which best describes the lowell (or waltham) system
Waltham - Lowell system - wikipedia Waltham - Lowell system Jump to : navigation , search Boston Manufacturing Co. , Waltham , Massachusetts The Waltham - Lowell system was a labor and production model employed in the United States , particularly in New England , during the early years of the American textile industry in the early 19th century . Made possible by inventions such as the spinning jenny , spinning mule , and water frame around the time of the American Revolution , the textile industry was among the earliest mechanized industries , and models of production and labor sources were first explored here . The system used domestic labor , often referred to as mill girls , who came to the new textile centers from rural towns to earn more money than they could at home , and to live a cultured life in `` the city '' . Their life was very regimented - they lived in company boardinghouses and were held to strict hours and a moral code . As competition grew in the domestic textile industry and wages declined , strikes began to occur , and with the introduction of cheaper imported foreign workers by mid-century , the system proved unprofitable and collapsed . Contents ( hide ) 1 Rhode Island System 2 Characteristics of the System 3 Waltham 4 Lowell 5 Decline 6 See also 7 References 8 Notes 9 External links Rhode Island system ( edit ) Slater Mill The precursor to the Waltham - Lowell system was seen in Rhode Island , where British immigrant Samuel Slater set up his first spinning mills in the 1790s . Slater drew on his British village experience to create a factory system called the `` Rhode Island System , '' based on the customary patterns of family life in New England villages . Children aged 7 to 12 were the first employees of the mill ; Slater personally supervised them closely . The first child workers were hired in 1790 . It is highly unlikely that Slater resorted to physical punishment , relying on a system of fines . Slater first tried to staff his mill with women and children from afar , but that fell through due to the close - knit framework of the New England family . He then brought in whole families , creating entire towns . He provided company - owned housing nearby , along with company stores ; he sponsored a Sunday School where college students taught the children reading and writing . Characteristics of the system ( edit ) The Waltham - Lowell system pioneered the use of a vertically integrated system . Here there was complete control over all aspects of production . Spinning , weaving , dying , 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 . The Waltham mill also pioneered the process of mass production . This greatly increased the scale of manufacturing . Water powered line shafts and belts now connected hundreds of power lines . The increase in manufacturing occurred so rapidly that there was no localized labor supply in the early 19th century that could have sufficed . Lowell solved this problem by hiring young women . Waltham ( edit ) After the successes of Samuel Slater , a group of investors now called The Boston Associates and led by Newburyport , Massachusetts merchant Francis Cabot Lowell devised a new textile operation on the Charles River in Waltham , Massachusetts , west of Boston . This new firm , the first in the nation to place cotton - to - cloth production under one roof , was incorporated as the Boston Manufacturing Company in 1814 . The Boston Associates tried to create a controlled system of labor unlike the harsh conditions they observed while in Lancashire , England . The owners recruited young New England farm girls from the surrounding area to work the machines at Waltham . The mill girls lived in company boarding houses and were subject to strict codes of conduct and supervised by older women . They worked about 80 hours per week . Six days per week , they woke to the factory bell at 4 : 40am and reported to work at 5am and had a half - hour breakfast break at 7am They worked until a lunch break of 30 to 45 minutes around noon . The workers returned to their company houses at 7pm when the factory closed . This system became known as the Waltham System . Lowell ( edit ) One of the last remaining textile mill boarding houses in Lowell , Massachusetts on right . Part of the Lowell National Historical Park Tintype of two young women in Lowell , Massachusetts While the Boston Manufacturing Company proved immensely profitable , the Charles River had very little potential as a power source . Lowell died prematurely in 1817 , and soon his partners traveled north of Boston to East Chelmsford , Massachusetts , where the large Merrimack River could provide far more power . The first mills , the Merrimack Manufacturing Company , were running by 1823 . The settlement was incorporated as the town of Lowell in 1826 , and became the city of Lowell ten years later . Boasting ten textile corporations , all running on the Waltham System and each considerably larger than the Boston Manufacturing Company , Lowell became one of the largest cities in New England and the model , now known as the Lowell System , was copied elsewhere in New England , often in other mill towns developed by the Boston Associates . Examples include Manchester , New Hampshire ; Lewiston , Maine ; Lawrence , Massachusetts ; and Holyoke , Massachusetts . Decline ( edit ) Eventually , cheaper and less organized foreign labor replaced the mill girls . Even by the time of the founding of Lawrence in 1845 , there were questions being raised about its viability . One of the leading causes of this transition to foreign labor and the demise of the system was the coming of the Civil War . Girls went to be nurses , back to their farms , or into positions that men had left when they went to the army . These girls were out of the mills for the duration of the war and when the mills reopened after the war , the girls were gone because they no longer needed the mills . They had rooted into their new occupations or moved on in life to the point where the mill was no longer suitable for them . The lack of mill girls created a movement towards Irish immigrants . The Irish community that was building in Lowell , Massachusetts was not exclusively female unlike the grouping of mill girls in the dormitories . The proportion of male employment at the mill increased which rapidly changed the demographics of the people that work there . The Lowell plant became heavily dependent on the foreign lower - class , especially the Irish immigrants that flocked to Massachusetts . This reliance on foreign workers forced the mills to become what they had been trying to avoid with the mill girls . Poverty snuck up on them and they were forced to deal with slums and a poor lower - class . These immigrants tended to have families and they did not live in the dormitory style of the mill girls . While in many cases the boardinghouses outlived the system , families of immigrant workers typically lived in tenement neighborhoods , and off company property . See also ( edit ) Mills and Factories in the Industrial United States Lowell Mill Girls References ( edit ) Dublin , Thomas ( 1989 ) . `` Review : Lowell , Massachusetts and the Reinterpretation of American Industrial Capitalism '' . The Public Historian . National Council on Public History . 11 ( 4 ) : 159 -- 64 . doi : 10.2307 / 3378079 . ISSN 1533 - 8576 . JSTOR 3378079 . ( Registration required ( help ) ) . MacDonald , Allan ( 1937 ) . `` Lowell : A Commercial Utopia '' . The New England Quarterly . 10 ( 1 ) : 37 -- 62 . doi : 10.2307 / 360145 . ISSN 0028 - 4866 . JSTOR 360145 . ( Registration required ( help ) ) . Notes ( edit ) Jump up ^ No. 384 : Samuel Slater ^ Jump up to : Dublin 1989 , p. 160 Jump up ^ Walton 2010 , p. 168 Jump up ^ Vance 1966 , p. 316 Jump up ^ Alan Alelrod and Charles Phillips ( 2008 ) . What Every American Should Know About American History : 225 Events that Shaped the Nation . Avon , MA : Adams Media ; 3rd edition . p. 86 . ISBN 978 - 1 - 59869 - 428 - 4 . Jump up ^ http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/mhr/2/ford.html Peter A. Ford - `` Father of the whole enterprise '' Charles S. Storrow and the Making of Lawrence , Massachusetts , 1845 -- 1860 ^ Jump up to : MacDonald 1937 , p. 61 ^ Jump up to : Dublin 1975 , p. 34 External links ( edit ) Fire map of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company and Dutton and Worthen Street boardinghouses , 1924 Boardinghouses and their demolition , 1960s More boardinghouses , 1960s Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waltham-Lowell_system&oldid=815641308 '' Categories : Lowell , Massachusetts History of the textile industry Hidden categories : Pages with login required references or sources Talk Contents About Wikipedia Add links This page was last edited on 16 December 2017 , at 03 : 05 . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply . By using this site , you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation , Inc. , a non-profit organization . About Wikipedia
1. Waltham-Lowell system
2. American textile industry
3. Mill girls
4. Vertical integration
5. Decline of the system