Weird Island

22. SLATER THE TRAITOR: Father of the American Industrial Revolution

Episode Summary

Rhode Island was the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, and an industrial spy - Samuel Slater - started it all. To Visit: Old Slater Mill National Historic Landmark | 67 Roosevelt Ave, Pawtucket, RI 02860

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material

Episode Transcription

Can you hear that? I’m at Pawtucket Falls - the last waterfall on the Blackstone River, located as I’m sure you can guess, in Pawtucket, which actually means “place of the falls” in Algonquin. It’s been raining for days, and you can hear how powerful the water is right now.

This powerful water is key to my story today, because it was here in this spot in Rhode Island that the American Industrial Revolution began, and water was a big piece of that.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of development in the late 1700s and early 1800s, that started in England, during which the economy shifted from being based on agriculture and manual labor to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. And there were two basic ingredients needed for that to happen: Machines to do the work and means to power the machines. Pawtucket was perfectly set up with the powerful Blackstone River long before the technology which would change the landscape of our country arrived. When the technology did finally make its way to America, it was brought here by Rhode Island’s most famous spy, and it was powered by Pawtucket’s powerful falls.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’m telling you about Rhode Island’s role as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Spy - Samuel Slater - who started it all.
To learn about this week’s story, I went to Slater Mill in Pawtucket, and my Uncle Myles joined me and helped research this episode. I’m going to jump right in to the story, but I’m not starting with Samuel Slater. I’m actually going to start the story with someone else - and his name is Moses Brown.
You’ve probably heard of Moses Brown before, or you’ve at least heard of his family. The Brown family descended from Chad Brown - a Baptist minister who co-founded Providence alongside Roger Williams. And members of the family have played many different prominent roles in the state since it was founded. You’re likely most familiar with Brown University, of course, but there’s also the Moses Brown School. And if you've listened to some of my past episodes, you may have heard me talk about John Brown in episode 17, who was well known as a Rhode Island merchant, statesman, and slave trader. Moses Brown was John’s brother, but while John was one of Rhode Island’s most prominent slave traders, Moses was one of the state’s most vocal abolitionists.
Initially, Moses was involved with the family business. But after an absolutely disastrous voyage of the slave ship Sally in 1764, in which most of the slaves died from disease and revolts, Moses gradually retired from the family business and started attending Quaker meetings. In 1773, he freed the last of his own slaves, and a year later he formally became a Quaker and began a life long crusade against slavery in Rhode Island. As you can imagine, there was some tension in the family after that.
While much of Moses’ most well-known contributions are focused on the abolition of slavery, he did briefly re-enter the business world in 1788, when he became one of the first people in Rhode Island interested in developing the textile industry.
At the time, America didn’t have a domestic textile industry. The country, which was originally a colony and had only become independent relatively recently, had an economy primarily based on agriculture and trade. Any cotton textiles that were made here were spun at home or in small shops, using hand tools and a spinning wheel, which was labor intensive and expensive. The United States had been cultivating cotton for almost 100 years, but we had no way to profitably take the raw materials and manufacture cotton textiles on a large scale. Meanwhile, England was taking off as the world’s first industrial textile power, and America found itself lagging behind.
That’s where Moses Brown saw an opportunity. He wanted to build a new factory--like the ones in England--to spin cotton into yarn using water power, and then weave the yarn into cloth. So he partnered with his cousin, Smith Brown, and his future son-in-law, William Almy, and set up shop in rented space in a carpenter’s fulling mill at Pawtucket Falls. And he started to acquire all of the most promising equipment that had been developed locally.
The only problem was, the technological breakthroughs which had allowed England to industrialize--the machines to turn cotton into yarn--they hadn’t made their way overseas yet. Specifically, there was one breakthrough innovator, Richard Arkwright, who had combined water power, innovative machinery and semi-skilled labor to revolutionize the mass production of cotton yarn - and Americans needed his technology, or something like it, to kickstart industrialization.
England was well aware of how important those designs and innovations were, and they were keeping the technology close to the vest, by banning the export not only of the machines and their design, but of any persons who had knowledge of them.
But that’s where the spies come in. Slowly, European immigrants with varying degrees of knowledge and skill secretly made their way to America. They couldn’t bring any designs with them. But they could bring their experience, and anything else they might be able to store secretly in their heads. And as this happened, Moses surrounded himself with a number of experts with knowledge of different areas. They made attempts at recreating the British machines, but nothing worked exactly right. One machine Moses acquired was similar to an Arkwright machine, and he was able to produce some yarn - but it just wasn’t profitable.
The issue was, Arkwright’s technology actually encompassed an entire series of machines. And in 1789, Moses had just one of them. A real Arkwright system would include machines that would properly condition raw cotton and then spin it into yarn. Likely, the yarn Moses made failed or wasn’t profitable because the cotton wasn’t properly prepared. Clearly, Moses had surrounded himself with some specialists, but he needed someone with broader experience of the full Arkwright method and management of the complete process, soup to nuts.
But the perfect man for the job was about to arrive in New York City. Born in Derbyshire, England, Samuel Slater received a basic education before he started working at a cotton mill owned by Jedidiah Strutt - who happened to be the business partner of one Richard Arkwright. Slater apprenticed to Strutt at age 14 and worked for him for seven years, eventually becoming the overseer of Strutt’s Derbyshire plant.
In 1789, believing the textile industry in England was expanding so rapidly that it would soon be overdone - and recognizing opportunity for his own success in the underdeveloped economy of America--Slater carefully memorized the details of Arkwright’s system, disguised himself as a simple farm hand, and set sail for New York.
Once in New York, it wasn’t long before he heard about Moses Brown and his experimentation with textile machinery. He contacted Brown, and received a letter back inviting him to Pawtucket. Moses Brown would later say, “I wrote to him and he came accordingly; but on viewing the mills he declined doing anything with them, and proposed making a new one.” Basically, Slater showed up in Pawtucket and found that while Brown and Almy had actually developed a fairly sound technical understanding of weaving, they were still struggling with the complicated task of spinning cotton into yarn. He took a look at their Arkwright machine and told them to scrap it and start fresh.
The narrative I’ve always heard was that Slater memorized Arkwright’s machinery with the intention of starting from scratch. But it’s possible that wasn’t his intention at all. From all accounts, Slater was disappointed by the state of affairs when he arrived in Pawtucket. Perhaps he expected more - thinking the machinery would be developed, and it was just the management expertise that was needed to get a factory up and running.
Regardless of his expectations or intentions, he got to work. Likely, Slater built the first functioning Arkwright machine not entirely from memory, but partly from one of Moses Brown’s existing machines--probably because Moses didn’t have enough faith in Slater to scrap the expensive machinery that had already been developed. But Slater came through, and the result was the first water-powered spinning textile mill in America, which was demonstrated in December of 1790. His machine was an immediate, unqualified success--responsible for introducing mechanization to manufacturing in the United States.
Slater employed a small group of 7-12 laborers to demonstrate the functioning machinery. And by small I mean, these laborers were physically small. Because Slater’s first employees were children. There was a process of changing spools on machines, and Slater saw this as the perfect job for kids with little fingers. Child labor wasn’t a new concept at the time, but the introduction of children into a factory workplace was.
As the new firm of Almy, Brown and Slater developed their first really profitable yarn-producing factory and eventually expanded beyond the original to control yarn production in much of New England, Slater developed a method of employing entire families to work in mills. This meant that men didn’t need to leave their family behind on the farm to work in factories. The whole family could relocate to be closer to the mills. And if you had many children you could generate additional income. This all became known as the Rhode Island System of labor. But as competition in the textile industry grew, factory owners were forced to cut wages and lengthen hours to stay profitable.
In Pawtucket, if workers were dissatisfied with their hours and wages, they could easily leave, because there were other places they could work. Slater recognized this and had an idea. He and his brother, John, who also came over from England, bought land in the more isolated town of Smithfield along the powerful Branch River, and set up the first intentionally-planned American textile mill village. Here, whole families could live and work and shop in the factory store. This was a good opportunity for workers, especially those who didn’t own land, but it also provided Slater fuller control over employees. The town became known as Slatersville and by 1810, nearly 300 people lived and worked there.
By this point in time, Slater had separated from Brown and Almy and had formed his own firm, Samuel Slater & Company, which would grow to include mills in RI, MA, CT and NH. By 1809, almost 20 years after Slater’s first mill, there were 17 textile mills operating within a 30 miles radius of Providence. Two years later, Zachariah Allen would indicate there were 36 mills. Just three years after that, Rhode Island was home to somewhere between 140 and 165 textile mills. This incredible growth was amplified by the Embargo Act of 1807 which was an attempt by President Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. Congress to punish Britain and France for interfering with American trade while the two major European powers were at war with each other. This forced America to be less dependent on European goods.
Slater died a millionaire in 1835, a part owner in 13 textile mills. But his name lives on. Slater is known as the Father of the American Industrial Revolution, or the Father of the American Factory System, or in England - Slater the Traitor -- for having stolen Arkwright’s designs.
But Slater wasn’t the only famous industrial spy to play an integral role in the American Industrial Revolution. Truthfully, most in America accepted that the quickest way to close the gap between American and European industrialization was to steal. Alexander Hamilton, in his 1791 Report on Manufacturers, actually advocated rewarding those who could bring back “improvements and secrets of extraordinary value” into the country. And under the Patent Act of 1793, the US validated theft by granting some questionable patents to Americans who had pirated technology from other countries.
In addition to stealing Arkwright’s method himself, it’s possible Slater encouraged his brother John to stay behind in England long enough to gain knowledge of new innovations, including knowledge of an improved machine called a spinning mule. Then, 20 years after Slater’s success in spinning yarn, another spy, Francis Cabot Lowell, famously memorized Edmund Cartwright’s power loom plans and created the first integrated textile manufacturing mill to convert cotton not only into yarn, but into finished cloth. So, Slater wasn’t the only industrial spy, but he was the one who initiated the whole Industrial Revolution and America, which shaped the course of our country. And it all started right here, in little Rhode Island.
In many ways, Pawtucket was the perfect place. Of course, water power was key. And the Blackstone River provided that. But, the area also had a base of skilled workers--and this was pivotal to Slater’s success. Pawtucket was founded in 1670 by Joseph Jenks Jr. who established an ironworks that harnessed the power of Pawtucket Falls to power its bellows. Jenks’ forge was so successful that soon his employees began opening their own ironworks along the Blackstone. By the time Slater arrived in Pawtucket, there was a huge variety of businesses and skilled workers and artisans who helped him build that first set of mill equipment, and would later be able to maintain and repair it.
And of course, it’s important to note that Moses Brown and others had already gotten a start, experimenting with textile manufacturing before Slater arrived. But whatever happened to Moses Brown?
After getting the textile firm off the ground, Moses withdrew from the operation, moving on to new activities. He played a role in RI’s ratification of the US constitution; conducted agricultural experiments and helped found the RI Agricultural Society, served on the Board of Directors of the Providence Bank, and later introduced smallpox vaccination to RI. He was also a founding member of the RI Historical Society. He lived to be 98 years old, outliving almost everyone in his life, and in addition to all of these other contributions, he spent much of his life actively fighting for the abolition of slavery.
So, why do I keep mentioning that? Well, something stood out to me when I was researching this story that I found either, you could say, ironic or tragic. Moses Brown wanted to get out of his family business in the transatlantic slave trade, and he got into the textile industry--more specifically, cotton textiles. And the cotton industry is synonymous with the history of slavery in the United States. Prior to 1800, cotton was essentially an insignificant American crop, because it was very difficult to remove the seeds and turn it into textiles. But a couple of things changed that. One was Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin, in 1793, which meant seeds no longer had to be painstakingly removed by hand. The other was industrialization, which Slater and Brown helped introduce in the North - that made cotton a central part of the American economy and perpetuated slavery in America. I wonder how Moses Brown felt about his role in that? And that’s not something I was able to find the answer to.
Thank you so much for listening. If you're interested in knowing more, I would definitely recommend going to check out Slater Mill. The building was actually the very first property listed on the National Register of Historic Places back when it started in 1966. Today, tours are run by the National Park Service and they did a great job. We had a ton of questions, and when the guide didn’t know an answer, he actually called someone and got the answer for us!
As always, all episodes are researched and written by Sara Corben, with help today from my uncle, Myles Wilde, and all of the source material is linked in the show notes! If you liked this episode, share it with your friends and family! Or you can leave a rating or review. And if there’s a topic you’d like to hear about, let me know! You can email me or send me a recorded voice memo at weird rhode island @ gmail.com. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!