The Run of the Mill : A Pictorial Narrative of the Expansion, Dominion, Decline, and Enduring Impact of the New England Textile Industry

Dunwell, Steve

A chronicle of centuries of labor in black and white photographs. Historical and modern perspectives on mills, industrial towns, and workers in New England from the earliest industrialization period to the 1970s. From the inside flap: "The full force of American capitalism was first released through the creation, consolidation, and incredible profitability of the New England textile industry. It was along the energetic waterways of the Northeast that the Industrial Revolution cut its teeth, there that real manufacturing initially occurred, that goods, produced on native soil, were first distributed in substantial quantities. There, in short, that the modern corporation was conceived. This fascinating, generously illustrated and extensively documented study presents the full scope of that phenomenon by concentrating on its single most powerful and successful manifestation: the textile mill. This was America's first integrated history, so immense in its concentration that in 1832, of 106 manufacturing concerns in the United States with assets of over $100,000, a full 88 were listed as textile companies.... Dunwell's survey is divided into two sections. The first, replete with 250 photographs and sketches from a wide variety of sources, gives an historical overview, a concentrated history of the textile mill in New England from the early developments in native technology to the final abandonment of the region. The second examines the living remnants of the industry...Here he presents the people who are still working in the mills..."

1978

en

Book

19th century - 20th century; New England

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