Managing Workers, Managing Markets

Historian, Dr. Gray Fitzsimons began day four with Winslow Homer's painting The Morning Bell. He suggested that the central female dressed in red was a veteran mill worker who had the means to afford expensive clothes. His presentation described the Waltham-Lowell mill system where water was used to power textile factories. He told the story of how Francis Cabot Lowell memorized details of the British power loom and worked with Paul Moody to build it in America. In 1813, Lowell set his sights on the Charles River in Waltham, MA to build the first American textile factory. Lowell also employed 600-800 people who were mostly Yankee farm girls who wanted to earn extra money for their families. The Waltham mill proved to be highly profitable, but to increase production meant that the Boston Manufacturing Company had to find a bigger and more powerful source of water power. They found it next to the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, MA. Enter Kirk Boott, a wealthy Boston merchant and skilled former British army officer, who began construction of a canal system to harness the Merrimack river. Fitzsimons stated, "Lowell became the center of hydraulic engineering."
Later in the morning, Dr. Tim Lavallee, taught how a production line system operated in the Boott Cotton Mills as teachers became line workers.
Historian, Robert Forrant from UMass Lowell lectured on Labor Responses to the New Industrial Order. He told the story of The slaughter at the Pemberton, a Lawrence mill building that collapsed in 1860 due to substandard construction. Forrant used the story to illustrate that workers had no health or safety protections in the mill system. Women started to oppose the factory system by the 1830s and petitioned to set the work day from 12 to 10 hours. Teachers learned about the 10 hour movement through a primary source based reenactment of the 1845 MA legislature hearing on the petition. The petition was denied, but it demonstrated that women had the courage to publicly expose the ills of the mill system.

More images.