Massachusetts — Interdisciplinary Explorations: Mill Life in the 1840s

The following excerpt is from Prentice Hall's Interdisciplinary Explorations: Mill Life in the 1840s pages 14–15.

Related materials can also be found in the Interdisciplinary Explorations Team Planning Guide on pages 22–23 and in The American Nation: Beginnings to 1877 on page 299.

LOWELL: THE INVENTION OF A FACTORY TOWN

A Case in Point

Have new stores, businesses, or places where people work recently moved to your community? Maybe a group of people worked together to build a mall or shopping center. More people were needed for the jobs created by these new businesses. Maybe more people moved to your town. A similar thing happened in Lowell, Massachusetts, about 170 years ago.

Words to know

principle (PRIHN-suh-puhl)	a basic truth, law, or belief
artisan (AHR-tuh-z'n)	a worker in a skilled trade; a craftsman
philosopher (fih-LAHS-uh-fuhr)	person who studies the principles of human thought, conduct, and knowledge

A Boston merchant by the name of Francis Cabot Lowell toured several British textile mills in the early 1800s. During his trip, he saw one factory that spun thread while another wove it into cloth. Lowell had an idea! Why not combine spinning and weaving under one roof? This trip to England led to Lowell's formation of the Boston Associates. This group of partners built a successful textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. It had everything needed to turn raw cotton into cloth in one factory.

The Boston Associates continued after Lowell's death. Soon they started something totally new in the United States: the mill town. They built an entire factory town on the Merrimack River in Massachusetts and named it after Francis Cabot Lowell. This factory town was called The Lowell Experiment. Almost everything in the town was owned or run by the factory owners.

In 1821, Lowell, Massachusetts, was a tiny village with only five farm families. By 1836, the population had grown to more than 10,000. The village had become a town with factories, banks, schools, stores, a library, and a church. Visitors flocked to this showplace of American industry. One visitor described Lowell this way: "There are huge factories, five, six, or seven stories high, each capped with a little white belfry . . . which stands out sharply against the dark hills on the horizon. There are small wooden houses, painted white, with green blinds, very neat, very snug, very nicely carpeted, and with a few small trees around them."

You cannot please all of the people all of the time. While there were many people in the Northeast who were impressed with the new factory system, there were some folks who were very unhappy. These people believed that the factory system went against everything America stood for and would destroy some basic American principles, beliefs, and values. Many artisans and farmers were among those who opposed the factory system.

Henry David Thoreau was a famous writer and philosopher. In 1845, he expressed his concern about factories in a single sentence: "Where is this division of labor to end?" Thoreau was writing about the fact that in factories, one worker did one boring job over and over again while another worker did another boring job over and over again. Other people also worried as they watched entire families go off to work in the mills. They predicted a day when the children who worked there would be treated poorly. Sometimes predictions do come true, as you will see when you read further in this book.

Social Studies Link

Though many people began moving from the farms to the cities, not everyone gave up farming and the "country" way of living. Many people remained in small villages in the early 1800s. There, they had general stores, one-room schoolhouses, and herds of cows and sheep and other farm animals. People called hogreeves roamed the village streets to keep up with hogs that ate the garbage thrown out at night.

People in the city forgot their country roots and began looking down on country folks, calling them rustics. City people grew used to buying ready-made goods. The country life was the "handmade" life. The city life was becoming the "store-bought" life. What do you think were the advantages and disadvantages of each lifestyle? You may wish to jot down your thoughts in your journal.

Language Arts Link

For information about 19th-century labor conditions, industrial equipment, and buildings in Lowell, write a letter to the Lowell National Historical Park. They may have facts and pictures to share with your class or books they could lend your library. In your letter, don't forget to include an inside address, heading, date, greeting, and closing.

Write to:
Lowell National Historical Park
169 Merrimack St.
Lowell, MA 01852