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This reliance on immigrant workers slowly turned the mills into what they were trying to avoid—a system that exploited the lower classes and made them permanently dependent on the low-paying mill jobs. By the 1850s, the Lowell system was considered a failed experiment and the mills began using more and more immigrant and child labor.
Six days per week, they woke to the factory bell at 4:40 a.m. and reported to work at 5 before a half-hour breakfast break at 7. They worked until a lunch break of 30 to 45 minutes around noon. The workers returned to their company houses at 7 p.m. when the factory closed. This system became known as the Waltham System.
The factory system began widespread use somewhat later when cotton-spinning was mechanized by a series of inventors. The first use of an integrated system, where cotton came in and was spun, bleached, dyed and woven into finished cloth, was at mills in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts. These became known as Lowell Mills and the Waltham-Lowell ...
The Merrimack Manufacturing Company is shown as dotted lines (demolished) at the Merrimack River end of the Merrimack Canal. After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Company, his associates (commonly referred to as the Boston Associates) began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts, along the Merrimack River.
Unlike the previous forms of labor (apprenticeship, family labor, slavery, and indenture), the Lowell system popularized the concept of wage laborer who sells his labor to an employer under contract—a socio-economic system which persists in many modern countries and industries. The corporation also looked out for the health and well-being of ...
Lowell, represented by lawyer David R. Yannetti, faces two counts of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, two counts of conspiracy and three counts of sexual conduct for a fee.
The workers would wake to the factory bell at 4:40 in the morning. They would report to work at 5:00 and have a half-hour breakfast break at 7:00 a.m. They would then work until the half-hour- to forty-five-minute lunch break at noon. At 7:00 p.m. the factory would shut down and the workers would return to their company houses.
A version of this story appeared in CNN Business’ Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.. For the last half-decade or so, the last thing any CEO wanted to wake up ...