TRIP #5, 2014--Farm to Factory

From Farm to Factory
Rain misted the windshield on the whole drive to Lowell this morning.  Andy's first words when he opened the drapes a few hours earlier were, "It's raining. We're not going to Boston. We'll head to Lowell instead."
Lowell today is still the fourth largest city in Massachusetts, with a population of about 112,000, but there was a time when it was the largest industrial city in the U.S.  The grand experiment changed how Americans lived and worked.

The trolley takes us along the track to the canal boat dock
in downtown Lowell.

We found the Lowell National Historical Park and registered for the 11:00 a.m. canal boat tour along the Merrimack River and through the 19th century power canal system.  But first, to learn background, we watched the 20-minute introductory film The Industrial Revelation.  That's NOT revolution misspelled.  Francis Cabot Lowell actually went to England where the Industrial Revolution had already begun.  An engineer, he memorized the textile mill set-up and the workings of the power loom, which in England was powered by coal.  England, recently a wartime enemy wasn't going to give him the details.  When he returned to the U.S., he dreamed of creating a system powered by water.  It would be cheaper and cleaner--his revelation.  Lowell never counted on water pollution from factory waste and dyes though.  His factory was to be a perfect world of production.
At 11:00 a.m. we boarded the trolley with Park Ranger Andrew and five other senior citizens.  As we rolled along the track in the old trolley car, he told us the history of Lowell and demonstrated with charts and laminated pictures.

On the trolley Park Ranger Andrew tells our small tour group
about Lowell and industrialization in America.

A group of wealthy Boston investors impressed with Lowell's idea, looked for an appropriate source of water power to harness falling water.  They found it in 1814 along the 115-mile Merrimack River.  In Manchester, New Hampshire, the Merrimack drops more than 40 feet, and the greater the drop, the more power is generated.  In Lowell at Pawtucket Falls, then called East Chelmsford in 1829, there were several drops within one mile for a total of 32 feet, but Lowell had several advantages:  it was closer to shipping, local farmers wanted to sell their stone-laden land, and a canal had already been dug to Newburyport in 1792 to float logs south from New Hampshire.

In spite of the rain, the canal boat glides along the water
between old cotton mills in downtown Lowell.

The investors offered the first farmers about $15 an acre. By the time they bought out the last one, they were paying $2,000 an acre.  And the farmers dug the canal.  Planned as a year's work, it took them four, and they even utilized the old canal and the natural feature of a cutting stream to make the work easier.  The canal twisted and turned through the farmland, but Lowell's dream of an integrated factory system with all sets done under one roof was becoming a reality.  Cotton textiles, the foundation of America's Industrial Revolution, fostered not only working-class wage labor in the mills, but also supported slave labor on the cotton plantations in the South.
At Swamp Locks we exited the trolley and boarded a canal boat, the James B. Francis, piloted by Tom.  Between 1836 and 1848, factories continued to be built.  Young girls between the ages of 15 and 30 came from farms to Lowell to live in boarding houses, work 73 hours a week in the mills at unskilled jobs for $3.50 a week-- more than a teacher's salary at the time-- and return home after four or five years.

Captain Tom pilots the James B. Francis canal boat into the
locks where the water rises for continuation of our journey.

Corporations regulated the lives of workers, exercising paternal control over the social behavior of young women.  Boardinghouse keepers enforced strict codes of behavior and conduct, and the corporations required church attendance and six-day work weeks.  The clanging factory bell controlled the lives of operatives.  Even after immigrants came to this country following the Civil War, women remained a large part of Lowell's textile work force.
By 1876, in less than 100 years, Lowell had grown to be a significant city.
Other connecting canals were built, including one through solid rock.  The last section of canal was completed in 1848. Then six miles of canals filled with water powered ten mill complexes and thousands of looms for weaving cotton and wool cloth.
"Actions by some small groups inspired others," said Ranger Andrew.
And immigrants came.  About 30 Irish workers walked the 29 miles from Boston to answer the call for male laborers to dig a straight canal.  Even though the men were immigrants, they weren't rejected.  Sponsor Kirk Boott was give two tasks:  built it wide, so it holds as much water as possible to power the whole system, and built it with granite walls, so it lasts in a stable fashion.

Inside the lock, we wait for the water to rise, even though the
level of the river is far below normal.

As leader of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company and Proprietor of Locks and Canals, Boott sold the unused water power to others, thus allowing many firms to open operations in Lowell of the 1800's.  More so than other founders of the city, he was involved in the day-to-day operations of the mill and the lives of its mill operatives.
By 1846, ten mill complexes powered more than 300,000 spindles and almost 10,000 looms to transform raw cotton shipped from the South into almost a million yards of cloth a week.
And Lowell was a microcosm of urban American society--an uneasy blend of many ethnic groups living in distinct neighborhoods.
Ranger Andrew had already pointed out the church in Irish Town or New Dublin.  "Boott donated one acre for the Irish to build a church," he said, directing our attention to St. Patrick's.  At the time the community had about 6,000 people.  The day the church opened, 3,000 showed up.
"After the Irish came other immigrant groups," said Ranger Andrew, "the Greeks, the Italians and Poles, the Vietnamese and the Cambodians, and more recently the Burmese.  Lowell just seems to keep reinventing itself."

Posted toll rates above the canal remind us of days long ago.

But unlike the farm girls who just went back to the family farms, the immigrant communities were here to stay.  Each new influx brought people willing to work for lower wages, people who wanted an opportunity to make a better life.
Lowell today is very different from the industrial city of the 1920's.  Factories have all left, relocated down South near the source of the cotton fiber and since moved to the Far East.  Workers unionized and demanded better wages; laws have established controls on working ages, hours and conditions; and regulations have set limits on pollution. Lowell transformed again.
As we passed through the locks, went out to the dam on the Merrimack River and came back through the canal, we marveled about the extremely low water level and the flood stage oh so many feet over our heads.


In the control house, water release is regulated for even flow
and maximum power.

An ingenious gate designed by James B. Francis protected the canal and the factories downstream in the case of a 70-year flood.  Three times people have lowered the gate and saved the factory town while upriver businesses and homes were washed away. The great 21-ton drop gate came down in 1852, 1936 and most recently in 2006.In days gone by people were highly impressed with a quick glimpse of Lowell.  Abraham Lincoln stayed a block away from the trolley stop, and Charles Dickens traveled on the same train tracks.  In the four hours he spent touring Lowell with factory owners he had nothing but praise for the wonders of industry.

A statue called The Worker outside
the Visitor Center pays
tribute to the American laborer.

We saw Lowell in the early 1970's when the factory town was dying with broken, deserted buildings and streets of rubble.
This morning we spent four hours in Lowell.  Now investors are converting old buildings into apartments and condominiums.  Students from the University of Massachusetts live here and study in Lowell, and businessmen live here and commute to Boston.  The city, reinvented, is growing again.
We stopped on the way back to Bedford at the deCordova Sculpture Park.  They charged $14 a person admission, and it was raining lightly. "No way we can walk there without getting wet," I told Andy.
We drove on to Minuteman Park.  "We can still walk to one house we missed yesterday," he suggested.

British soldiers, retreating along Revolutionary Road in 1775,
after the clash at Old North Bridge, see this farm home
of Captain William Smith as they march back to Boston.

Past the Hartwell Tavern, we found the protected beams and central fireplace of the Samuel Hartwell home.  Farther down Revolutionary Road was the two-story colonial farmhouse of Captain William Smith, brother of Abigail Adams.
Smith owned the second largest farm in the area.  On April 19, 1775, after the confrontation at Concord Bridge, a critically wounded British soldier was brought to their door.  For three or four days they cared for the man until he died.  As thanks for their kindness he told them about the gold sovereign sewn into his jacket lining, their reward for his final care.