Display of Cotton Cloth from the Boston Manufacturing Company
date: label: Date made
content: before 1930
name: label: manufacturer
content: Boston Manufacturing Company
notes: label: Description
content: This display of fabric samples was made by the Boston Manufacturing Company—an influential textile manufacturer—to advertise their products. The display includes the words, “Made by Boston Mfg. Co., Waltham, Mass. A group of Smart 1937 cottons. Showing the Variety, beauty, and versatility of the new cottons-the answer to why cottons are so fashionable-these swatches are arranged on the bias and all these fabrics are washable.” In addition to fabric samples, this display also shows cotton in various stages of production, from a fully cotton boll, to the cotton thread that would be woven into fabric, to the finished cloth. Specifically, the samples include a cotton boll, a (small) cotton bale, finisher picker lap, card sliver, combed sliver, slubber roving, intermediate roving, fly frame roving, Jack frame roving, yarn from spinning frame, six colored filling bobbins, and ten samples of cloth.
label: Description
content: Although this display may have been made shortly before the Boston Manufacturing Company closed in 1930, the company had a long history; their example would reshape cotton production, labor systems, and gender roles in the U.S. and worldwide. When the company was founded in 1813 in Waltham, Massachusetts, it was the first factory in the world to combine all stages of cotton cloth production at one site; previously, one manufacturer might spin cotton into thread and then send it elsewhere to by woven into cloth. For this reason, historians have referred to the Boston Manufacturing Company as "the world's first modern factory." This revolutionary new system is reflected in the display, which includes examples of every stage of production from the cotton boll to the finished cloth.
label: Description
content: The Boston Manufacturing Company was also famous for its labor system, called the “Waltham system” after the town it was located in or the “Lowell system” after one of the company’s primary investors, Francis Cabot Lowell. The Waltham-Lowell system focused on a specific labor source: the unmarried daughters of New England farmers. This was advantageous for the company because young women and girls could be paid lower wages than men and because young, single women--who were not yet occupied with managing their own households--were available to enter the workforce. Partly to assuage parents’ anxieties about their daughters leaving home and living in cities, the company established all-female dormitories to house their employees, where the “mill girls” lived a highly regimented life: they were held to a curfew and a moral code as well as a strict schedule with bells for waking up, eating their meals, and other daily activities. Nevertheless, for these “mill girls,” this experience created something previously impossible: the chance to live independently from their families and earn their own wages.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: manufacturer
content: United States: Massachusetts, Waltham
title: label: Title
content: Display of Cotton from the Boston Manufacturing Company
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Production and Manufacturing
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of the American Textile History Museum
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2017.0233.09
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0233.09
label: accession number
content: 2017.0233
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Display