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Collection: Massachusetts
The Lawrence Textile Strike was a public protest mainly of immigrant workers from several countries, including Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Canada, France, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Syria, and Turkey. According to the 1910 census, 65% of mill workers (many of whom eventually struck) lived in the United States for less than 10 years; 47% for less than five years.
Our collections are being digitized and made available through our website, OCLC WorldCat, Internet Archive, Digital Commonwealth, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
One of the most significant struggles for workers’ rights began on January 12, 1912, in Lawrence, Mass., when thousands of textile workers began a walkout that would come to be known as the Bread and Roses Strike, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and the Singing Strike. Read an overview and find teaching resources below.
Lowell’s water-powered textile mills catapulted the nation – including immigrant families and early female factory workers – into an uncertain new industrial era. Nearly 200 years later, the changes that began here still reverberate in our shifting global economy. Explore Lowell, a living testament to the dynamic human story of the industrial revolution.
The film describes the extraordinary anti-slavery efforts taking place in the mid-19th century in Lowell. Forrant and Grooms visit the sites that still exist in downtown Lowell where abolitionist activity occurred and where freedom seekers operated businesses.
The Lowell mill girls were young female workers who came to work in industrial corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States.
In the early 19th century the United States of America began to experience many changes. In parts of the country there was a shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
In the early 19th century the United States of America began to experience many changes. In parts of the country there was a shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Lowell built on the advances made in the British textile industry, such as the use of the power loom, to industrialize American textile production. He was the first factory owner in the United States to create a textile mill that was vertically integrated.
The Boott Cotton Mills Museum gives a snapshot of what is was like to work in New England cotton mills in the 1800s. The Museum, once Boott Mill #6, was originally owned by Kirk Boott, an industrialist who was responsible for much of the early urban planning that shaped Lowell’s industrial and residential landscape.
In 1820 Lowell, known as East Chelmsford, MA at the time, had a population of 200 and was a farming community. Thirty years later, the population had grown to 33,000 and one could find 32 textile mills in existence there. Lowell was an ideal location for these mills because it was located near the Merrimac River. The river supplied the water necessary to run these factories.
