United States 1823-1836

Synopsis

After 1823 a factory town grew up along the banks of the Merrimack River at Pawtucket Falls in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, which by 1836 had become the mill town of Lowell. The first planned industrial city in the nation, Lowell at this date had a population of 16,000 and employed more than 6,000 operatives in eight brick mills. A series of innovations in industrial organization and operation distinguished Lowell from earlier textile undertakings and made the town the center of the industrial revolution in the United States before the Civil War. The Lowell experiment also brought young, single, rural women into industrial employment in large numbers for the first time in American history and saw some of the nation's earliest labor protests among working women. The Lowell experiment prospered and set an example that was widely followed at first. With the entry into the market...