Old Slater Mill

Samuel Slater (1768-1835) opened a water-powered cotton spinning factory in Pawtucket in 1793 after leaving England in 1789 with working knowledge of mechanical yarn-making and finding artisans there with the skills needed to begin the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Using the power of the Blackstone River, talented artisans to build his machinery, capital from Providence merchants, and workers willing to labor hard and long in the new factory, he set the mill in motion, and from this beginning industrialization spread throughout America. Slater had learned cotton spinning technology in a water-powered English mill and, with considerable assistance, reproduced mechanized textile machines for use in the United States. His mill became the model for the Rhode Island System of Manufacture, in which small, privately financed mills were often managed by their owners and employed entire families, including children, who worked long hours amid thick dust and the deafening clatter of machinery. Slater also hired women and children to use what was seen as an under-employed labor force.

Pawtucket, Rhode Island · United States