In the 1970s, Lowell became part of the Massachusetts Miracle, being the headquarters of Wang Laboratories. Over the next few decades, the city was just a shadow of itself. However, this economic boost was short-lived and the post-war years saw the last textile plants close. Several years later, the mills were reactivated, making parachutes and other military necessities for the World War II effort. More than one-third of its population was "on relief", as only three of its major textile corporations remained active. The city fell into deep hard times, and was called a "depressed industrial desert" by Harper's Magazine in 1931, as the Great Depression deepened. The Mill Cities' manufacturing base declined as many companies began to relocate to the South in the 1920s. By the time World War I broke out in Europe, the city had reached its economic and population peak of over 110,000 people. They came to work in Lowell and settled in ethnic neighborhoods, with the city's population reaching almost 50% foreign-born by 1900. Later waves of immigrants included Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanians, Swedes, and eastern European Jews. Next were the Catholic Germans, then a large influx of French Canadians during the 1870s and 1880s. The city continued to thrive as a major industrial center during the 19th century, attracting more migrant workers and immigrants to its mills. In 1860, there were more cotton spindles in Lowell than in all eleven states combined that would form the Confederacy. The textile industry wove cotton produced in the South. The mill workers, young single women called Mill Girls, generally came from the farm families of New England.īy the 1850s, Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the United States. Many of the men who comprised the labor force for constructing the canals and factories had immigrated from Ireland, escaping the poverty and Potato Famines of the 1830s and 1840s. As Lowell's population grew, it acquired more land from neighboring towns, and diversified into a full-fledged urban center. The so-called Boston Associates, including Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson of the Boston Manufacturing Company, named the new mill town after their visionary leader, Francis Cabot Lowell, who had died five years before its 1823 incorporation. See also: Timeline of Lowell, Massachusettsįounded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles, Lowell is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 25 miles northwest of Boston in what was once the farming community of East Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Lowell is known as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, and many of the city's historic sites have been preserved by the National Park Service. Lowell and Cambridge were the county seats of Middlesex County prior to the abolition of county government in 1997. It is the fourth largest city in the state. As of 2012, the city's estimated population was 108,522. Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA.
0 kommentar(er)
