The Belles of New England

The Belles of New England is a masterful, definitive, and eloquent look at the enormous cultural and economic impact on America of New England's textile mills. The author, an award-winning CBS producer, traces the history of American textile manufacturing back to the ingenuity of Francis Cabot Lodge. The early mills were an experiment in benevolent enlightened social responsibility on the part of the wealthy owners, who belonged to many of Boston's finest families. But the fledgling industry's ever-increasing profits were inextricably bound to the issues of slavery, immigration, and workers' rights.

William Moran brings a newsman's eye for the telling detail to this fascinating saga that is equally compelling when dealing with rags and when dealing with riches. In part a microcosm of America's social development during the period, The Belles of New England casts a new and finer light on this rich tapestry of vast wealth, greed, discrimination, and courage.

Acknowledgments

1. A Place in the Universe
The ingenuity of Francis Cabot Lowell brings large-scale textile manufacturing to New England. Generations of native-born Americans and immigrants find jobs in the mills.

2. Glory of the Nation
From the rocky farmland and tranquil villages of New England, women migrate to the mill towns to take their place in the history of the American labor movement.

3. The Lords of the Loom
Business leaders in Boston expand the textile industry, accumulate great wealth, and ignite a fierce debate over the morality of using Southern slaves to provide the cotton that feeds the mills.

4. From Across the Irish Sea
Irish laborers build the mills, the Irish famine victims of the mid-nineteenth century replace the Yankee women at the looms.

5. Voyagers South
The ethnic character of New England is changed forever as the French Canadians of Quebec cross the border to seek opportunity in America.

6. Wretched Refuse
Poles, Italians, Russians, Jews, and many others weary of Europe's nineteenth-century wars and poverty join the workforce in the New England mills.

7. Fighting for Roses
Immigrant women lead the great 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the women win.

8. Last Bells
The shift of textile manufacturing to the South destroys the industry in New England.

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Index