Description
Son 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. 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.
It was estimated that nearly 35 percent to 53 percent of female workers were less than 16 years old in England (Document C), an age that was illegal for employment in modern society. Some of them were even under the age of ten. "I think the youngest children is about seven...I dare say there are twenty under nine years old" the description of the situations in Mr. Wilson's Mill from a worker named Hannah Goode in 1833 (Document J). In addition, a report in 1841 showed that 43% percent of the female workers were no more than 20 years old in four English textile industries in cotton, silk, lace and woolen manufacturing (Document C). In Japan, in the silk factory in Nagano, Japan 1901, 66 percent of female worker were under 20 years old. Female worker were more or less working for gaining more family income in order to release their financial burden. However, did they really contributed to family income and did they get the reasonable payment from the
Summary The PBS special, “Mill Times”, hosted by David Macaulay, gives a viewer insight into what aided in igniting the Industrial Revolution and changing how textiles are produced. Through documentary snippets and an animated storyline the viewer is able to imagine life before technological changes. Viewers are shown how clothing was produced prior to the mill, the benefits of the mill, the Lowe girls and their working environment, and further technological advancements which aided in making production more mobile and independent of waterways. The beginning of the program shows how laborious and strenuous it was to manufacture any cloth before the waterwheel invention.
Sam Patch’s father, who was a drunkard, exhausted all his family fortune, and in 1807 the Patches moved to the mill village of Pawtucket. This was a climactic moment in their history because it marked their passage out of the family economy and into the labor market. This caused the Patches to be dependent on factory owners for a job. Factory spinners, including Sam Patch, were people with a lot of pride and dignity. Before 1820, most spinners in New England mills were emigrants from the factory towns of Lancashire England. They were veterans who knew that their skills were essential, and they commanded respect (Johnson 23). Industrialization brought with it urbanization or city growth but it had an unintended consequence of creating massive wealth gaps between the rich people and the working class people.
Veto, Robert Elliott. Looms and Weavers, Schools and Teachers: Schooling in North Carolina Mill Towns, 1910-1940 . Michigan: Bell and Howell Information Company, 1989.
These comforts and conveniences included better and more developed homes, cheaper clothes, more tools and utensils to work with, and faster and cheaper travel. One of the most important concerns of this time period is the effect of child labor. Document 7 states: Large machines and rising demand for products quickly led to the growth of the factory system. The building of these factories led to the hiring of massive numbers of child workers, the youngest at 11 to 12 years old.
Labor leader and advocate of legislative labor reform, Samuel Gompers was globally recognized for being a cornerstone in the sustaining legacy that is the American Federation of Labor. Gompers was born to a Jewish working class couple in London on the 27th of January in 1850. His childhood was short lived, for he was forced to mature early on. After only four years of receiving an elementary school education, Gompers was taken in and apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of ten. He would quickly switch off trades and become apprenticed to a cigar maker in the east end of London; Gompers would continue with the cigar trade for a quarter of a century.
Many businesses and factories hired children because they were easier to exploit; they could be paid less for more work in dangerous conditions. Plus, their small size made many children idea for working with small parts or fitting into small spaces. Children as young as four could be found working in factories, though most were between eight and twelve. Despite the economic gains made by the business that employed them, many children suffered in the workplace. The industrial setting caused many health problems for the children that, if they lived long enough, they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Children were also more likely to face accidents in the workplace, often caused by fatigue, and many were seriously injured or killed. Despite efforts by reformers to regulate child labor, it wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that children under 14 were prohibited from
Lowell mills were located in Lowell, Massachusetts and specialized in manufacturing cotton cloth. The strong currents from the surrounding streams of water powered the mills machinery. More often then not, a mill was a community's largest employer and mill owners frequently had other business investment in the neighborhood such as general stores, real estate, and residential properties (Inventing America p.391).
Child labor started during the industrial revolution, cheap labor was needed, and the machines could be operated by children. Many children worked because of poverty, they were forced to work to help out their families. The lack of government regulations that enforced safety standards or that said how long the children were to work. They would work very long hours with nothing to show for it. Since children were so small they could fit into small spaces that the adult workers could
Sam Houston Sam Houston was, as legend reports, a big man about six feet and six inches tall. He was an exciting historical figure and war hero who was involved with much of the early development of our country and Texas. He was a soldier, lawyer, politician, businessman, and family man, whose name will be synonymous with nation heroes who played a vital part in the shaping of a young and prosperous country. He admired and supported the Native Americans who took him in and adopted him into their culture to help bridge the gap between the government and a noble forgotten race. Sam Houston succeeded in many roles he donned as a man, but the one most remembered is the one of a true American hero.
Factories were utilizing children to do the hard work. They employed children as young as five or six to work as many as twenty hours a day. According to Document C, children worked in factories to build up muscles and having good intellect in working rather than getting an education. They became a different person rather than conventional children. There were additionally health issues due to child labor: rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing loss, higher chemical absorption rates, and developing ability to assess risks. Progressive Era reformers believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society. They believed that children should be protected from harmful environments, so they would become healthy and productive adults. In 1912, Congress created the Children’s Bureau to benefit children. The Keating-Owen Act was passed in 1916 to freed children from child labor only in industries that engaged in interstate commerce. However, it was declared unconstitutional sinc...
According to the article “A History of Child Labor” reviewed by Milton Fried, a child could work as long as six days a week for up to 18 hours a day, and only make a dollar a week. Child labor was nothing but cheap labor. The big companies loved cheap labor because then they could make an item for not very much money, and make a huge profit margin. Fried continues to state how cheap the labor was, “One glass factory in Massachusetts was fenced with barbed wire ‘to keep the young imps inside.’ These were boys under 12 who carried loads of hot glass all night for a wage of 40 cents to $1.10 per night.” Unlike, children today who are in bed sleeping by 8 pm each night, these children had to stay up all night working to make just enough income for their families. Sadly, the children had no choice but to work for very little pay. Their mothers and fathers made so little money in the factory system that they couldn’t afford to let their children enjoy their childhood: “Other working children were indentured—their parents sold their labor to the mill owner for a period of years. Others lived with their families and worked for wages as adults did, for long hours and under hard conditions” (Cleland). The child had no other choice, but to work for these big
The first key player in the American industrial revolution was Francis Cabot Lowell. In 1810, in Waltham, Massachusetts, Lowell was responsible for building the first American factory for converting raw cotton into finished cloth. Large factories were built along the river to house the new water driven power looms for weaving textiles. At the same time that more factories were built to keep up with the growing demands of the consumer, the numbers of immigrants to the United States grew (Kellogg). This new labor force could be employed with even less pay and provided with a much lower standard of housing. This in turn increased the profit margi...
“Child Labor in U.S. History.” Child Labor Public Education Project. 2011. Web. 2. April. 2014
Coal mines were a source of heavy profits during the Industrial Revolution. Children worked in coal mines where accidents ...