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Lowell, Massachusetts has the dubious distinction of being the location in the United States where the Industrial Revolution took hold. Lowell's founders -- a bunch of wealthy investors looking for ways to get wealthier -- conceived of a new, hitherto untapped labor force: young, idle women living on nearby farms. This happy discovery, combined with some good solid industrial espionage to learn the secret of water powered looms, quickly built Lowell into a textile manufacturing center supplying 30% of the worlds cotton cloth. Below is a shot of one of Lowell's mills, and the ever-present clock that ran the lives of the mill workers.
Here is an interior shot of a water powered mill. As you can see, it took hundreds of hands to keep these looms fed. The belts you can see stretching from the looms to the ceiling turned the looms; the nearby river turned the belts. The whole thing was running when we were there. It was so loud in this room, there were ear plugs assigned to each of us, although in the Mill days, none of the workers wore ear protection. They had to use sign language to communicate to each other.
An exterior shot of a run-down mill outbuilding. Lowell is experiencing a bit of a renaissance now -- promoting itself as a tourist site. However, after the mills closed, Lowell fell on pretty hard times.
Here are the girls in front of an array of dyed yarn, which was spun in the factory. The girls look like they are having a great time, but that just demonstrates how deceptive image can be. They hated Lowell, for the most part. It does have a heavy, dreary feeling to it, even now.
Lowell once had an excellent street car system. Its remnants are now used by the NPS to ferry park guests about. The girls played on this street car cab, mugging for the camera.
The life of the "factory girls" was difficult. They usually came to work in their late teens, right from the farm and security of their families, and stayed for 3 years or so. The factory paid them a piecework salary, and gave them room and board. Each boarding house had a "house mother" who saw to the girls health -- physical, spiritual and moral. Below is a shot of the house mother's room. Small, but quite nice.
The factory girls all ate together, in crowded dining rooms like this one. Note the china on the tables, the fireplace, and the other homey touches. It was not prison, although some girls came to regard it so.
Lowell's planners intended to 'harvest' the work of young girls, with the express idea of avoiding the creation of a permanent working class. This worked quite well for a few years, until competition set in and drove the price of mill cloth downward. As the price plummeted, so did the wages paid to the workers. This had the result of driving most of the girls back to their farms and families. However, at this same time, millions of immigrants were flooding into the U.S., and they were so desperate for work they took the mill jobs. Irish, Russians, Jews, Poles, Columbians, Asians -- they all worked the mills, one group taking the place of another. Today, Lowell is an amazing amalgam of cultures and peoples, all descended from ancestors who once worked in the mills. According the one resident we queried, they mostly all get along well now. This is a shot of a stone home in Lowell's downtown historic district. It is still in use, as far as I can tell.
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