{"id":379,"date":"2015-08-30T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/30\/slavery-in-the-factory-the-lowell-experiment-2\/"},"modified":"2015-08-30T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T20:59:00","slug":"slavery-in-the-factory-the-lowell-experiment-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/slavery-in-the-factory-the-lowell-experiment-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Slavery in the Factory – The Lowell Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\nSlavery in the Factory- Part 2<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAccording to Arthur L. Eno, Jr. (Cotton Was King) \u201dIn man\u2019s
\nfour million year career he has revolutionized his economy only twice.  The first time was about seven thousand
\nyears ago when man learned to domesticate wild cereal grasses.  He went from being a hunter to a farmer\u2026..In
\nthe mid-eighteenth century the second economic revolution introduced factory
\nproduction of textile goods on a large scale using machines powered by energy
\nderived from water-wheels.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
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\nCotton Was King – A History of Lowell, Massachusetts, <\/span><\/div>\n
\nEd., ArthurL. Eno, Jr.,<\/span><\/div>\n
\nNew Hampshire Publishing Co.,1976<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nIt was the production of textiles that began the industrial
\nrevolution.  In the past, textiles for
\nfamily use were made in the home.  With
\nthe exception of royal workshops which produced a very small quantity of
\ntextiles for the royal entourages, or government controlled guilds producing a
\nvery narrow range of specific textiles, clothing and household linens were made
\nby family members, often after their work in the fields was completed for the
\nday.  Gradually, small mills began processing
\ntextile fibers, but each mill was specialized, that is, providing only one step
\nin the process.  At this time there were
\nother mills, of course: grist mills, saw mills, even gunpowder mills.    For power, the mills used water, which
\nfell onto a waterwheel.  <\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nEurope was already into their industrial revolution and
\nsending their exports around the globe when American industrialists began
\nfollowing their lead by firstly manufacturing the machinery necessary to
\nproduce large quantity of goods.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe story of the Lowell Offering is the tale of astute,
\nresourceful business entrepreneurs seeking high return for their
\ninvestments.  Francis Cabot Lowell was
\nan international trader who was much impressed with the European textile
\nindustry.  Gathering other investors he
\nestablished textile industry in New England and set a precedence for
\nindustrialization throughout the country. 
\nHe established  a factory system
\nthat produced the entire finished product within one mill.  This required large capitalization,
\nexpert  management of both resources and
\nlabor, producing cheap goods in quantity.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
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\n<\/div>\n

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\n<\/a><\/div>\n
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\nThe Lowell Offering- Writings by New England Mill women (1840-1845), Ed. Benita Eisler, Harper and Row Pub., 1977 <\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
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\nOther manufacturers relied on male laborers, some skilled,
\nsome not.  The Lowell Experiment hired
\nyoung, farm girls from New England.  To
\nassure the families of the safety of their daughters, boarding houses were built
\nand run by older women, while some girls lived in the city with relatives.  The wages for these \u201cmill girls\u201d were paid
\nin cash, monthly, and they were encouraged to open savings accounts in banks.  In other systems, wages were credits at the
\n\u201ccompany store\u201d and often the laborers became indebted to the company to the
\nextent that were not able to leave their employment.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAlthough the \u201cmill girls\u201d were undoubtedly better off
\nfinancially than if they had remained on the farm, there were also
\ndisadvantages.  They were required to
\nremain for at least one year and their lives were strictly regulated, working
\nlong hours.  Often the boardinghouses
\nwere overcrowded.  The working conditions
\nin the factory led to health issues: lung disease and typhus. <\/span><\/div>\n
\n     <\/span><\/div>\n
\n
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\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\n                         Cotton Was King, Page 124<\/span><\/div>\n
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\n
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\n  Lowell – The Story of an Industrial City<\/span><\/div>\n
\nProduced by the Division of Publications, National Park Service, <\/span><\/div>\n
\nU.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., 1992<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
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\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe early years of the 20th century saw  production in the Lowell mills falling.  Aging machinery was not upgraded.  The Yankee \u201cmill girls\u201d were replaced by
\nimmigrant labor.  The years following
\nWW1 saw a decline and hours of production and salaries were reduced.  To make the situation worse, there came the
\ndepression..  There was a short reprieve
\nduring the Second World War, but textile manufacturing would go the way of much
\nmanufacturing in the US, elsewhere.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slavery in the Factory- Part 2 According to Arthur L. Eno, Jr. (Cotton Was King) \u201dIn man\u2019s four million year career he has revolutionized his economy only twice.  The first time was about seven thousand years ago when man learned to domesticate wild cereal grasses.  He went from being a hunter to a farmer\u2026..In the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinnamonstudio.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}