While wages were far lower than those received by men, they were enough to make meaningful contributions to the women’s families, and young women from across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine migrated to Lowell to take up factory jobs. Unlike other factory systems, Lowell paid the women-or “mill girls,” as they were known-in cash. Lowell’s solution? To hire young, single women who would live in dormitories supervised by older women, work in the mills (often for around 80 hours a week), and receive training and instruction to move on to better jobs after a few years. It also meant, however, the need for a disciplined workforce that would adhere to a factory schedule of production. The introduction of power mills meant that Lowell did not need to hire laborers who were as physically strong as hand millers needed to be. Throughout the exhibits and tours offered in the Lowell National Historical Park, visitors can observe and experience parts of this system and its decline in the second half of the nineteenth century. The system that emerged, known as the Lowell or Lowell-Waltham System, endured from the 1810s until around 1850. textile production in two ways: by introducing the English power looms and mass production, and by avoiding the social ills associated with British industrialization (child labor, low wages, stagnant job prospects). When Francis Cabot Lowell built his first mill in Waltham, MA in 1814, he was determined to improve upon existing U.S. Her ambivalent sketch of life as a mill operative in the mid-1840s marked the end of an era in textile manufacturing. “Few would wish to spend a whole life in a factory, and few are discontented who do thus seek a subsistence for a term of months or years,” wrote an anonymous woman mill worker in 1845. The system began to fall apart as a second generation of mill owners abandoned the paternalism of the early system and pursued every option possible to cut costs and exploit an increasingly immigrant, increasingly impoverished labor force. The system was paternalistic, using its all-encompassing position to both control woman laborers and provide them opportunities for advancement and education. Hiring young, single women kept labor costs down (the mills were not obliged to pay them as much as male workers). For a time, it appeared that Lowell was successful. In the early 19th century, Francis Cabot Lowell created the Lowell System, which was meant to produce textiles more cheaply than elsewhere in the United States while avoiding the worst abuses of the English factory system.
The Industrial Revolution, though most commonly associated with men and machines, wrought profound changes on the lives of women, as well. The Visitor Center on Market Street is a good place to start. Lowell National Historical Park includes a variety of museums, exhibits, and tours that explore the history of this former factory town.
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