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History : Lowell
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Early American Manufacturing
The mounting conflict between the colonies and England in the
1760s and 1770s reinforced a growing conviction that Americans
should be less dependent on their mother country for manufactures.
Spinning bees and bounties encouraged the manufacture of homespun
cloth as a substitute for English imports. But manufacturing of
cloth outside the household was associated with relief of the
poor. In Boston and Philadelphia, Houses of Industry employed
poor families at spinning for their daily bread.
Such practices made many pre-Revolutionary Americans dubious
about manufacturing. After independence there were a number of
unsuccessful attempts to establish textile factories. Americans
needed access to the British industrial innovations, but England
had passed laws forbidding the export of machinery or the emigration
of those who could operate it. Nevertheless it was an English
immigrant, Samuel Slater, who finally introduced British cotton
technology to America.
Slater had worked his way up from apprentice to overseer in an
English factory using the Arkwright system. Drawn by American
bounties for the introduction of textile technology, he passed
as a farmer and sailed for America with details of the Arkwright
water frame committed to memory. In December 1790, working for
mill owner Moses Brown, he started up the first permanent American
cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Employing a workforce
of nine children between the ages of 7 and 12, Slater successfully
mechanized the carding and spinning processes.
A generation of millwrights and textile workers trained under
Slater was the catalyst for the rapid proliferation of textile
mills in the early 19th century. From Slater's first mill, the
industry spread across New England to places like North Uxbridge,
Massachusetts. For two decades, before Lowell mills and those
modeled after them offered competition, the "Rhode Island
System" of small, rural spinning mills set the tone for early
industrialization.
By 1800 the mill employed more than 100 workers. A decade later
61 cotton mills turning more than 31,000 spindles were operating
in the United States, with Rhode Island and the Philadelphia region
the main manufacturing centers. The textile industry was established,
although factory operations were limited to carding and spinning.
It remained for Francis Cabot Lowell to introduce a workable power
loom and the integrated factory, in which all textile production
steps take place under one roof.
As textile mills proliferated after the turn of the century,
a national debate arose over the place of manufacturing in American
society. Thomas Jefferson spoke for those supporting the "yeoman
ideal" of a rural Republic, at whose heart was the independent,
democratic farmer. He questioned the spread of factories, worrying
about factory workers' loss of economic independence. Alexander
Hamilton led those who promoted manufacturing and saw prosperity
growing out of industrial development. The debate, largely philosophical
in the 1790s, grew more urgent after 1830 as textile factories
multiplied and increasing numbers of Americans worked in them.
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