Two events propelled these changes. One was the successful introduction of the power loom into American manufacture; the other was the organization of production so that all four stages of the manufacture of cotton cloth could occur within one establishment. These stages were spinning, weaving, dying, and cutting.
After closely observing the workings of textile machinery in Great Britain, Francis Cabot Lowell, a New England merchant, gained sufficient knowledge of the secrets of mechanized weaving to enable him, with the help of a gifted technician, to construct a power loom superior to any that had been built to date. It was as an enterpriser, however, that Lowell made a more significant contribution. He persuaded other men of means to participate with him in establishing a firm at Waltham that had all the essential characteristics of factory production (Economic Reasoning Proposition 1, scarcity forces us to make choices). This was the famed Boston Manufacturing Company, the forerunner of several similar firms in which the so-called Boston Associates had an interest. Specializing in coarse sheetings, the Waltham factory
The complexity of mechanized factories and the substantial economies of scale related to them are illustrated here with a cotton manufacturing plant (circa 1839) where cotton is being carded, drawn, and roven (twisted into strands).
Sold its product all over America. Consolidating all the steps of textile manufacture in a single plant lowered production costs (Economic Reasoning Proposition 2, choices impose costs). A large number of specialized workers were organized into departments and directed by executives who were more like foremen than technical supervisors. The factory, by using power-driven machinery, produced standardized commodities in quantity.
At Lowell, where the Merrimack Manufacturing Company followed the Waltham pattern, and at Manchester and Lawrence, the factory system gained a permanent foothold. In the second leading center of New England textile manufacture—the Providence-Pawtucket region—a similar trend emerged, although the factories there were fewer and smaller. The third great district, located about Paterson and Philadelphia, contained mainly small mills that performed a single major process and turned out finer weaves. But by 1860, New England’s industry had nearly four times as many spindles as the Middle Atlantic industry and accounted for nearly three-fourths of the country’s output of cotton goods. The factory had demonstrated its superiority in the textile field.
It was simply a matter of time until other industries adopted the same organization. Because technological changes in wool production were slower, the production of woolen cloth tended to remain in the small mill longer than cotton production did. But after 1830, woolen factories began to adopt the Waltham system, and by 1860, the largest textile factories in the United States were woolen factories. Again, New Englanders far surpassed the rest of the country in combining factors of production in large units; two-thirds of America’s woolen output in 1860 was made in New England.48
Technological advances in iron and steel production, such as the blast furnace and rolling mill shown here, epitomized the “modern” nineteenth-century factory.
World History
