author
Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
1869–1942
A New England writer and industrial observer, he wrote with unusual sympathy about factory life, labor, and the human side of modern industry. His books bring early 20th-century mill towns into focus with a mix of social history and lived experience.
1 Audiobook
The factory
by Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
About the author
Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1869, Jonathan Thayer Lincoln came from a family closely connected to the region’s textile manufacturing world. Johns Hopkins University’s guide to the Victoria Lincoln papers describes him as the son of Leontine Lincoln, educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, and associated with the family business in Fall River.
What makes his work especially interesting is that he wrote about labor and industry from inside that world while remaining notably attentive to workers’ lives. The same archival source says he was sympathetic to the beginnings of the labor movement in the factories and cotton mills of New England, and that his published writings dealt with labor relations.
Lincoln is best known for books such as The City of the Dinner-Pail (1909), a portrait of Fall River first drawn from pieces published in The Atlantic Monthly and The Outlook, and The Factory (1912), based on lectures delivered before the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth. He died in 1942, leaving behind writing that still feels valuable for readers interested in industry, reform, and everyday life in the mill era.