They were a group of Boston families who joined to form one of the earliest and most powerful joint-capital ventures. They eventually came to dominate the textile industry, the railroad, insurance, and banking business' in all of Massachusetts. With Pride the Boston Associates considered their textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts a showplace factory. The labor there was mostly New England farm girls who were supervised on and off the job and worked from "dark to dark." (Ch 17, pgs 293-295)