Page 246 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Read the Document Harriet Hanson Robinson, A Lowell Mill Girl Tells Her Story (1836) 9.1

9.2

9.3

EaRly inDUStRialiSM Lowell, Massachusetts, became America’s model industrial town in the first half of the
nineteenth century. In this painting of the town in 1814 (when it was still called East chelmsford), a multistory brick mill
is prominent on the river. Textile mills sprang up throughout Lowell in the 1820s and 1830s, employing thousands of
workers, mostly women. Above, a photograph from c. 1848 shows a Lowell mill worker operating a loom.

For those who benefited from it most directly, the market economy provided firm
evidence of progress and improvement. But many of those who suffered from its periodic Quick Check
panics and depressions regretted the loss of the individual independence and security that a Which manufacturing sector first
localized economy of small producers had provided. These victims of boom and bust were fully adopted industrial production,
receptive to politicians and reformers who attacked corporations and “the money power.” and where was it centered?
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