Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817), the man who brought the power loom to the United States, envisioned an entire community involved in textile production. Although he died in 1817, his investors kept his vision and purchased land around Pawtucket falls on the Merrimack River in Massachusetts as well as the rights to a small canal there. They built several mills, the first of which opened in 1823. This is an 1835 report about three of the largest companies. Collectively they used 12 million, 256 thousand, 400 pounds of cotton per year. By 1848, Lowell mills produced 50 thousand miles of cotton cloth per year-enough to circle the world twice. Ironically, all of the cotton was grown and processed by labor of the enslaved in the Southern states while the abolitionist states of the North profited highly from the textiles made with cotton.
Greenfield Gazette and Franklin Herald. “Lowell.” May 12, 1835. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l05-045/. Accessed on October 16, 2024.
Please note: Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.