11/11 Lowell

One machine



Lots of machines

 We went to Lowell, Mass. This is one places that the Industrial Revolution started.
At first Lowell was a small agricultural area, when people first invented the power loom in England the Americans didn’t what to be lower than them. So, Mr. Lowell went over to England to steal the plans for the power loom. He remembered the plans and he created a blueprint of the power loom, but with a few adjustments. Then Mr. Lowell looked for the right place to build his mill. Unfortunately he died, but his partners found the Merrimack River. The Pawtucket Falls was the perfect place for the mill because of the water power. His friends planned out the city. They planned out the main canals and proved that their concept worked. Then his friends hired workers to make the canals. 500 Irish workers worked and dug the canals. When the gates were open to the workers, they hired Yankee farm girls and women for working the mills.

Factory and power canal

The first wave of the workers were the Yankee farm girls. The people who worked the mills were called “mill girls” There were different types of jobs in the mill at the bottom were the people who work the looms and at the top the owners. The Yankee farm girls came for opportunity and work, but as they worked their wages went down. Then they went on strike. They didn’t get there wish. So they left, but the immigrants were coming in from every where looking for work and found work in the mills. The immigrants would work for little pay and they hired boys to carry the cotton from floor to floor. The workers went on strike for so long that the managers finally agreed to the higher wages, but the business finally moved onto the south, because there were less taxes and the owners didn’t have to pay as much as they did in the north. Also the machines were old.

We went on a canal ride. The canal was a way providing power to the mills. The mills made power by moving the turbines with water.