Most of the employees in the early years of the Boston Manufacturing Company, which was one of the first American cloth factories, were young, unmarried women.
Founded at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814 by Francis Cabot Lowell, the company ran the first American factories to produce both yarn and finished textiles.
Its employees were daughters of New England farmers, usually employed for only a limited period between school and marriage, often to build up their dowries.
Housed in supervised boardinghouses, they worked for cash wages at spinning and weaving machines.