 Ethnic tensions - sometimes stoked by mill companies seeking to use members of one community as strikebreakers against members of another - were not unheard of, and in the 1840s, the nativist, anti-Catholic American Party (often called the Know-Nothing Party) won elections in Lowell.By the 1850s, industry competition increased as more manufacturing centers were built elsewhere, Lowell's mills employed increasing numbers of immigrant families, and the early "Lowell System" of Yankee women workers living in company boardinghouses was transformed.In its place, large, densely populated ethnic neighborhoods grew around the city, their residents more rooted in their churches, organizations, and communities than the previous era's company boardinghouse dwellers.