For most employees, getting a job with Rodman Manufacturing was a dream come true amid the sweeping changes that transformed southern Rhode Island in the middle and latter portions of the 19th century. After more than two centuries of an economy centered on agriculture and maritime pursuits, the Industrial Revolution pushed the region toward manufacturing as rail and canal networks opened eastern seaboard markets to larger and more profitable western farms, leaving small New England farms and sea shipping less competitive. In southern Rhode Island, that change meant textiles, and work in a plant like the Lafayette mill was hard and often dangerous, with six ten-hour days in a typical week and whirring leather belts driving countless machines. Yet the Rodmans fostered a sense of family that comforted workers raised in generations of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters laboring side by side, and the stability of mill employment inspired pride in following one generation into the next. Mill work included spinning room workers replacing bobbins and repairing breaks and snags, dyehouse workers coloring woven fabric with water from the nearby pond, inspection room workers checking cloth for imperfections, finishing room workers trimming, cutting, rolling, routing, and preparing cloth for shipment, and pattern room workers who programmed machines to weave plaid and patterned fabrics. A 1913 group photograph captured available workers from the weavers section, and many Lafayette schoolchildren eventually worked in the mill alongside their parents, with girls outnumbering boys two to one because many older boys were already at work.