ABSTRACT
AS the result of a number of factors, including the enclosure movement, a large surplus population had appeared in eighteenth-century England. There the unemployed agricultural laborers, with their wives and children, provided a cheap supply of workers to operate the machines of the rapidly expanding cotton mills of Lancashire. No such surplus was to be found in the United States. Even in New England, where some labor power was available for manufacturing, to bring it to the factory was a serious problem. In the days before the streetcar and the automobile, the worker was not available for factory employment unless he lived within easy walking distance of the factory. In attempting to solve this problem of providing a sufficient number of operatives to tend the machines, employers developed two distinct types of factory organization. In southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the states to the south and west, the Rhode Island or family system evolved. In most of Massachusetts and the states to the northward, the Waltham or boardinghouse system predominated, though many small mills used the Rhode Island system.
