The Industrial Revolution in England - Lowell National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) (2024)
British historian Eric Hobsbawm sharply characterized English industrial history: "Whoever says Industrial Revolution says cotton." Rapid industrialization transformed the lives of English men and women after 1750, and changes in cotton textiles were at the heart of this process.
The manufacture and export of various cloths were vital to the English economy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Before the Industrial Revolution, textiles were produced under the putting-out system, in which merchant clothiers had their work done in the homes of artisans or farming families. Production was limited by reliance on the spinning wheel and the hand loom; increases in output required more hand workers at each stage.
Invention dramatically changed the nature of textile work. The flying shuttle, patented by John Kay in 1733, increased the output of each weaver and led to increased demand for yarn. This prompted efforts by others to mechanize the spinning of yarn. The first advance came in 1767, when James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, allowing one spinner to produce several yarns at a time. Two years later Richard Arkwright patented the water frame, a spinning machine that produced a coarse, twisted yarn and could be powered by water. Coupled with the carding machine, the Arkwright spinning frame ushered in the modern factory.
The first textile mills, needing waterpower to drive their machinery, were built on fast-moving streams in rural England. After the 1780s, with the application of steam power, mills also grew up in urban centers. Initially, English mills relied on pauper labor, and for a considerable period mill owners had difficulty recruiting workers. Once in the mills, though, workers felt threatened bythe introduction of new machinery, and periodically resisted such moves by destroying power looms and setting fire to new factories. Nevertheless, the textile industry expanded rapidly, increasing production fifty-fold between 1780 and 1840.
The English Industrial Revolution had important consequences for Americans. It spurred cultivation of cotton in the South to meet expanding English demand for the fiber. The growth and profits of English textiles also caught the imagination of American merchants, the more farsighted of whom sought to manufacture cloth and not simply market English imports. But the degraded conditions and social unrest in English mill towns made many Americans wary of manufacturing. The formidable challenge was to import the innovations without bringing social ills with them.
Source: Lowell National Historical Park Handbook 140
The system also had considerable importance and significance in the United States economy. One of the Lowell system's paramount significance was the advancement of factory systems that increased productivity and contributed heavily to industrialization.
The most important of these inventions were: the "fly shuttle", "spinning jenny", spinning frame, "mule", and power loom. The dependence of most of the new machines on waterpower was important to the later rise of Lowell.
What were two of the main challenges that workers faced at the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts? Factory owners wanted to employ skilled workers, which were hard to find. Workers were forced to attend school, cutting down working hours. Child workers were not allowed to work at the mills, causing families to split.
Francis Cabot Lowell helped drive the Industrial Revolution in the textile industry. His creation of an integrated factory system allowed for increased production of textile goods at a portion of the cost.
The Industrial Revolution in England led to increased demand for raw materials from their colonies. This affected the colonised countries badly as they were required to produce large quantities of whatever raw materials were needed. These countries were also required to buy back the finished goods from England.
While there is no single birthplace of industry, Lowell's planned textile mill city, in scale, technological innovation, and development of an urban working class, marked the beginning of the industrial transformation of America.
It introduced a new system of integrated manufacturing to the United States and established new patterns of employment and urban development that were soon replicated around New England and elsewhere.
Beginning in 1820s, the nation's largest textile factories were built in Lowell and thousands of women and men flocked to the city to find jobs in the booming textile industry.
The Lowell Experiment takes an anthropological approach to public history in Lowell, showing it as a complex cultural performance shaped by local memory, the imperatives of economic redevelopment, and tourist rituals—all serving to locate the park's audiences and workers more securely within a changing and uncertain ...
Lowell garnered a reputation for the high standard of living of its working class and was considered an “industrial utopia.”[1] Some associated this high standard of living with an exclusively “American” standard of living, as working conditions and wages were poorer in Europe.
He took advantage of the innovative technology of the time like the water-driven power loom to make production more efficient. When Lowell passed away in 1817, the Boston Associates opened a new, much larger mill town and named it after him.
In the cotton mills, excessive dust, excessive heat and humidity (both necessary for efficient textile production), and hard, monotonous work were "quite sufficient to wage successful war upon the general health" and particularly on women's reproductive systems.
Most textile workers toiled for 12 to 14 hours a day and half a day on Saturdays; the mills were closed on Sundays. Typically, mill girls were employed for nine to ten months of the year, and many left the factories during part of the summer to visit back home.
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".
The Waltham-Lowell system pioneered the use of a vertically integrated system. Here there was complete control over all aspects of production. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, and cutting were now completed in a single plant. This large amount of control made it so that no other company could interfere with production.
This 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 1775, and became a successful merchant.
It introduced a new system of integrated manufacturing to the United States and established new patterns of employment and urban development that were soon replicated around New England and elsewhere.
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