 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[walton-6] Walton, Perry (2017). The Story of Textiles: A Bird's-Eye View of the History, of the Beginning and the Growth of the Industry, by Which Mankind Is Clothed. Forgotten Books. p. 199. ISBN 978-1330295052 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

[war1812-7] 1 2 3 Paul G. Pierpaoli (2012). Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812: A Political, Social, and Military History, Volume 1. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 429–430. ISBN 978-1851099566 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.