History : Lowell
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Links Prologue
Spirit of the Past
America's self-image is founded in part on the nation's rapid
rise to industrial preeminence by World War I. 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. Visitors can see today the working components of this
early manufacturing center---the dam and nearly six miles of canals
that harnessed the energy of the Merrimack River; the mills where
the cloth was produced; a boardinghouse representing the dozens
of like buildings that housed the workers; the churches where
they practiced their faiths; the ethnic neighborhoods. These are
the roots of American industry and of American working people.
The
Lowell story is as much about change as about beginnings. Just
as the city today reflects the deindustrialization happening across
our northern states, so its historical structures represent one
of the greatest transitions in American social history. This was
the shift from a rural society, where most people adapted their
lives to natural cycles, to a society in which people responded
to factory bells, where work was the same year round and did not
cease at nightfall. In these pages historian Thomas Dublin tells
of the changes undergone by Lowell: the city's role in the Industrial
Revolution; the transition on the mill floor from Yankee women
to immigrant men and women; the transition from waterpower to
steam; Lowell's decline following the shift of textile capital
to the South.
Nowhere is Lowell's transformation more vividly seen than in
its workforce. Successive waves of immigrants came to Lowell,
taking the lowest paying jobs as those who had come before climbed
the economic ladder. One of the most moving of the city's monuments
is the group of 20 bronze bricks laid in the sidewalk that leads
to Boott Mills. Inscribed on them are names like True W Brown,
Patrick Kelley, Charles Demers, Karoline Alrzybala kinds of Yankee,
Irish, French-Canadian, and Polish names still found in Lowell.
In this unobtrusive setting is distilled the spirit of the city:
At places like Boott Mills, one can touch Lowell's past. Its people
remain the vital connection to the generations who labored here.
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Prologue
Seeds of Industry
Lowell's Southern Connection
The Industrial Revolution in
England
Early American Manufacturing
Transportation Canals
Making Textiles
The Waltham-Lowell System
Lowell Machine Shop
Lowell's Canal System
Waterpower in
Lowell
Mill Power Drives
Power Looms
"Mill Girls"
Boarding Houses
Immigrants
Working Conditions
Products of the Mills
Lowell's Other Industries
Decline and Recovery
Rebirth of Lowell
Jack Kerouac
Reading List
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