INDUSTRIALIZATION

HST 210: THE US EXPERIENCE

 
 Introduction
• Market Revolution to Industrial Revolution
o Ea. Nineteenth Century
o Centralization and acceleration
o Gradual and uneven
o Persistence of home production
o Transitional form of labor
o Factors
o Wage rather than paid for product
o Shoemaking & clothing manufacture
o Full industrialization = work moved out of home
o Ownership
 Mill Girls of Lowell

• Textile production = female dominated

• 1820s -shift in direction of factory labor
• Lowell girls were America’s first female factory
workers
• Tiny percentage but big impact
• New possibilities
 The Beginning of Lowell

• War of 1812
• Interruption in trade
• Open door for American Industrialists
• 1814 Waltham MA
• 1823 Lowell MA
 A Plan…

• industrialization hazards and bad

reputation in Europe and America
• 1790s - Alexander Hamilton
• Choice rather than necessity
• Provide for families
• Spinning and weaving traditional
women’s task
 Lowell Model

• 1820s 1830s - yankee farm girls

• New path to independence
• Eager to work
• Long days and little pay
• Wages for home and self
• Reputation
• Free time
• Activities
 Lowell Model

• Housing problems
• Moral supervision

• Solutions
o Boarding houses
o Camaraderie
o cosmopolitanism
 Lowell Offering

• Literary output
• Content
• Popularity
• Company Role
 Decline of Lowell Model

• Economic pressures taking a toll

• Cut wages
• 1834 and 1836 response
• Panic of 1837
• Return to long hours and lower wages
• 1840s - try to organize
o Petition to MA legislature denied
 Conclusion

• Conditions of factory work changing

• 1840s - Immigration
• Pressure off of Textile capitalists
• Factory world becomes what was once
feared