THOUGHTS ON…LOWELL, MA.
In our last Thoughts On we wrote about Francis Lowell, one of the founders of the American textile industry and a key figure in bringing the Industrial Revolution to the US. In the process of learning about Francis Lowell, we naturally started to gather information about the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, which was named after him and quickly became an epicentre of the Industrial Revolution.
We found the history of the city to be quite intriguing, and so in the fledgling days of NY Textile Co. we decided to take a trip to Lowell to see the city for ourselves and in particular pay a visit to the American Textile History Museum, who although now sadly closed, were very supportive of our journey and provided some of the images below.
Incorporated in 1826, Lowell would come to be known as the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution.
The city was initially founded by the so called Boston Associates and specifically the Boston Manufacturing Company. Seeking space to grow from their first site on the Charles River in Waltham, the company decided to expand operations further north and set up shop on a new site located at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers. With both rivers having a large number of waterfalls and rapids, the site was geographically advantageous with a continuous and strong power source.
This expansion was facilitated by taking over the financially strained Pawtucket Canal in East Chelmsford, roughly 12 miles from the site in Waltham and just outside of Lowell. The site was ideal for hydraulic power development and they eventually struck a deal to acquire and assemble the land of nearly the entire island site encompassed by the Merrimack and the canal, including all of the water rights.
The power afforded by the rivers was so strong that the company calculated the site could support up to 60 mills. However, clearly a development of this ambition would prove a huge financial and managerial commitment and in order to overcome this they came up with an ingenious plan to spin off the canals and waterworks assets as a new company, the Locks & Canal Company, with a separate (albeit interlocking) board of directors.
By doing this what they effectively created was a wholly owned subsidiary which acted as a hydraulic power utility company by leasing out the power generated by the river to other mill owners. To do this they invented a water power unit to calculate a water leasing rate, then estimated how many water power units the works could support and set a unit price.
The Locks & Canal Company would quickly develop into the greatest industrial development in the country and by the mid 1830’s it served 25 mills and a variety of other water powered business such as machine shops. By the 1840’s its canal network was more than 17 miles long.
In addition to its utility function, the Locks & Canal Company also developed into a real estate and manufacturing business by leasing land and water sites to other mill operators, constructing waterworks and even the machinery for the waterworks. This was so successful that over time the property and manufacturing businesses were spun off too.
The system developed in Lowell proved extremely successful and it became a favoured venture investing model for the Boston Associates, who would acquire water rights on an undeveloped river, construct the power hydraulics (dam, canals, power supply for the first plant), build a textile factory and machine shop and then lease the remaining water power to other entrepreneurs.
The success of this model ended up with the Boston Associates owning hundreds of textile mills, using the profits from the mills to invest in railroads, establish banks and set up insurance companies. In fact over time they would end up owning about 40% of the banking capital in Boston in addition to 40% of all insurance capital and 30% of all railroads in Massachusetts.
As Lowells population grew, it acquired more land from neighbouring towns and developed into a fully-fledged urban center. Interestingly, many of the men who constructed the canals and factories were from Ireland, who were escaping the poverty and Potato Famine of the 1830’s and 40’s.
By the 1850’s, Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the US, and by 1860 there were more cotton spindles in Lowell than in all 11 states that combined to form the Confederacy.
However, like most good things it did come to an end as the city’s manufacturing base slowly declined as companies began to relocate to the south in the 1920’s. The city fell on quite hard times with Harpers Magazine describing it as “a depressed industrial desert” in 1931 and with only three of the major textile corporations active.
The next significant stage of the city’s development came in the the 1970’s and 80’s, when Lowell became part of the “Massachusetts Miracle”; a brief period of economic growth in Massachusetts focussed on the high-tech industry and financial services.
The city also saw thousands of new immigrants, many coming from Cambodia to avoid the Khmer Rouge, move to the city and started to re-position itself with a focus on culture. The most obvious example of this is the former mil district along the Merrimack becoming part of what is now the Lowell National Historic Park.
Today Lowell is the fourth largest city in Massachusetts and is home to the second largest Cambodian-American population in the US.
In addition to the city’s large student population owing to its two university’s, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Middlesex Community College, the city has a relatively vibrant art scene. This is perhaps best exemplified by Western Avenue Studios, which is home to the largest artist community on the eastern seaboard of the US and occupies three former mill buildings. Of no particular relevance to this story, but interesting nonetheless, Lowell is also the birthplace of both Jack Kerouac and Bette Davis.
Looking forward, what the future holds for Lowell is for anyone to ponder, but given the city’s seemingly innate ability to adapt, we remain optimistic. What we do know is that the vibrant history of the city and its long lasting impact on US industry in general and textiles in particular, is something that we have enjoyed learning about and slowly come to admire.HISTOR
