T his American industrial pioneer left as his legacy a manufacturing system, booming mill towns, and a humanitarian attitude toward workers. In just six years, Francis Cabot Lowell built up an American textile manufacturing industry.
He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in , and became a successful merchant. He was instrumental in bringing the Industrial Revolution to the United States. The development of the Lowell system revolved around the life of Francis Cabot Lowell. Lowell was from an established Massachusetts family: his father was a member of the Continental Congress and served as a judge.
Lowell attended Phillips Academy and eventually graduated from Harvard. While his siblings pursued careers devoted to politics and religion, Lowell was more business-minded, devoting himself to establishing a successful textile mill. Before setting his plans in motion, Lowell spent two years touring factories in England and Scotland to examine their methods and machinery.
In , the company opened a mill next to the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. This is where Lowell developed and implemented a new approach to textile production. But scholars disagree about how Lowell developed a working power loom. Many economic historians claim that Lowell essentially stole the design from the factories he visited in the United Kingdom, where owners did not know he intended to copy their systems and machinery.
But Chaim M. Rosenberg argues that rather than stealing a design, Lowell brought the original design into a new stage of development. Known as vertical integration, this approach guaranteed that outsiders could not impede the production process.
Vertical integration is still an important strategy that both large and small companies use today in order to reduce transaction costs, assure the supply of important materials, improve coordination of production stages, and reduce competition by making an industry more expensive to enter. To solve the labor shortage, Lowell hired girls from nearby farming families, generally between the ages of 15 and This strategy contrasted sharply with that of the Slater mill, where entire families including children would be hired to work in the mill together.
But he actually had more than one motivation for his approach. In addition to needing labor, Lowell was concerned about the moral deprivation and social upheavals associated with the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Critics of the Industrial Revolution in Britain often pointed to the living conditions of workers. The housing was crowded with insufficient sanitary facilities and poor drainage. This led to outbreaks of typhus and cholera.
Factory masters would lock workers in during hour workdays, six days a week. Work was monotonous and sometimes dangerous. Occasionally these conditions led to violent action by workers. Lowell had seen firsthand how international conflict jeopardized the American economy with its dependence on foreign goods. The only way to neutralize this threat, Lowell reasoned, was for America to develop a domestic textile industry of its own that was capable of mass production.
To solve the labor shortage, Lowell hired girls from nearby farming families, generally between the ages of 15 and This strategy contrasted sharply with that of the Slater mill, where entire families including children would be hired to work in the mill together. At first, this was because they would work for low pay compared to men.
Often the working conditions were poor and dangerous. Eventually laws were passed to outlaw child labor. The factory system had a large impact on society. The two biggest problems with the factory system were dangerous working conditions and very low pay. Women and children would routinely work 50 hours a week, earning about 10 cents an hour. In conclusion, the factory system had more advantages compared to the domestic system.
Work was faster, cheaper, more efficient and got paid more than farm workers. But equal amounts of disadvantages came along such as severe injuries, strict discipline, long tiring shifts and lesser freedom. The main benefit of the factory system was that it was less expensive for the company and made the workers more efficient. The factory system is considered a form of production. Economies of scale — Factories produced products on a much larger scale than the putting out or crafts systems.
He paid them lower wages than men, but offered benefits that many girls, some as young as 15, were eager to earn. Mill girls lived in clean company boardinghouses with chaperones, were paid cash, and benefitted from religious and educational activities. Waltham boomed as workers flocked to Lowell's novel enterprise. Industrial Powerhouse When he died of an illness in , Lowell left his Boston Manufacturing Company poised to expand and reward its investors handsomely.
In , dividends were paid out at an astounding
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