Francis Cabot Lowell

• Born: April 7, 1775
• Birthplace: Newburyport, Massachusetts
• Died: August 10, 1817
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

American industrialist

A member of a distinguished family that made significant contributions to the law, the church, and the arts, Lowell established the family’s reputation for financial acumen, wealth, and industry by building the first American textile factories and pioneering the mass production methods that initiated the American industrial revolution.

Source of wealth: Manufacturing

Bequeathal of wealth: Children; charity

Early Life

Francis Cabot Lowell was the son of John Lowell, a highly respected jurist and a member of the Continental Congress. Francis graduated from Harvard College in 1793 with the highest honors in mathematics. He then embarked on a series of sea voyages to gain knowledge of the world and foreign trade. Setting up in business as a merchant, Lowell by 1802 had acquired more than twenty properties in the Boston area. As the most entrepreneurial member of his family, he looked for new ways to increase its wealth, prestige, and contributions to the welfare of his native land.

First Ventures

In 1810, Lowell traveled to England, where he visited the textile mills in Lancashire. Even though the British government forbade the export of machines or even plans for manufacturing equipment, the keenly observant Lowell put to good use his command of mathematics and memorized the mechanics of power looms. Thus he was able to reconstruct and improve the English industrial equipment used to manufacture cotton goods. By 1812, he had established the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. In 1814, this firm built the first textile mill in America, converting raw cotton into finished cloth.

Mature Wealth

Lowell’s wealth was generated by his ability to take advantage of new technology (such as a new power loom invented by Paul Moody) and of new ways of financing and growing his business. He arranged to sell $1,000 worth of shares in his company’s stock to the public. In so doing, he helped to establish shareholder businesses and public stock offerings as one of the fundamental methods of expanding American industry and commerce. By 1815, shares in Lowell’s company paid a 10 percent return, and by 1817 the return had doubled to 20 percent. This stock return was possible, in part, because in 1816 Lowell successfully lobbied Congress to impose a tariff on cotton, thus ensuring that his manufactured goods would be protected against imports from England and other countries.

At the same time, Lowell created a new workforce for his industry, employing farm laborers and young women as textile workers in what became known as the Lowell system. He was heavily criticized for paying low wages, especially to women, but he compensated his workers with subsidized housing in company boardinghouses, as well as providing them with religious and educational instruction.

Prone to ill health that was exacerbated by his penchant for overwork, Lowell died in 1817, just a few years after his breakthrough success. However, he had built his business on such a strong foundation that by 1821 his company was able to pay shareholders an astounding 27.5 percent in dividends. He was also fortunate in having a son, Francis Cabot Lowell, Jr., who was able to expand the family business, creating a new mill town in 1826 named Lowell, Massachusetts, after his father.

Legacy

As one of his biographers notes, Francis Cabot Lowell probably did more than any other individual to increase the wealth of New England and by extension improve the commerce of the entire United States, beginning the process of transforming America from an agricultural to an industrialized power. The factory system he pioneered, for better and worse, established the course of the American industrial economy. On one hand, he drove his workers hard (as he drove himself); on the other hand, he provided for their welfare, demonstrating a humanitarian concern for his employees that set a standard for other industrial enterprises. Writers like Henry David Thoreau criticized Lowell and his successors for suppressing American individualism, yet other writers like Charles Dickens, who could be highly critical of Americans and American institutions, visited the Lowell factories and found no fault with them.

Bibliography

Greenslet, Ferris. The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Sobel, Robert. The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.