Perhaps it was something in the water that, when Francis Cabot Lowell returned from England over two hundred years ago in 1812, drew him to Waltham. The something in the water was real; it was the power it contained that would enable the manufacturing process he intended to create. But it was not just the mighty Charles that would draw him. Many cities had mighty rivers from which to draw power. Just as in the classic movie “Field of Dreams” a voice from above seemed to be urging him on, instructing him “if you build it, they will come.” It would be romantic to think that this was the way it happened, but it was also pretty close to being true.
Lowell had gone to Europe to observe the manufacturing process with the intention of replicating it here in America. What he had no intention of replicating was the squalor the laborers there worked and lived in. He correctly concluded that content, if not happy, workers would enable his company to draw the great numbers of mostly young women employees the venture would depend on. Instead of company script they would be paid good wages, better than the average for millworkers, so they could help their families or save up for whatever dreams they may have. He provided good housing, fairly priced, well supervised and safe. Workers flocked to his new company and his plans succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. New companies sprung up to provide for the many needs of the workers. Churches, schools, libraries, new roads and much more followed. His Boston Manufacturing Company would become a magnet for skilled and unskilled workers. His business model would become known in history as “The Lowell-Waltham System” and would serve as the template for many new enterprises that would spring up across the country including Lowell and Lawrence. What was more significant than the company he built and its important place in history as the beginning of the industrial revolution was the remarkable community that both he and workers helped create.
What Lowell had perhaps not envisioned is that his plan would become the very heart and soul of this then young community. “If WE build it, they will come” became Waltham’s unspoken creed. It would not take long for other enterprises to take root. The watch industry would find and make a good home here. It and its workers would produce the finest watches in the world. By using interchangeable parts, Waltham’s Model 57 pocket watch became the first mass-produced watch in the world. The improvements introduced by the watch industry would become known in industry as “The American System of Manufacturing” and would be widely copied. “Made in Waltham” products were (and still are) the best products made anywhere and our workers the envy of the world. Newly arrived immigrants sought us out. Our reputation as a place where a person could get a good job at a fair wage and would be able to do so regardless of his/her origins brought them here as surely as we had a hung a “Waltham this way” sign at Ellis Island. Waltham became an almost mystical land of opportunity within an even greater land of opportunity.
As our reputation grew, more businesses grew or were spun off. The Waltham Watch Company led to many new companies: the O’Hara Dial Company created highly-prized watch dials and other artistic works. The Bird Precision Company, (over 100 years old), was able to use advances in setting industrial jewels to begin its awe-inspiring growth. Today you find products from this company in the most highly technical equipment used in our hospital operating rooms, military systems and space programs. Relatively young (1922) upstart Raytheon’s products will usually be found right alongside of them.
Most of us have seen pictures of the world’s first 10-speed bicycle – the Oriten. Although Ford has it in their Dearborn, Michigan Museum, only one of them was ever made and it was made right here in Waltham, as were all the record-setting Orient bicycles and highly regarded Orient/Metz/Waltham automobiles.
Other companies, Ames Manufacturing, W.H. Nichols, Polaroid…too many to name joined in. Our education system grew to include giants such as Bentley and Brandeis.
None of this was easy. Opinions sometimes differed widely, tempers often flared and prejudices were sometimes displayed as competing groups vied for the same jobs. New neighborhoods, and more importantly, new neighbors Waltham could count on were formed. Through it all, everyone found a place at the table in our fair city. Waltham became a destination of choice rather than a place people of all nations simply wandered into. Through of all the recessions, depressions, downturns, trials and tribulations, Waltham has just kept on reinventing itself. Our downtown retailing, long ago anchored by Grover Cronin’s, has morphed into “Restaurant Row” a dining destination of widespread repute. Many of our historic sites including Cronin’s Landing, and the Watch Factory live on repurposed as housing. We even have separate Museums dedicated to our history and housed in buildings that are historically important to us. Far beyond our beginnings as a nation of hopeful new immigrants, we have become a nation and city of dreams. We continue this tradition to this day. Moody and Main Streets are not the same places as 50 years ago. Notably, some of our fondest memories like the Embassy and the Wal-lex are long gone as are many of those we loved so dearly who used to walk amongst us. They have however, been replaced by much that is good and will be remembered just as fondly. We still know that if we build it, they will come. It has always been this way in Waltham, our City of Dreams.
Waltham Museum Newsletter September 10, 2012