Technology In The 1800s

The Lowell textile mills were a new transition in American history that explored working and labor conditions in the new industrial factories in American. To describe the Lowell Textile mills it requires a look back in history to study, discover and gain knowledge of the industrial labor and factory systems of industrial America. These mass production mills looked pretty promising at their beginning but after years of being in business showed multiple problems and setbacks to the people involved in them.

Textile mills grew because of new inventions that would make the product and people willing to work for a living. In the 1790’s, Samuel Slater built the first factory in Rhode Island, which had a machine that could spin thread and yarn. This allowed an increase in the New England area of spinning mills. In Lowell, Massachusetts, factories were created on the Merrimack River combining all parts of cloth production, such as combing, spinning, shrinking, weaving, and dyeing (Roark, 262). This also brought the change in the workforce by using girls as employees. These young women would work at the mill until they got married, and replacements were always

The Era of 1800 to 1860 proved to be some of the most technologically advanced years of the 19th century. This Era saw a rapid technological change in communications, travel. Through these advances helped the United States grow and prosper. Communication was now possible from the most populated to the least populated areas of the country. Telegraph wires stretched from north to south and east to west. The introduction of the Pony Express allowed the physical movement of mail from the east to as far west as California and as far North as Wyoming. Transportation was at its heyday, via water, rail or land, people moved across the country faster than any other time in history. This era showed

These mills were different as they had seen a major advancement in machinery whereby they were able to combine processes such as spinning and weaving under one roof. This meant more production of goods and an increase in profit as the companies only had to rely on the mills to not only transform raw materials but also weave them into finished goods – cloth. According to Tindall, and in contrast to the English mills, the founders of the Lowell mills opened up the mills in the countryside as they were less crowded, and their workers would be able to receive paternal guidance whereby they were required to live in the housing provided by the company and away from unpleasant urban conditions, and attend church every Sunday. The aim of the founders was to introduce a system whereby their workers would not only gain monetarily but also spiritually and form healthy relationships. Most of the factory workers at the Lowell mills were mainly of the female sex as most men had migrated westward in search of cheap land and economic opportunities. The Lowell mills also employed mostly young women because they were dexterous in operating the machinery, and were willing to work for lower wages than those paid to men. The “Lowell experiment” was supposed to provide the young women with tolerable work conditions, prepared meals, comfortable boarding houses, education and cultural privileges. However, as years passed by the expectations changed and they women became weary and formed strikes in protest to their conditions. A thorough analysis of Harriet Robinson’s Loom and Spindle: Or Life Among the Early Mill Girls shows the reasons behind the strikes at the Lowell

During the 1800s, our nation experienced a technological revolution. The United States’ population increased immensely due to immigration and to the development of technological advancements. During this time period, our country was transformed into a more industrial nation. Technological advancements occurring during this time, such as the Erie Canal, the expansion of railroads, and the invention of the cotton gin permanently changed American life.

African Americans had little opportunity to better themselves economically. Some laws prohibited them from teaching and from entering certain other businesses and professions. Large numbers of blacks had to take low-paying jobs as farm hands or as servants for white employers. Many others were forced to become sharecroppers or tenant framers. They rented small plots of land and paid the rent with money earned from the crops. Struggling to survive, many ran up huge debts to their white landlords or the town merchants. Fortunately, there were rays of sunshine forcing their way through this cloudy time.

industrialization was a big step for the world. “The first had come on a wave of new inventions in iron making, in textiles, in the centrally powered factory, and in new ways of organizing business and work. In the latter 19th century, a second wave of technical and organizational advances carried industrial society to new levels” (Document 3). As industrialization grows, people are inventing more and more items, which changed civilization. Examples are the telephone and the railroad, which have been recreated

According to the document, the Lowell girls lacked “the means of health and comfort” and “bathing-rooms fitted in the basement of each mill” (Document E). Those were just two of the many complaints about what should and need to have been fixed about the Mills. There were also complaints of the lack of proper house ventilation and the fact that the girls barely got any time for their breakfast and lunch breaks and their passing times. None of the workers at the Lowell Mills had adequate working conditions and were not treated very fair for the work they were doing for the

The factory workers at Lowell were mostly young women from New England farm families. During that time, employers hired women instead of men due to the shortage of labor and willingness of a woman to work for lower wages. As a result, for the first time in the U.S. history, the existence of women as wage earners became prevalent. By 1840, there were about 8,000 women working in the textile mills in Lowell, which was about 75% of the total workforce in those factories. Most of those women were from farms and came to mills for various reasons such as helping their brother to pay for college, helping with the home mortgages, to earn a supplementary income for themselves or for educational opportunities offered in Lowell. In some houses, the mill girls were the sole source of income. However, the work environment in the mills where these women worked was extremely poor.

The Lowell Mills, in Massachusetts, before the Market Revolution bosses acted like family and they were paternal to their workers. Prior to the market revolution, paternalism guided the relationships between employers and their workers. Paternalism meant that employers took care of their workers in a similar way to how they would care for their own family members. In times, employers would keep their workers working instead of firing them, and they would overlook transgressions such as tardiness. They would also take care of workers in their old age. As the Lowell Mills exemplified, the demands of the market, however, fundamentally changed this relationship. Between 1822 and 1839, Lowell's population grew from 200 to 18,000 people and the mills rivaled the world's major textile centers. Lowell was unique for its size, but also because it employed mostly young, single women rather than men, like the vast majority of other mills and factories. Lowell chose women because they received less wages since they were perceived as not having a family to feed. They were also seen as more obedient and less rebellious, and their smaller hands were believed to be more dexterous and suitable for detailed textile work. Lured by the potential of the market, the Lowell Mills departed from the traditional paternalism and instead sought to maximize profits. As the women's wages decreased, the pace of work and the regimentation of the work place increased. Moreover, workers became deskilled because they only made one part of the final product instead of the product in its

The Lowell System was fair towards its female workers in the early 1800s. In the early 1800s, Francis Cabot Lowell created the “Lowell System”. This recruited young, unmarried women from local farms to work in textile mills. The first textile mill was opened in 1814 in Waltham, Massachusetts. To begin with, as stated in Document A, women were paid monthly wages and were provided a room in a boardinghouse. They shared this room with three other girls. The girls were also all given three meals a day in a common room. Unlike at home, the women were paid for all of the hard work that they did. They were also provided a room to stay in that had two beds and a fire place in it for warmth. At home, the girls had to share a bed with their siblings and now had a lot more space to live in. The meals

Firstly, the Industrial Revolution affected women in the working and poor classes by allowing them to work in factories and mills. Before this time, women in the working class were primarily working unpaid jobs such as cooking and cleaning around the house for the family, but the industrial revolution gave women the chance to be paid and work outside of their homes (Frader, “Effects of the Industrial Revolution”, BCP). Most women obtained jobs in the textile industry. According to Dr. Christopher Wells, a professor of U.S cultural history at Macalester University, explained that ,“The town of Lowell, MA, for example, was incorporated in 1826 and soon hosted over 30 different mills.” (Wells, “Industrializing Women”, Teaching History). In the Lowell Mills, women expected to work at least thirteen hour days of constant and tiring labor in which women accounted for three-fourths of the workers in the mill. (Wells, “Industrializing Women”, Teaching History). Women factory workers typically made around $3.00 to $3.50 per week which was much greater than most women could earn in their hometowns (Dublin, “Women and

The Industrial Revolution was the main contributor of the development of factories and modern day machinery. The Industrial Revolution created hundreds of new jobs, influenced many new inventions, and created many new ways of creating and transporting goods. Many jobs including spinners, miners, factory workers, and farmers were beginning to rise in population, due to the new technology being created in the 18th and 19th centuries. The start of new inventions coming into view was beginning in Britain, with many agricultural tools creating new ways to plow and yield crops. Later on, it caused new forms of transportation to be developed, for example, railroads and canals. This essay will explain exactly how these causes began, and how they

In the years following the war, once everything had settled down and the United States of America was whole again, technology really began to pick up. At the start of the 1870s, America was in the beginning stages of becoming a very technologically advanced nation. Some of the key ingredients that America already had for the future were, electricity, steal, railroads, chemistry, and the most important one of all engineers of production. These engineers were innovators and wanted to be able to mass-produce anything that they could. In order to mass-produce at a high capacity, the engineers believed that America must create parts interchangeably. This enabled manufacturers to manufacture things such as, guns, clocks, bicycles, typewriters, and even engines very quickly. Whether America knew it or not, this was the beginning to something that would forever change the way the world operated.

During the 1800’s, England experienced an Industrial Revolution. With steam engines, coal, and steal coming about, England boomed with new factories and commerce. Previous to the invention and use of this machinery, England was a rural country, with many people making their own trades. Soon enough, machines with higher efficiency and speed began to replace hand-crafted materials. Factories with huge machinery began to pop up along with new job opportunities. By the mid-1800’s, fifty percent of people lived in urbanized areas, compared to less than