On September 1, 1823, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company commenced operations, the first of many textile mills constructed and operated by the Boston Company (colloquially referred to as the Boston Associates). The burgeoning mill complex, the first large-scale industrial development in the United States was incorporated as the town of Lowell in 1826. While the Boston Associates realized monetary profit from the mills, the Associate’s primary motivation for building and operating the textile mills was a desire to perpetuate their vision of the Puritan’s Social Covenant. The Associates achieved their goal in the short term. However, over the long-term, the sheer scale and new management style of the Lowell mills catalyzed the modernization of New England and sublimated the very social and economic conventions the Social Covenant sought to reinforce. In the 19th century the Puritan Social Covenant, part of the American narrative from its earliest years, validated the virtues of community and industry. Already wealthy and spurning other potentially more lucrative investment opportunities Francis C. Lowell and other members of the Boston Associates used the textile mills to inculcate and strengthen the Social Covenant’s precepts among their mill operatives. In the 1840s, the Lowell mills, needing to fill empty mill positions, began to hire Irish immigrants. The introduction of the Irish to the mills immediately created an atmosphere of friction among the predominantly Yankee work force. The later introduction of French-Canadians to the Lowell mills only served to create additional tension. Mill owners found themselves refereeing interminable arguments regarding different and divergent interpretations of social values and personal responsibilities. In the late 1850s, mill owners and mill workers came to the same conclusion: social obligations mattered less than solid financial resources and a wide range of freedom. Mill owners jettisoned their self-imposed responsibilities; employees “turned out” for higher wages and, when unsuccessful, migrated westward. The Lowell mill complex, originally conceived as a means to preserve a traditional, tight-knit social order and an ethic of personal responsibility among a demographically homogeneous population, found itself a large, demographically heterogeneous city embracing and encouraging change. / text

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / In 1814, a group of wealthy Boston merchants led by Francis Cabot Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. In the decades before the Civil War, Lowell and his partners constructed public schools for Waltham children living in the vicinity of the mills and paid many of the schools' educational expenses, including teachers' salaries. The company also promoted adult education through its establishment of the Manufacturers' Library and its support of the Rumford Institute for Mutual Instruction, one of the first lyceums in the United States. Previous research on the Boston Manufacturing Company has primarily focused on its unique labor force ("mill girls") and its role as America's first modern industrial corporation, while the story of the company's involvement in education has been neglected. Based on company records, school committee reports, newspaper accounts, Francis Lowell's personal correspondence, and other archival sources, this study highlights the forgotten history of corporate support for education in antebellum Waltham. The findings indicate that the support given to Waltham educational institutions by Francis Lowell and his business partners can be attributed to their patriotism, generosity, and belief in civic virtue. Implications for the history of American education, the Industrial Revolution, and twenty-first century public/private sector educational partnerships are addressed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.