"View of Boott Cotton Mills at Lowell, Massachusetts," Gleason's Pictorial, 1852. Color postcard of wood engraving.
The World Before
Before the factory, families owned their production. Economic independence was the normal condition of free labor, and its destruction was the Industrial Revolution’s most consequential act.
"There is a vast scene of household manufacturing, which contributes more largely to the supply of the Community, than could be imagined; without having made it an object of particular enquiry."
— Alexander Hamilton, "Report on the Subject of Manufactures," 1791
"It is computed in a number of districts that ⅔ and even 4/5 of all the clothing of the Inhabitants are made by themselves. The importance of so great a progress, as appears to have been made in family Manufactures, within a few years, both in a moral and political view, renders the fact highly interesting."
— Alexander Hamilton, "Report on the Subject of Manufactures," 1791
The Machine
"The Cotton Mill invented in England, within the last twenty years, is a signal illustration... all the different processes for spinning Cotton are performed by means of Machines, which are put in motion by water, and attended chiefly by women and Children... the operations of this mill continue with convenience, during the night, as well as through the day. The prodigious affect of such a Machine is easily conceived. To this invention is to be attributed essentially the immense progress, which has been so suddenly made in Great Britain in the various fabrics of Cotton."
— Alexander Hamilton, "Report on the Subject of Manufactures," 1791
Arkwright, Richard. Drawing Submitted with Richard Arkwright's 1768 Patent Application for a Spinning Machine. 1768.
In 1810, Lowell visited Lancashire mills; British law forbade the export of machines or plans, so Lowell memorized the power loom mechanics, then returned and reconstructed it.
“The power loom was at this time being introduced in England, but its construction was kept very secret, and after many failures, public opinion was not favorable to its success. Mr. Lowell had obtained all the information which was practicable about it, and was determined to perfect it himself.”
— Boston Associate Nathan Appleton, "Introduction of the Power Loom ; And, Origin of Lowell," 1858
In 1813, the Boston Manufacturing Company was chartered by the Boston Associates. In 1823, Lowell was founded as the first planned industrial town in America. Water-powered mills centralized all production stages; workers no longer owned tools or products. The design created workers who had nowhere else to go and nothing but labor to sell.
"The great era of the industrial city had not yet arrived. New textile towns, after all, were superimposed on rural settings and dramatically reflected the industrial revolution. They industrialized more quickly and thoroughly than older metropolitan centers and, much to the horror of some nineteenth-century Americans, seemed to foreshadow the worst of industrial Europe."
— Historian George Rogers Taylor, quoted in Artisans into Workers
"Greeting Card from Lowell, Massachusetts." Illustration. Britannica ImageQuest.
Recruitment
The Recruitment Campaign
"Help was in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of workpeople; stories that reached the ears of mechanics’ and farmers’ sons and gave new life to lonely and dependent women in distant towns and farmhouses... Troops of young girls came from different parts of New England, and from Canada, and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them at the factories."
— Former Tremont Mills operative Harriet H. Robinson, 'Early Factory Labor in New England,' 1883
"She makes regular trips to the north of the state, cruising around in Vermont and New Hampshire, with a ‘commander’ whose heart must be as black-as his craft, who is paid a dollar a head, for all he brings to the market, and more in proportion to the distance–If they bring them from such distance that they cannot easily get back. This is done by 'hoisting false colors,' and representing to the girls, that they can' tend more muchinery than is possible, and that the work is so very neat, and the wages such, that they can dress in silks, and spend half their-time in reading. Now, is this true? Let those girls who have been thus deceived, answer."
— Anonymous Operative, 'Voice of Industry Vol 1, No. 29,' 1846
— Anonymous Operative, 'Voice of Industry Vol 1, No. 29,' 1846
With mechanized farm equipment, the industrial revolution had made daughters expendable at home and dependent on the factory.
"There was little demand for female labor, as household manufacture was superseded by the improvements in machinery."
— Boston Associate Nathan Appleton, "Introduction of the Power Loom ; And, Origin of Lowell," 1858
"LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS. - View of Lowell, Massachusetts, showing the characteristic multi-storied
architecture of a New England mill town." Lithograph, 1834.. Fine Art. Britannica ImageQuest,
Motivations
"The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of education for some male members of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of the better class of millgirls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. I have known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known women to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There are many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early millgirls."
— Former Tremont Mills operative Harriet H. Robinson. "Early Factory Labor in New England." Fourteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Wright & Potter 1883.
"The commercial revolution made her expendable and the industrial revolution provided new occupational choices, opportunities to earn money and perhaps attain some degree of independence."
— Bruce Laurie, 'Artisans into Workers,' 1989
The Ideology the Revolution Collided With
Mill girls brought their revolutionary heritage into the factories.
"Striking women workers expressed their pride and sense of independence as ‘daughters of freemen.’ They were identifying themselves not primarily as working women, but rather as daughters of propertied rural farmers... They linked their action expressly to the tradition of the Revolutionary War, to the efforts of their ‘Patriotic Ancestors’ to secure independence from England"
— Thomas Dublin, 'Women at Work,' 1979
As independent ‘daughters of freemen,’ they felt no deference toward their employers; they would certainly not call them their masters
— Thomas Dublin, 'Women at Work,' 1979