Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

JOHN LOWELL, JR.

(From "The Lowell Institute," by Harriette Knight Smith, published by Lamson,
Wolffe & Co., Boston.)

Francis Cabot, the second son, was the father of the noted giver, John Lowell, Jr. Charles, the third son, became an eminent Boston minister, and was the father of the poet, James Russell Lowell. On his mother's side the ancestors of John Lowell, Jr., were also prominent. His maternal grandfather, Jonathan Jackson, was a generous man of means, a member of the Congress of 1782, and at the close of the Revolutionary War largely the creditor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was the treasurer of the State and of Cambridge University.

John Lowell, Jr., must have inherited from such ancestors a love of country, a desire for knowledge, and good executive ability. He was reared in a home of comfort and intelligence. His father, Francis Cabot, was a successful merchant, a man of great energy, strength of mind, and integrity of character.

In 1810, when young John was about eleven years old, the health of his father having become impaired, the Lowell family went to England for rest and change. The boy was placed at the High School of Edinburgh, where he won many friends by his lovable qualities, and his intense desire to gain information. When he came back to America with his parents, he entered Harvard College in 1813, when he was fourteen years old. He was a great reader, especially along the line of foreign travel, and had a better knowledge of geography than most men. After two years at Cambridge, he was obliged to give up the course from ill health, and seek a more active live. When he was seventeen, and the year following, he made two voyages to India, and acquired a passion for study and travel in the East.

His father, meantime, had become deeply interested in the manufacture of cotton in America. The war of 1812 had interrupted our commerce with Europe, and America had been compelled to manufacture many things for herself. In 1789 Mr. Samuel Slater had brought from England the knowledge of the inventions of Arkwright for spinning cotton. These inventions were so carefully guarded from the public that it was almost impossible for any one to leave England who had worked in a cotton-mill and understood the process of manufacture. Parliament had prohibited the exportation of the new machinery. Without the knowledge of his parents, Samuel Slater sailed to America, carrying the complicated machinery in his mind. At Pawtucket, R.I., he set up some Arkwright machinery from memory, and, after years of effort and obstacles, became successful and wealthy.

Mr. Lowell determined to weave cotton, and if possible use the thread already made in this country. He proposed to his brother-in-law, Mr. Patrick Tracy Jackson, that they put some money into experiments, and try to make a power-loom, as this newly invented machine could not be obtained from abroad. They procured the model of a common loom, and after repeated failures succeeded in reinventing a fairly good power-loom.

The thread obtained from other mills not proving available for their looms, spinning machinery was constructed, and land was purchased on the Merrimac River for their mills; in time a large manufacturing city gathered about them, and was named Lowell, for the energetic and upright manufacturer.

When the war of 1812 was over, Mr. Lowell knew that the overloaded markets of Europe and India would pour their cotton and other goods into the United States. He therefore went to Washington in the winter of 1816, and after overcoming much opposition, obtained a protective tariff for cotton manufacture. "The minimum duty on cotton fabrics," says Edward Everett, "the corner-stone of the system, was proposed by Mr. Lowell, and is believed to have been an original conception on his part. To this provision of law, the fruit of the intelligence and influence of Mr. Lowell, New England owes that branch of industry which has made her amends for the diminution of her foreign trade; which has left her prosperous under the exhausting drain of her population to the West; which has brought a market for his agricultural produce to the farmer's door; and which, while it has conferred these blessings on this part of the country, has been productive of good, and nothing but good, to every other portion of it."