Station 1

Lowell System

The Lowell system or Waltham-Lowell system, named after , was a paternalistic textile of the early 19th century that relied almost exclusively on young, unmarried women laborers. Because many in considered the employment of women to be somewhat immoral, factory owners emphasized the maintenance of a proper environment: they enforced strict curfews, mandated church attendance, provided their workers with a healthy diet, and maintained a high degree of cleanliness. Unlike many of the factories of the day, Lowell factories were clean, and the workers lived in well-kept dormitories and boardinghouses. Wages were good compared to the standards of the day.

The innovative system and the enthusiasm it incited in its employees drew international acclaim. The women wrote a newsletter, the Lowell Offering, that was widely read. Charles Dickens, who visited Lowell during part of his four-month tour of the United States, said of the place, "I cannot recall or separate one young face that gave me a painful impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to be matter of necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would have removed from those works if I had had the power." [1] (http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/primarysources/lowell/docs/dickens.html) The system's success was one of the factors that propelled Lowell and his fellow entrepreneurs (later the Associates) to great success.

The Lowell system almost immediately ran into trouble, however. The women, most of whom were recruited from the surrounding countryside, found transition to factory life and the tediousness of repetitive tasks difficult. And the competitiveness of the textile industry made the high standards of living and working conditions difficult to maintain. An economic downturn in 1834 led to a 25% wage cut, and the mill workers responded by organizing a union (the Factory Girls Association) and immediately going on strike. The strike failed, but the depression of 1837 three years later virtually destroyed the system entirely. Despite the agitation of the militant Sarah Bagley and her Female Labor Reform Association, conditions continued to worsen throughout the 1840s, and the mill owners began to seek cheaper labor in Irish immigrants. By the 1850s, the Lowell system had been abandoned.

Station 2

Lowell System

Francis Cabot Lowell revolutionized the early stages of industrialization in the United States, with his vision of an entire community involved in textile production. Upon returning from a trip to England to observe the Lancashire cotton mills, Lowell was inspired to create a system of textile mills and develop a "paternalistic" working environment of caring for the workers. This setting would attempt to care for the workers while governing their moral reputations. Lowell passed away in 1817 before he was able to see his vision become a reality. carried on the ideas of Francis Cabot Lowell and opened the first mills in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1823.

The system used domestic labor, often referred to as mill girls, who came to the new textile centers from rural towns to earn more money than was possible at home, and to live a cultured life in "the city". They lived a very regimented life - they lived in company boardinghouses and were held to strict hours and a rigid moral code. Women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five were recruited to work at the mills. The protective setting, promised by the mill agents, alleviated the parents' fears of letting their daughters leave the farms. The management offered cash wages, company run boardinghouses and cultural events for the women. The women agreed to a strict set of rules including church attendance and curfews. In the 1800s, job options were limited for women and the Lowell Mills offered them the opportunity to become money earning rather than a money-saving part of the family.

A further benefit to the mill owners was that the young mill girls were willing to work for two or three years at one-half to one-third the wages paid to men for similar work before returning home to marry and start a family. At $2.40 to $3.20 a week, the pay was still more than domestic servants and seamstresses, the two most common occupations for working women. Moreover, the work was not much more difficult than farm labor or home spinning, and most of the female workers enjoyed having more financial and personal independence that they had ever experienced in their paternalistic, male-centered farm households or in the claustrophobic confines of rural villages. The keepers of the Lowell boardinghouses where the women lived did impose strict discipline, with curfews, mandatory church attendance or Sunday self-improvement, and chaperones for male visitors, but the women were more than willing to trade these limits on their freedom for the money in their pockets and the camaraderie of their fellow workers, at least for a few years.

Work routines were strict at Lowell, with a twelve-hour day starting at seven in the morning, and only a half- hour lunch break at midday. Factory bells announced times for leaving and entering the plant, and the employees were fined for lateness as well as other breaches of the rules, including insubordination, profanity, or improper conduct. The work did not demand great physical strength, but it did require constant attention as the women generally tended carding, spinning, and weaving machines, checking for and then correcting broken threads and patters. In winter, work began before sunup and lasted into the darkness, when smoky whale-oil lamps illuminated the interior of the factories. Because cotton thread breaks more readily in dry air, overseers sealed windows shut and sprayed water in the air to keep the humidity high in the six-story factories. As a result, not only were light and ventilation blocked, but the "buzzing and hissing and whizzing of pulleys and rollers and spindles and flyers" became an unnerving cacophony in the enclosed machinery rooms.

It has long been debated by scholars if the intentions of Francis Cabot Lowells' "paternalistic" expectation of the Lowell mills were realized after his death. Through the documentation left by many of the female workers in the mill system, we can see that the hope for a clean, safe and nurturing environment was not always possible.

Station 3

Immigration to the US

Wars in Europe and American slowed immigration during the late 1700's and early 1800s. Newcomers included Irish fleeing English rule and French escaping revolution. Congress made it illegal to bring in slaves of 1808. By that time, about 375,000 black Africans had been imported as slaves.

During the early 1800's, New York City began to replace Philadelphia as the nation's chief port of entry for immigrants. The country's first immigration station, Castle Garden, opened in New York City in 1855. Ellis Island, the world's most famous station, operated in New York Harbor from 1892 to 1954.

The second wave lasted from 1820 to 1870. Almost 7 � million newcomers entered the United States. Nearly all of them came from northern and western Europe. About a third were Irish, many of them seeking escape from a potato famine that struck Ireland in the mid-1840's. Almost a third were German. Most of the Irish had little money, and so they stayed where they arrived, on the East Coast. Many Germans had enough money to journey to the Midwest in search of farmland. (Source: The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 10, Page 82).

In the mid-1880's, some states sent agents to Europe to attract settlers. Railroad companies did the same thing. Better conditions on ships and steep declines in travel time and fares made the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean easier and more affordable. In the mid-1800's news of the discovery of gold in California reached China. Chinese immigrants and sojourners streamed across the Pacific to strike it rich. Sojourners were temporary immigrants who intended to make money and return home. French-Canadian immigrants and sojourners opened still another path to the United States. They moved across the Canadian-U.S. border into the New England states and Michigan.

The flood of immigrants began to alarm many native born Americans. Some feared job competition from foreigners. Others disliked the religion or politics of the newcomers. During the 1850's, the America Party, also called the Know-Nothing Party, demanded laws to reduce immigration and to make it harder for foreigners to become citizens. Although the part soon died out, it reflected the serious concerns of some Americans.

During the 1870's, the U. S. economy suffered a depression while that of Germany and Britain improved. German and British immigration to the United States then decreased. But arrivals increased from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, China, Canada, and southern and eastern Europe. In 1875, the United States passed its first restrictive immigration law. It prevented convicts and prostitutes from entering the country. During the late 1870's, Californians demanded laws to keep out Chinese immigrants. In some instances, mobs attacked Chinese immigrants, who were accused of lowering wages and unfair business competition. They were also denounced as inassimilable and as racially inferior.

Station 4

Immigration to US

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Station 5

Transportation

Trains

In 1852, the first railroad tracks were laid in Hilliard, Ohio. These railroad tracks were completed in 1853 and the railroad opened in Hilliard. The railroad station was made up of three boxcars put together to form a building, and it was called Hilliard’s Station. The trains took people from the village of Hilliard, which was founded by John R. Hilliard in 1853, to Pleasant Valley. The trip fare to Pleasant Valley, what we now call Plain City, was 28¢. The railroad also had a train that took people from Hilliard to Columbus for a fare of 10¢. This train left Hilliard early in the morning for workers and shoppers to travel to Columbus and then return back home to Hilliard in the evening.

Around 1890, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company replaced Hilliard’s Station with a new building. This new building was a combination depot where the town’s transportation and communication needs were met.

Between 1800 and 1900, the way Americans moved around their world changed drastically.

In 1800, the only practical way to travel and trade across long distances was along the nation’s natural waterways. As a result, settlement clung to the nation’s coasts and rivers. A few roads connected major cities, but travel on them was difficult and time consuming.

One hundred years later, railroads sped along thousands of miles of track. Large ships moved passengers and freight across the oceans and smaller boats plied the nation’s rivers, lakes and canals. Bicycles, carriages and wagons rolled over thousands of miles of roads. Seventy-five million people lived coast to coast, many in towns and cities that had sprouted up along the new routes.

One of the fastest growing of these young cities was Chicago. In 1800 the state of Illinois didn’t exist; by 1900, its largest city was an economic powerhouse with over 1.6 million residents. Located at the intersection of river, lake and railroad routes, Chicago’s industrial, and commercial life depended on the boats and trains traveling into and out of the city. Lake steamers carried coal and iron ore to Chicago’s steel mills. Railroads brought livestock to the city’s stockyards and shipped sides of beef, pork, and lamb to the rest of the country.

Sears, Roebuck and Company and Montgomery Ward—both Chicago firms— sold everything including the kitchen sink and guaranteed delivery to the nation’s doorstep, or at least to the nearest railroad station.

By 1900, the average American had come to depend on far-flung places for the basic staples of life. Fruit from California, furniture from Chicago and clothes from New York now criss-crossed the country with a speed and ease unheard of a century earlier.

Station 6 - Transportation

It was during the that massive modifications of transport systems occurred in two major phases, the first centered along the development of canal systems and the second centered along railways. This period marked the development of the that converted thermal energy into mechanical energy, providing an important territorial expansion for maritime and railway transport systems. Much of the credit of developing the first efficient steam engine in 1765 is attributed to the British Engineer Watt, although the first steam engines were used to pump water out of mines. It was then only a matter of time to see the adaptation of the steam engine to locomotion. In 1769, the French engineer Cugnot built the first self-propelled steam vehicle, along with being responsible for the first automobile accident ever recorded. The first mechanically propelled maritime vehicle was tested in 1790 by the American Inventor Fitch as a mode of fluvial transportation on the Delaware River. By 1807, commercial steam boat services were inaugurated. This marked a new era in the of land and maritime transport systems alike. From the perspective of land transportation, the early industrial revolution faced problems over bottlenecks, as inland distribution was unable to carry the growing quantities of raw materials and finished goods. Roads were commonly unpaved and could not be used to effectively carry heavy loads. Although improvements were made on road transport systems in the early 17th century, such as the Turnpike Trusts in Britain (1706) and the development of stagecoaches, this was not sufficient to accommodate the growing demands on freight transportation. The first coach services had speeds of about 5.5 miles per hour in the 1750s. By the 1820s turnpikes greatly improved overland transportation but roads were not profitable if used to haul anything except compact and valuable goods. In a horse drawn era, road economics were clearly disadvantageous. Bulk products could be transported for about 100 miles, but in a slow, costly and inefficient manner. For instance, four horses could pull a wagon weight of one ton 12 miles a day over an ordinary road and one-and-a-half tons 18 miles a day over a well maintained turnpike. Comparatively, four horses could draw a barge of 100 tons 24 miles a day on a canal.

From the 1760s a set of freight shipping canals were slowly built in emerging industrial cores such as England (e.g. Bridgewater Canal, 1761) and the United States (e.g. Erie Canal, 1825). These projects relied on a system of locks to overcome changes in elevation, and thus linking different segments of fluvial systems into a comprehensive waterway system. Barges became increasingly used to move goods at a scale and a cost that were not previously possible. Economies of scale and specialization, the foundation of modern industrial production systems, became increasingly applicable through fluvial canals. Physical obstacles made canal construction expensive, however, and the network was constrained in its geographical coverage. In 1830 there were about 2,000 miles of canals in Britain and by 1850, there were 4,250 miles of navigable waterways. The canal era was however short-lived as a new mode would revolutionize and transform inland transportation emerged in the second half of the 19th century.

Station 7 – Changes in Technology

The Industrial Revolution boasts many advancements and achievements in technology and science. Inventions created during the Industrial Revolution paved the foundations of Industrial America. Transportation was greatly expanded upon, electricity was discovered, and industrial processes were improved. Below are some of the greatest inventions and achievements that occurred during the industrial age.

Cotton Gin The cotton gin was created by Eli Whitney. It was designed to weed out the cotton from its seeds. Previously, cottonseed had to be separated by hand and was very time consuming. The cotton gin automated the process using a small wire screen and hooks that pulled the cotton over the screen and separated the seeds.

Medical Achievements During the Industrial Age in the late 1800s, many breakthroughs in medicine occurred. The basic concepts of disease, sanitation, and medical care were all advanced upon during this time. Many of the ideas discovered would go on to fuel the extensive knowledge and treatments we have available today.

In 1870, Louie Pasteur from France showed the link between microbes and illness. He also proved false the concept of spontaneous generation - that life could spring from nonliving matter. He showed the bacteria are like other living organisms and can reproduce, and are always constantly in the air. He went on the event pasteurization, which kills the bacteria that ferment and cause the souring of milk, wine, and juices.

Pain management techniques advanced as well. Crawford Long, an American surgeon, had often used a gas called "ether" to make his patients unconscious and to eliminate pain. It was actually an anesthetic, and it was later developed upon and used regularly during operations. Unfortunately, many patients continued to die from infections due to unsanitary medical practices.

Station 8 – Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution that occurred in the 19th century was of great importance to the economic future of the United States. Three industrial developments led the way to industrialization in America:

1. Transportation was expanded. 2. Electricity was effectively harnessed. 3. Improvements were made to industrial processes.

Following is a list of key events and dates of the Industrial Revolution. Person Invention Date

James Watt First reliable Steam Engine 1775 Eli Whitney Cotton Gin, Interchangeable parts for muskets 1793, 1798

Robert Fulton Regular Steamboat service on the Hudson River 1807

Samuel F. B. Morse Telegraph 1836

Elias Howe Sewing Machine 1844 Isaac Singer Improves and markets Howe's Sewing Machine 1851 Cyrus Field Transatlantic Cable 1866

Alexander Graham Bell Telephone 1876

Thomas Edison Phonograph, Incandescant Light Bulb 1877, 1879

Nikola Tesla Induction Electric Motor 1888

Rudolf Diesel Diesel Engine 1892

Orville and Wilbur Wright First Airplane 1903

Henry Ford Model T Ford, Assembly Line 1908, 1913