 In 1813 , businessman Francis Cabot Lowell formed a company , the Boston Manufacturing Company and built a textile mill next to the Charles River in Waltham , Massachusetts . Differing from the earlier Rhode Island System , where only carding and spinning were done in a factory while the weaving was often put out to neighboring farms to be done by hand , the Waltham mill was the first integrated mill in the United States , transforming raw cotton into cotton cloth in one mill building . 
