Broadlooms and Businessmen : A History of the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company

In the closing months of 1945, James D. Wise, the President of the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, Inc., of Lowell inquired if the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration would be interested in writing a history of his company. The history written shows the evolution of what in 1951 became the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company as a result of a merger of eleven predecessor companies whose roots can be traced back to 1825. Leaders in point of time, leaders in scale of operations, leaders in mechanization, in market extension, and in integration, the predecessors of Bigelow-Sanford literally made carpet history. This study of the development of this company is therefore more than an exercise in the background of a single firm; it is a survey of the origins and growth of an important American industry over a period of 125 years. CONTENTS Editors' Introduction Authors' Preface CHAPTER 1. PIONEERING AN INDUSTRY: The Lowell Manufacturing Company, 1828-1852 CHAPTER 2. PIONEERING AN INDUSTRY: The Connecticut Companies, 1825-1854 CHAPTER 3. PIONEERING AN INDUSTRY: Three Younger Companies, 1837-1856 CHAPTER 4. YEARS OF ADAPTATION: The Lowell Manufacturing Company, 1852-1899 CHAPTER 5. YEARS OF ADAPTATION: The Hartford Carpet Company, 1854-1901 CHAPTER 6. YEARS OF ADAPTATION: The New York Companies, 1854-1901 CHAPTER 7. YEARS OF ADAPTATION: The Bigelow Carpet Company, 1854-1899 CHAPTER 8. THE RECONSTITUTED COMPANIES: The Hartford Carpet Corporation, 1901-1914 CHAPTER 9. THE RECONSTITUTED COMPANIES: Bigelow Carpet Company, 1899-1914 CHAPTER 10. THE BIGELOW-HARTFORD CARPET COMPANY, 1914-1924 CHAPTER 11. CONTINUING GROWTH AND A NEW MERGER, 1925-1929 CHAPTER 12. YEARS OF DEPRESSION AND RECOVERY, 1930-1936 CHAPTER 13. FROM RECESSION TO PROSPERITY, 1937-1941 CHAPTER 14. WARTIME OPERATIONS, 1942-1945 CHAPTER 15. ADMINISTRATIVE REORGANIZATION AND POSTWAR ADJUSTMENT, 1945-1949 CHAPTER 16. PROGRESS UNDER ADVERSITY: 1950-1953 APPENDICES NOTES INDEX Axminster Broad Loom; yam is fed from individual tubes into loom and there cut and tied into fabric; rows of tubes with protruding ends are clearly visible Wilton Broad Loom; note the jacquard attachment; cards with punched holes guide needles to select yarn, thereby producing pattern Amsterdam Plant; spread along bank of the Chuctenunda Creek from which original power was obtained Thompsonville Plant; power plant near Connecticut River; other buildings across railroad track arranged in compact order