Samuel Slater

Samuel B. Slater
Samuel Slater (1768 – 1835) popularly called "The Father of the American Industrial Revolution"
Born	June 9, 1768 (1768-06-09) Belper, Derbyshire, England
Died	April 21, 1835 (1835-04-22)
Resting place	Mount Zion Cemetery, Webster, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Occupation	industrialist
Known for	bringing the industrial revolution to the U.S.

Samuel Slater (June 9, 1768 – April 21, 1835) was an early American industrialist popularly known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. A native of England, he was apprenticed as an engineer and in 1789 violated a British emigration law that prohibited the spread of British manufacturing technology to other nations. When he left for New York, he had memorized the plans for the mill and offered to sell his knowledge to American industrialists. He then gave it to Moses Brown, who used the plan, and made major profit. He soon found work in Massachusetts and Rhode Island replicating British factory equipment for a textile mill, and earned the owner's backing to design and build the first horse-powered and water-powered mill in the United States.

Slater established tenant farms and towns around his textile mills such as Slatersville, Rhode Island. Due to his technical knowledge from Britain, he became a full partner and eventually went into business for himself and grew wealthy. By the end of Slater's life he owned thirteen spinning mills.

Samuel Slater is also known as the "Father of the American Sunday School System" establishing youth Bible classes in his mills.

Early years

Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England June 9, 1768, the fifth son of a farming family of eight children. It is recorded that Samuel received a basic education at a school run by a Mr. Jackson in Belper. ^[1] As a member of such a large family, it seems unlikely that he would have continued past his tenth birthday, but instead begun work at the cotton mill opened that year by Jedediah Strutt utilising the water frame pioneered by Richard Arkwright at nearby Cromford Mill.

Four years later, in 1782, his father died after a fall from a cart while harvesting hay and, shortly afterwards, Samuel became indentured as an apprentice.^[1] There is no record of his family sponsoring him by way of a fee which would be customary in those days. It would seem then that Samuel had created an impression, and Strutt was looking for good workers for the new mill he was opening at Milford, Derbyshire (recorded in his indentures as New Mills in the parish of Duffield). ^[1]

As his twenty first birthday approached and his apprenticeship neared its end, he began to consider his prospects. The cotton industry in England was by then well developed and scope for expansion was limited. While he no doubt could have gained a senior position anywhere in the country, he still have been an employee and the chances of starting his own company were slim.

At this point, the desperate American textile industry was offering bounties of $100 to people with British technological knowledge. These had been offered because all attempts to obtain English models, by purchase or smuggling, had failed."For which man will bring us English models, will be given monetary funds for his reward."

Slater would be well aware of the espionage activities of agents from various countries, including America. The threat to British interests was such that anyone exporting plans or parts, or craftsmen attempting to leave the country, would be charged with treason. Thus he had to rely on his memory and, with his indentures fastened around his body, he departed for London on 1 September 1789, leaving there on 13 September.

He arrived in New York sixty-six days later, taking lodgings at 37, Golden Hill, and finding employment in a local cotton-spinning workshop. It confirmed to him that American spinning was still very much a cottage industry and that his knowledge was a valuable commodity.

Life in America

Slater Mill

In 1787, a Quaker merchant by the name of Moses Brown had decided to start his own textile factory in Beverly known as the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. This was a joint effort between his brother-in-law Israel Thorndike, John Cabot, Andrew Cabot, George Cabot and his brother-in-law Joseph Lee. They had partnered with Thomas Somers and James Leonard as initial investors in building and creating the mill and machines used in it. John Cabot and Joshua Fisher held the most stock in the company and became the managers of the Manufactory. The manufactory, being horse-powered, suffered economic downturns due to the difficulties in sustaining horse-powered operation. Although they incurred some losses in the venture, Beverly became the building ground for Slater and Brown to reinvent their mill into the new water-powered technologies, and claim Beverly as the site of the first cotton mill in America.^[2]

In 1789, Moses Brown and Samuel Slater moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and hired Brown's son-in-law, William Almy, and nephew, Smith Brown, to operate the mill. ^[3] Housed in a former fulling mill, Almy & Brown, as the company was to be called, set about to make and sell cloth spun on spinning wheels, jennies, and frames.Operational challenges with the frames led Brown to seek out someone with experience with textile mills and the ability to reproduce Arkwright's machine. Slater offered his services and was put to work duplicating British factory equipment. After he proved his competency, Brown provided the funds to build a mill on the Blackstone River based on the Arkwright designs in his photographic memory. During construction, Slater made some adjustments to the designs to fit the needs of America. The result would be the first successful water-powered textile mill in America. Samuel's wife, Hannah (Wilkinson) Slater, also invented a type of thread made of cotton. Slater's machinery carded cotton and spun it into thread.^[4]

After creating this mill, he put the principles of management in place that would lead to success by teaching people to be skilled mechanics.

Expansion

In 1793, now partners with Almy and Brown, Slater constructed a new mill for the sole purpose of textile manufacture under the name Almy, Brown & Slater. It was a 72-spindle mill; the patenting of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1794 ensured ample supplies of cotton from the South.

In 1818 Samuel Slater split from Almy and Brown to build his own larger mill in partnership with his brother John, which he called the White Mill.^[5]

Management style

Main article: Rhode Island System

Slater drew on his British village experience to create a factory system called the "Rhode Island System," based upon the customary patterns of family life in New England villages. Children aged 7 to 12 were the first employees of the mill; Slater personally supervised them closely. The first child workers were hired in 1790^[6]. Slater first tried to staff his mill with women and children from far away, but that fell through due to the closeknit framework of the New England family. He then brought in whole families, creating entire towns. ^[7] He provided company-owned housing nearby, along with company stores; he sponsored a Sunday School where college students taught the children reading and writing.

Slater put his brother John in charge of the White Mill that opened in 1799. By 1810 Slater held part ownership in three factories in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1823, he bought a mill in Connecticut. He then built factories that made textile machinery used by many of the region's mills, and formed a partnership with his brother-in-law to produce iron for use in machinery construction. Slater spread himself too thin, and was unable to coordinate or integrate his many different, spread out business interests. He refused to go outside his family to hire managers and after 1829 he made his sons partners in the new umbrella firm of Samuel Slater and Sons. His son Horatio Nelson Slater completely reorganized the family business, introduced cost-cutting measures, and gave up old-fashioned procedures, thereby making the firm one of the leading manufacturing companies in the United States.

Slater also hired recruiters to search for families willing to work at the mill. He also used means of advertisement to get more families into his business.

Industrialization

By 1800 the phenomenal success of the Slater mill had been duplicated by other entrepreneurs; by 1810 Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin reported the U.S. had some 50 cotton-yarn mills, many of them started in response to the Embargo of 1807 that cut off imports from Britain. The War of 1812 speeded up the process of industrialization; when it ended in 1815 there were within 30 miles of Providence 140 cotton manufacturers employing 26,000 hands and operating 130,000 spindles. The American textile industry was launched.

In the eighteen-teens, Francis Cabot Lowell built his full cotton-to-cloth textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts which was immensely successful. By 1826, although Lowell had died, the Waltham System had proven so successful that the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first to use the system on a large scale, was founded by his partners in his honor. Lowell would be the model for textile towns for many decades to follow.

Slater died on April 21, 1835 in Webster, Massachusetts (a town that he founded and had become a town three years earlier in 1832 and was named after his friend Senator Daniel Webster). At the time of his death, he owned thirteen mills and was worth a million dollars. His original mill, known today as Slater Mill, still stands and operates as a museum dedicated to preserving the history of Samuel Slater and his contribution to American industry.

References

Bibliography

• Edward H. Cameron, Samuel Slater, Father of American Manufactures (1960) scholarly biography
• James L. Conrad, Jr. "'Drive That Branch': Samuel Slater, the Power Loom, and the Writing of America's Textile History," Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 1–28 in JSTOR
• Barbara M. Tucker, "The Merchant, the Manufacturer, and the Factory Manager: The Case of Samuel Slater," Business History Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 297–313 in JSTOR
• Barbara M. Tucker, Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860 (1984)
• George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures (1836, repr. 1967) classic biography

External links

• Slater Mill website
• Slater Mill, Sarah Leavitt, Arcadia Publishing, 1997, ISBN 9780752405674
• VIDEO "Samuel Slater - Hero or Traitor?" (2006) Maypole Promotions