The Course of Industrial Decline: The Boott Cotton Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1835–1955 by Laurence F. Gross

Abstract

Book Reviews The Course ofIndustrial Decline: The Boott Cotton Mills ofLowell, Massachu­ setts, 1835-1955. By Laurence F. Gross. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. xvii+279; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $42.00. Despite the rich collections ofcompany archives in the Harvard Business School library, University ofLowell, Museum ofAmerican Textile History, and elsewhere in New England, few company histories of New England textile firms have been written since the 1950s. Given the subsequent shifts in historiographical emphasis, now highlighting changes in business or­ ganization, technology, and labor (and informing Larry Gross’s perspec­ tives) , it is interesting to read this new view of an old firm. The study has five chronological parts. The first outlines the Lowell background, the founding ofthe Boott Mills, and the growth period up to 1870; the second reaches the crisis of 1905 when ownership changed hands; the third ends with the onset ofdepression in 1930; the fourth covers depression and war; and the last, the final collapse between 1947 and 1955. In each the themes of organization and management, technology, and labor are topically discussed. This review can only touch on these themes. From a clean and well-equipped and organized plant before the Civil War, the Boott Cotton Mills had become (according to the fire insurers) one of the most unhealthy firms in the industry by 1932. Several firms of outside consultants before the First World War concluded that a new mill layout, new equipment, and consequendy improved working con­ ditions were the only ways to secure the long-term efficiency and profitability of the Boott Mills. As early as 1906-7 consultants advised the directors to pull the mills down and build afresh. That the new owners, headed by Frederick A. Flather, did not do so arose from the short-term profitability of the mill. By paying low wages (for over half the two thousand employees in 1916, well below a governmentestimated annual living wage of $700), neglecting worker training, postponing maintenance, and depending on loan capital for very modest levels of new investment, management kept shareholder profits high. The reader’s understanding of the financial position of the business would have been helped had the author presented some balance sheets and profit-and-loss accounts: profits are usually estimated as a percentage of turnover (sales), not (as on p. 163) of new investment. From management’s point of view, it made sense to stagger on rather than lose profits in a massive new investment in the New Permission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 868 technologyand culture Book Reviews 869 England cotton industry, which since the 1880s had been losing ground to the new cotton industry of the South. Why not move to the South, as many other New England firms did during and after the First World War? Gross’s investigation of the directors’ decision making casts light on the question. Cheaper and more docile labor was the great attraction, but relative North-South manufacturing costs were still imprecisely known in the early 1920s and were warmly debated. After 1922 the directors sought to acquire a mill in the South as a first step toward relocating there. In 1929-30, when of all Lowell’s giants only the Merrimack, Lawrence, and Boott mills remained in the city, a southward move was begun with the purchase of a corduroy plant. The relocation strategy was then overtaken by the Depression, when demand for textiles collapsed, and then war, when demand pushed output to 48 million yards a year in 1944 (when half the U.S. Navy wore Boott twill). The owners hung on until a resurgence of union activity, inaugurated by New Deal legislation, persuaded them to sell out for $1.65 million to Alabama Mills, which promptly closed what they would have seen as excess capacity and wasteful competition. Gross’s sympathies are very much on the side of the workers. Given relatively poor wages and working conditions and the consequent high labor turnover, labor productivity suffered by the late 19th century. A crude measure of this might have been calculated from output and employee figures (given in the 19th century in...