page_title: Waltham-Lowell system
section_title: Lowell
hierarchical_section_title: Waltham-Lowell system / Characteristics / Lowell
caption_attribution_description: 2 Young Women (Tintype)
context_page_description: The Waltham-Lowell system was a labor and production model employed during the rise of the textile industry in the United States, particularly in New England, amid the larger backdrop of rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution 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 the 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.
context_section_description: While the Boston Manufacturing Company proved immensely profitable, the Charles River had very little potential as a power source.  Francis Cabot 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.
caption: Tintype of two young women in Lowell, Massachusetts (circa 1871)
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