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.