The Industrial Revolution in United States

America was a colony for almost as many years as it has been a nation. For its settlers, the lure was manifold: social betterment, economic opportunity, religious freedom, and political separation. Efforts to develop colonial manufactures were frowned on by Great Britain, for they posed the possibility of dangerous competition for Great Britain’s early factories.

The Rhode Island System and the Waltham System

Great Britain sought to prevent the industrial revolution by prohibiting the sale of manufacturing equipment and the emigration of skilled labor to the United States. Cloth, the major industry at that time, was made in the home for home use, put out by various merchant under the domestic system, and occasionally made in small manufactories with hand looms.

The firm of Almy and Brown foresaw prospects in the more advance Arkwright machinery. Samuel Slater, an experience mechanic in Richard Arkwright’s machine was induced to bring his technical knowledge by Almy and Brown. The result was the country’s first technologically advanced textile mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790. The Rhode Island System relied on a sole partnership as the form of ownership; spun fine yarn in the mill, but put out weaving to be done by families in the home, and it therefore resulted in more child labor. Slater exercised supervision of operation, assisted by his son, his brother and other relatives. By 1808, the United States have fifteen mills, and over half of them connected with Slater and his associates.

On a visit to British Isles in 1810-1812, Francis Cabot Lowell, a prominent merchant, carefully studied the textile industries of Lancashire and Scotland that was powered by waterwheels, rather than hand driven looms. Upon his return to Boston in 1813, he joined his brother-in-law, Patrick Tracy Jackson, and Nathan Appleton to found The Boston Manufacturing Company of Waltham Massachusetts. Waltham system used joint stock companies and the corporate form of ownership; integrated spinning and weaving to manufacture goods, hired nonfamily supervisors and managers; and relied on adult female labor by establishing company boarding house. Workers in the Waltham system were mainly young women, they were brought by agents who toured the countryside and emphasized the moral and educational advantages of factory work. Their morale conduct was carefully watched by a housemother. These treatments were praised by Charles Dickens, who reported that the workers were clean, healthy, and sound morale deportment. By 1816, Waltham system became the dominant method of textile manufacturing.