Merrimack Manufacturing Company mills begins operating in Lowell.

The successor of the Boston Manufacturing Company on the Charles River in Waltham, it is created to take advantage of greater water power from the Merrimack River in what was then East Chelmsford). Incorporated in February 1822, the company goes on to build the largest dam in the world at the time. It also builds boarding houses and dormitories and sponsor lectures and classes for its workers, most of whom are initially young women from rural New England. But as Russell Adams Jr. subsequently writes, “As major stockholders withdrew from active management of their companies, turning operations over to men whose primary mission was to crank out regular dividends – and never mind how – wage exploitation became common.”