New Insights on Old Issues

At first glance, these three scholarly books might seem to have little in common except for the fact that they all deal with labor and industry. A closer reading suggests that each of these studies not only addresses some aspect of the history of American industry and American labor, but attempts to grapple with issues that historians and economists have examined for many years. Laurence Gross, Gary Fink, and Douglas Flamming contribute new insights to such old issues as what happened to a prominent industry after its heyday, in this case the famous Lowell factories. Was the southern cotton mill work force as pliable and weak as traditional views have persistently argued? Were unions always so weak and ineffective in the South? Were there at least pockets or locations in the South where workers and unions were indeed more successful than we once thought? Each of these masterly studies addresses these individual issues and questions and presents findings that can only be described as profound and highly original. Gross, Fink, and Flamming, in short, have completed studies that will have to be addressed by any scholar working in the area of American industrial development and/or the history of American labor unions from this point on.

For his part, Laurence Gross makes it clear in the very beginning of his work that he was going to “test the myths of early Lowell against its ultimate development, to follow through its story and determine how this novel enterprise evolved” (p. xiii). Moreover, instead of concentrating on the antebellum Lowell factory, he singled out one company, the Boott Cotton Mills, to examine in detail just what happened to it from its founding in 1835 to its closing in 1955. Looking at its managers, workers, buildings, technology, and every other facet of the mill’s existence, Gross hoped to learn not only about Lowell but of American industry itself.

From the inception of Boott Cotton Mills, Gross found investors were interested more in profits than people, a theme that dominated the company’s history to its ultimate demise. Between 1850 and 1870, the Boott Cotton Mills faced added pressures from the growing national and international markets. Company managers responded to growing market demands by keeping wages low and demanding increased output from their work force; yet they did little to improve the company’s buildings and/or technology. Even when new machinery was added, it was done solely to increase profits. The result was, of course, the dehumanizing of the individual worker. Conditions in the plants were so bad that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts warned the company of the fire hazards.

Some members of the company’s hierarchy had better attitudes and ideas about the workers and the company’s future than others. In this respect, agent Alexander Cumnock stood out. He tried to treat the workers better, for example with respect to company housing, but he too sought to control the workers by setting rules for their behavior, especially in regard to drinking. If workers did not do as expected, they were either summarily fired or evicted from company housing.

Between 1905 and 1930, Boott Mills reorganized and prospered due primarily to the efforts of the Flather family, Frederick A. and his sons John Rogers and Frederick. Gross is especially good in his analysis of the Flathers and how they sought to control the mill and its work force. Frederick A. Flather is presented as a capable manager who often moralized, was meticulous in doing his job, and was a financial conservative. Still, even the...