U.S. Technology: History

Lesson 3: Industrialization

Factories and Conclusion

The two most famous early factory systems were the Slater and the Lowell factory systems. They were started by Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell, respectively.

Samuel Slater was an immigrant who had been born into a fairly wealthy merchant family in England. He had immigrated to the United States after discovering that many places were offering money to people who would set up and operating a cotton spinning machine.

Slater eventually found his way to Rhode Island, where he worked for merchants who were willing to pay well for someone to set up and run their cotton spinning machines. He agreed to setting up the business, as long as he could have a share. Slater set up a spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island that is widely regarded as the first textile factory in the United States.

Slater’s mill is regarded as the first mill but soon twelve others would pop up in the region. These mills were rural and usually located in small villages. They employed about seventy to eighty workers, usually in a family system. This sytem meant the father and the children worked in some fashion at the mill and the mother stayed home and took care of the house (which was rented to them by the mill). This family system came to be known as the “Slater system” and was widely used in early factories.

The Lowell System was developed in a mill on some land near the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. This land would eventually become the town of Lowell. In this mill, the spinning and weaving of cotton was done in four story buildings. The entire process from raw cotton to finished cloth took place in one large complex.

The workers at this mill were unmarried women who lived in boarding houses adjacent to the mill. These women were originally unskilled and had been recruited from farms all over the surrounding countryside. By the year 1856, Lowell had 52 mills and 12,000 employees.

I hope that this lesson has made you think about how industrialization began in the United States. It was not the revolution we have always been taught about; it truly was a process. What I have discussedin this lesson, and what Cowan writes about, is just the start of that process.

Questions to Consider:

1) What do you feel was the first step in the process of industrialization? 2) Who do you feel was the most important person mentioned by Cowan in getting the process of industrialization started? 3) Do you think that it is a process or do you still feel that the term “Industrial Revolution” is appropriate?

Bibliography:

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. “A Social History of American Technology” Oxford University Press, New York (1997) Pages 69-91.

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