In an unassuming rural town in Massachusetts during the early 1800's a revolution in American economy and women's rights was born. Lowell, Massachusetts, on the Merrimack River, was the home of the textile industry in America. The Boston Associates, the brains and funds behind the textile mills, unwittingly set up a system, The Waltham-Lowell system, in order to maintain a paternalistic control over the female operatives at the Lowell textile mills. It was that very system which would unify the women of the mills towards creating the first permanent women's union, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Under the direction of Sarah Bagley and through the women's labor literature of the time, the LFLRA, had an impact on the development of the women's rights movement later embarked upon by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
