The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell, 17751817

(Hardback)

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After the Revolutionary War, despite political independence, the United States still relied on other countries for manufactured goods. Francis Cabot Lowell was one of the principal investors in building the India Wharf and the shops and warehouses close to Boston harbor. His work was instrumental in establishing domestic industry for the United States and brought the Industrial Revolution to the United States. From 1810 to the start of the War of 1812, he traveled through Great Britain, where he saw the tremendous changes caused by the Industrial Revolution, starting with cotton textiles. On his return to the United States he focused on establishing a domestic textile industry to replace imported goods. With his brother-in-law, Patrick Tracy Jackson, he built the Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham-America's first integrated mill. With his star mechanic, Paul Moody, he developed a power loom and other machines suitable for local conditions. The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell, 1775-1817 tells the story of this amazing man and the great success of the Boston Manufacturing Company, which spurred the American industrial revolution. Francis Cabot Lowell's method-a detailed investment plan, cheap raw materials and power, a motivated labor force, a sound marketing plan, and, above all, modern technology-became the standard for the American factory of the nineteenth century. When Francis Cabot Lowell died, his associates established America's first industrial city, and named it Lowell in his honor.

Reviews

With the mind of a scientist, the energy of an entrepreneur, and a moral compass that directed him to do good while he was doing well, Francis Cabot Lowell helped shape the world in which we live today. Chaim Rosenberg has discovered every thread of this man's life and weaved a biography both informative and elegant. -- William M. Fowler Jr., Distinguished Professor of History, Northeastern University
Rosenberg has combed the archives to recapture the life and times of Francis Cabot Lowell, whose short life brought about the industrial revolution in the United States, and made the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts the most industrialized stretch of real estate in the world. It is astonishing that this story has not been told before-though there are biographies of Lowell judges, lawyers, and poets, this is the first biography of Francis Cabot Lowell, industrial pioneer and economic revolutionary. This is a great story, one worth telling. -- Robert J. Allison, Suffolk University; author of The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815

Author Bio

Chaim M. Rosenberg is author of The Great Workshop-Boston's Victorian Age, and Goods for Sale: Advertising and Products of the Massachusetts Industrial Age, as well as America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.