what was significant about the lowell mills of massachusetts

Artefact mills in Lowell, Massachusetts

Detail from map showing Lowell Robert Mills in 1850

The Lowell mills were 19th-hundred textile Robert Mills that operated in the City of Lowell, Massachusetts, which was named after Francis Cabot Lowell; atomic number 2 introduced a new manufacturing system called the "Lowell system", likewise titled the "Waltham-Lowell system".^[1]

Philosophical context [edit]

Francis Cabot Lowell sought to create an streamlined manufacturing process in the United States that was different than what he saw in Avid Britain. His imaginativeness relied on his "bang-up faith in the people of New England" and employees "would be housed and fed past the accompany and remain employed only a a few years rather than form a permanently downtrodden underclass".^[2]

Later on a trip to London in 1811 during which he memorized the plan power looms, Lowell founded the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1813 along with Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, and the other alleged "Bean Town Associates". This group of Boston-area merchants were "loving to the ideals of the original Christian ethic and Republican River simplicity" but were nevertheless "shrewd, faraway-sighted entrepreneurs who were quick to hug...red-hot investment opportunities".^[3] The Boston Manufacturing Company built its first mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814.^[1] Dissimilar the frequent organisation of artefact manufacturing at the time—the "Rhode Island System" established by Samuel Woodlouse—Lowell decided to lease young women (usually undivided) between the ages of 15 and 35, who became known As "grinder girls". They were called "operatives" because they operated the looms and other machinery.^[4]

The Lowell System [edit out]

The Lowell system, also best-known American Samoa the Waltham-Lowell system, was "unprecedented and revolutionary for its time". Not only was it 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 America, these mills combined the artifact processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, fundamentally eliminating the "putting-unconscious system" in favor of mass production of high-quality fabric. IT totally revolutionized the textile industry and "eventually became the model for different manufacturing industries" in the United States.^[1]

Abbott Lawrence Lowell milling machinery girls [edit]

Lowell solved the job of labor by employing young women (commonly single) 'tween the ages of 15 and 35, WHO became known as "mill girls". Unlike European industries, which had entree to "large, landless, urban populations whose trust on the engage system gave them few economic choices", American companies had to grapple with a small labor supply because the population was small and most loved farming their own land and the system independence that came with IT. In addition, 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 "hebdomadally or two weeks".^[6] In addition, Lowell devised a factory community: women were required to live in company-owned dormitories adjoining to the pulverisation that were run away older women chaperones called "matrons". Additionally to working 80 hours a week, the women had to adhere to strict moral codes (enforced away the matrons) arsenic well Eastern Samoa attend pious services and learning classes. Despite being "highly discriminatory and paternalistic compared to modern standards, it was seen as revolutionary in its day".^[7]

So, hiring women made good business sense; not lone did women have experience weaving and spinning, they could be paid less than men, thereby increasing the earnings of Abbott Lawrence Lowell's Beantown Manufacturing Fellowship, and were "more easily controlled than workforce". Additionally, his tiddly rule on his employees "cultivated employee loyalty, kept wages low, and assured his stockholders accelerating lucre".^[7]

In cable with the Boston Associates' worldview, the mill girls were pleased to educate themselves and pursue intellectual activities. They attended free lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson and President Adams and scan books they borrowed from current libraries. They were also encouraged to unite "melioration circles" that promoted creative writing and public discussion.^[3]

Decline [redact]

Social science unstableness in the 1830s likewise as immigration greatly affected the Lowell mills.

Overproduction during the 1830s caused the price of finished cloth to drop and the Robert Mills' financial situation was exacerbated by a minor depression in 1834 and the Scare of 1837. In 1834, the mills cut wages by 25%, which led the girls to respond aside staging an unsuccessful strike and organizing a labor trades union called the Factory Girls Tie. In 1836, they went connected another unsuccessful mint when their housing rates were hyperbolic. Conditions continuing to degenerate until 1845, when the Lowell mill girls formed the Young-bearing Labor Regenerate Association, which united forces with other Massachusetts laborers to pass laws aimed at rising working conditions in the state, which the mills simply ignored.^[1]

The women responded by going away out along strike and published magazines and newsletters the like the Abbott Lawrence Lowell Offering. They eve petitioned the Massachusetts state legislature to pass a police force limiting the work day to ten hours. The petition was washed-up only it showed Mill owners that their employees had become too troublesome.

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

Furthermore, mill owners, who were convinced that their employees had suit too troublesome, found a new seed of push in the Irish immigrants who were flocking to Massachusetts in 1846 to leak Ireland's Heavy Famine. These immigrant workers were by and large women with large families World Health Organization were willing to work thirster for cheaper wages. They also often forced their children to work Eastern Samoa well. This reliance on immigrant workers tardily turned the Robert Mills into what they were difficult to head off—a arrangement that exploited the bring dow classes and made them for good dependent on the low-paying mill jobs. By the 1850s, the Lowell system was considered a failing experiment and the mills began using more and more immigrant and child labor.

In the 1890s, the Southwesterly emerged as the center of U.S. textile manufacturing; non only was cotton grown locally south, it had fewer labor unions and heating costs were cheaper. By the mid-20th 100, wholly of the New England textile mills, including the Lowell mills, had either closed or relocated to the southmost.^[1]

Bequest [edit]

Away 1840, Lowell, Old Colony, 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 set off and replaced by immigrants by 1850, the grown, azygous women WHO had been used to earning their own money ended upwards using their education to become librarians, teachers, and social workers. In this manner, the organisation was seen as producing "benefits for the workers and the larger high society".^[7]

References [edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f 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 Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr., 1775–1817. Lexington Books. p. 179. ISBN978-0739146835 . Retrieved 27 Jan 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Shi, Jacques Louis David E. (1985). The Shield-shaped Animation: Plain Living and High Thinking in Dry land Culture. Athens, Empire State of the South: University of Georgia Press. pp. 93–98. ISBN978-0195034752 . 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 Triplet (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the Industrial Gyration in World History, Volume 3. 3. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 1024–1025. ISBN9780810888883 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
^ Walton, Perry (2017). The Floor of Textiles: A Bird's-Eye View of the History, of the Beginning and the Growth of the Industry, by Which Humankind Is Clothed. Unnoticed Books. p. 199. ISBN978-1330295052 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c Apostle Paul G. Pierpaoli (2012). Spencer C. Tucker (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812: A Political, Social, and War machine Story, Volume 1. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC's-Clio. pp. 429–430. ISBN978-1851099566 . Retrieved 27 January 2018.

External links [edit]

Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. MA-89, "Bay State Robert Mills, 95 Span Street, Lowell, Middlesex County, Mummy", 2 photos, 9 information pages, 2 pic caption pages
HAER Zero. Milliampere-89-A, "Massachuset Mills, Cloth Board-Surgical incision 15", 18 photos, 18 data pages, 3 photo caption pages

what was significant about the lowell mills of massachusetts

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_mills