DescriptionS on of a yeoman farmer, Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England on June 9, 1768. He become involved in the textile industry at the age of 14 when he was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, a partner of Richard Arkwright and the owner of one of the first cotton mills in Belper. Slater worked for Strutt for eight years and rose to become superintendent of Strutt’s mill. It was in this capacity that he gained a comprehensive understanding of Arkwright’s machines. Believing that textile industry in England had reached its peak; Slater immigrated secretly to America in 1789 in hopes of making his fortune in America’s infant textile industry. While others with textile manufacturing experience had emigrated before him, Slater was the first who knew how to build as well as operate textile machines.
Slater, with funding from Providence investors and assistance from skilled local artisans, built the first successful water powered textile mill in Pawtucket in 1793. By the time other firms entered the industry, Slater’s organizational methods had become the model for his successors in the Blackstone River Valley. Later known as the Rhode Island System, it began when Slater enlisted entire families, including children, to work in his mills. These families often lived in company owned housing located near the mills, shopped at the company stores and attended company schools and churches. While not big enough to support the large mills which became common in Massachusetts, the Blackstone River’s steep drop and numerous falls provided ideal conditions for the development of small, rural textile mills around which mill villages developed. One of the earliest of these mill villages was Slatersville.
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Located on the Branch River in present day North Smithfield, Rhode Island, Slatersville was built by Samuel Slater and his brother John in 1803. By 1807, the village included the Slatersville Mill, the largest and most modern industrial building of its day, and two tenement houses for workers, the owner’s house and the company store. In the early twentieth century, industrialist and preservationist Henry P. Kendall took a personal interest in the village and initiated many of the improvement projects, which give the village its traditional New England Charm. Impact The system of child labor in Rhode Island mills began with Rhode Island’s first textile mill – the Slater Mill.
Samuel Slater’s first employees were all children from seven to twelve years of age. By 1830, 55% of the mill workers in Rhode Island were children. Many of these children worked long hours in unhealthy factories for wages less than $1 per week. To understand why these conditions were accepted, one must look at the attitudes and circumstances of the time. Even before the development of mills, children were expected to work long hours on self-sufficient family farms. For some poor families struggling to survive, factory work was a decided improvement over farm labor.
Mills did not put children to work, they simply changed the type and location of work they were already doing. The textile machines themselves played a large part in part in encouraging the use of child labor. Early Arkwright machines were so easy to use that unskilled children could easily operate them. More over, centralized manufacturing with machines and children under the watchful eye of an adult overseer provided a very economical method of production.
Life in the mills was difficult and unhealthy, even for adults. The workday started before sunrise and ended after sunset. The air in the mills was full of flying lint particles that often caused respiratory disease. The mills were cold and drafty in winter, hot and humid in summer; dirty, noisy, and uncomfortable at all times. During all of this, children worked under the same dismal conditions as their parents. Corporal punishment by overseers was a common practice.
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The danger of working near machines was always present. A tired, sleepy child could easily loss a finger, arm, or scalp to the devouring machinery. At this time, childhood was not a time of formal schooling or of play, except for a wealthy minority. Most children’s education, whether farm or factory, consisted of learning skills through experience. Formal education for mill children was often limited to the most basic reading, writing and arithmetic – taught at Sunday school on the child’s day off. In many mill villages, these schools were also used to socialize workers along owner-approved lines.
In early mill villages, the owner alone determined the hours, earnings and physical conditions of workers. Given their ultimate control, it was not unusual for owners to take advantage of less powerful workers. While there was eventually legislation in Rhode Island against child labor, it was not effective. In 1910, only 48% of Rhode Island children attended school. In much of Rhode Island, truancy laws were often ignored. It wasn’t until 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act that child labor was finally eliminated.
What If? What if Samuel Slater had never come to America? What if Samuel Slater never opened a mill? What if Samuel Slater never learned how to mill? These and others are very important questions. From what I know now, I can conclude two things. He was the first to incorporate entire families into a system of business, and he was the first to spark the great supply of textiles in the United States. People in the States accepted his mills and others with open arms, for they now had yet another independence from Britain, one of many to follow. Slater’s mills did miraculous things for the American economy at that time. Before the arrival of the easy operating textile mill, the south was forced to export a large majority of its cotton to other countries and made poor profit.
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People nowadays are busy with their own lives by spending much time on their gadgets like tablets, iPads and laptops including the children. They are either doing their job or playing games because of habit on the gadgets and forgot the traditional games. It is agreed to say that children today prefer to play computer games to traditional games. For instance, children nowadays did not participate ...
As things seemed dim for the southern cotton monopoly, along came Slater to save the day. Many farmers and plantation owners in the southern states became very rich, very quickly. The combination of the cotton gin and the textile mill was the elixir that ailed the south. I believe that without Slater, the south would have not had the funds to enter the Civil War. Without money, the south had no guns, no support, no ammo, and no uniforms. No anything to give the soldiers.
Just the thought of the Civil War dissipating sparks numerous ideas of what would have happened through out US history as well as how life today would be different. Clothing too. The fashion market today is one of the top financial markets today. Without Slater there would be no fashion market, or it would be dramatically slowed compared to the one today.
The US would have the technology but we would be years behind Europe in the textile business. The product was not the only good thing to come from the Slater mills. The system of family labor came from them as well. Employing whole families was a brilliant idea, that way there was discipline, moral, and plenty of workers. Business was centered the mills and as the mill grew, the town grew too.
This promoted small town life in New England. What would have happened if Slater had never come to America? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
