During the Market Revolution, the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts employed large numbers of:

-Escaped fugitive slaves who evaded capture on the underground railroad

-Women, who were called “mill girls” and it was the first time in American history there was a sizable portion of female wage earners

-Irish children whose parents had been victims of the famines in their native land

-Unemployed coal miners who found factory work more desirable than life in the mines