Eight men are captured at a moment both dangerous and routine, part of the steelworker's 12-hour day. Botts is likely depicting what was called an open-hearth furnace, used by Andrew Carnegie to dramatically speed up the process and undercut his…
The factory town of Lowell, MA was named after the inventor of a power loom that revolutionized manufacturing and, along with the technology, the structure of work. Owners of the mills employed thousands of people, most of them women called the…