GREAT AMERICANS—FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL AND THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Lowell was responsible, in six short years, for the founding of the American textile industry. He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1775, and became a successful merchant there. On a trip to England at age 36 he was impressed by British textile mills. Lowell was inspired to start his own manufacturing enterprise for this in the United States. In 1813, Lowell and several partners formed the Boston Manufacturing Company. He led them in both technical and business decisions. They introduced a power loom, based on the British model, with significant technological improvements. And they found a novel way to raise money in selling $1000 shares for the company (each worth over $10,000 in 2002 dollars). The revolutionary shareholder corporation they devised would rapidly become the method of choice for structuring new American businesses.

A very tall brick mill structure was built for the company next to the Charles River in Waltham Massachusetts, incorporating various mechanization technologies and converting raw cotton into inexpensive cloth. The Waltham mill integrated the chain of tasks, under a single roof what was to become  the American factory system of the nineteenth century. Waltham cloth gained immediate popularity. Another of Lowell's innovations was in hiring young farm girls to work in the mill. He paid them lower wages than men, but offered benefits that many girls, were eager to earn. Waltham boomed as workers flocked to Lowell's novel enterprise.

Lowell died of an illness in 1817, and left his Boston Manufacturing Company ready to expand and reward its investors handsomely. In 1821, dividends were paid out at an astounding 27.5% rate. The next year Lowell's surviving partners named a new mill town on the Merrimack River, Lowell, after their visionary leader. New England had embarked on the transformation of its economy from farming to industry. This was to be the model for dozens of other manufacturing enterprises through the 19th and 20th centuries.