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Labor in the Early New England Carpet Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Nancy P. Norton
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

In the annals of American labor the deeds of the carpet weavers are writ large. Their experiences are significant not only for the labor movement; they have permanently left their mark on the business institutions which were involved. In no case is this more true than in that of the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company. A study of the history of this company is under way at the Harvard Business School. This paper is drawn mainly from the records of the two largest and most important of Bigelow-Sanford's six ante-bellum predecessors: the Lowell Manufacturing Company and the Thompsonville Carpet Manufacturing Company.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1952

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References

Editor's Note: This paper was read at a joint meeting of the Business Historical Society, Inc., and the American Historical Association, held in New York on December 28, 1951.

1 Horace C. Brainard Manuscript Collection, in the possession of Mrs. Willis Clarke Noble, Forest Hills, New York.

2 Commons, John R., and others, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society vol. iv, Supplement (Cleveland, 1910),pp. 9394.Google Scholar

3 Directors' Minutes, July 22, 1835, Thompsonville Carpet Manufacturing Company.

4 Willard H. Furey Manuscript Collection, Thompsonville, Connecticut.

5 Brainard Ms.

6 Commons, op. cit., p. 116.

7 Ibid., p. 25.

8 Ibid., p. 57.

9 Voice of Industry, September 11, 1846, p. 4.

10 George W. Martin to Orrin Thompson, May 1, 1847, Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, Inc., Manuscript Collection.