The Lowell Mills During the War of 1812, Francis Cabot Lowell, a Boston merchant, found a way to improve on British textile mills. In Britain, one factory spun thread and a second factory wove it into cloth. Why not,

Question

The Lowell Mills During the War of 1812, Francis Cabot Lowell, a Boston merchant, found a way to improve on British textile mills. In Britain, one factory spun thread and a second factory wove it into cloth. Why not,

Lowell wondered, combine spinning and weaving under one roof? The new mill that he built in Waltham,
Massachusetts, had all the machines needed to turn raw cotton into finished cloth.
After Lowell’s death, his partners took on a more ambitious project. They built an entire factory town and
named it after him. In 1821, Lowell, Massachusetts, was a village of five farm families.
By 1836, it boasted more than 10,000 people. Visitors to Lowell described it as a model community composed of “small wooden houses, painted white, with green blinds, very neat, very snug, very nicely carpeted.”

What was unique about the workers that Francis Cabot Lowell hired? How did he protect them?

Answer 1

Francis Cabot Lowell hired young, unmarried women from rural areas to work in his mills. He provided them with housing, meals, and medical care, and he paid them a wage that was higher than what they could earn in the countryside. He also provided them with educational opportunities and encouraged them to form unions to protect their rights.