Ah, perfect! pasted from my previous reply. I might actually have some more information to toss into this in a second.
So I actually broadened this a teensy bit, but I can explain smaller points further if you want.
Rhode Island is incredibly important and interesting in the context of the American Industrial revolution for a couple of reasons. The first is that the first American cotton mill was actually built in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790. England was incredibly secretive about their mills in the late 18th century- so much so that no one in America could come near replicating the same quality yarn and cloth they were capable of producing. Regardless, many American entrepreneurs still tried. One such entrepreneur was Moses Brown, who attempted to build a mill in Pawtucket Rhode Island. When he found he simply couldn’t get it to work, he partnered with an Englishman, Samuel Slater, who actually was familiar with English textile mills. Slater actually smuggled the plans for a water-based textile mill out of the country in his head because he knew that there was no way he would be able to smuggle the plans out of England any other way. Together they constructed the Slater Mill- the first successful water powered textile mill in the United States.
Why Pawtucket? Well there are a few reasons, that will help explain what parts of Rhode Island and New England in general industrialized first. The first reason was that it was a population center. Founded near the city of Providence (which had earlier joined with the Narragansett Bay colonies to form Rhode Island, or, to give it its long-winded and pretentious name, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations), Pawtucket had historically been a locale settled for its rich deposits of Salmon and comparatively fertile farmland. Another major reason was the city’s history of forges and industry. Pawtucket was home to multiple iron forges which provided both skilled repairmen and easy access to the parts necessary to build and maintain mills. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Pawtucket controls the Blackstone River. Early mills, being water powered, were dependent on fast running and easily accessible water sources. The Woonasquatucket river in bordering Providence, for example, was too calm for powering the water wheels and mechanical parts that the factory utilized. Finally, Pawtucket provided ocean, river, and reliable road access to ship raw materials up and finished products out.
The Slater Mill had a tremendous impact not only on Rhode Island, but New England as a whole. Slater and Brown created a management style based loosely off of what was being in practiced in England at the time, known as the Rhode Island System. (This is closely related to something called the Waltham-Lowell system, which you may remember if you took an AP US history class at some point. They’re basically the same thing with some very subtle differences, so I wouldn’t worry too much about the semantics of which is which.) Children were primary laborers in these mills, usually ages 7 to 15. Although boys were also utilized in the beginning, as mills moved inland to more agrarian society’s young girls increasingly staffed the mills instead. They lived in boarding houses and had strictly regulated diets, schedules, and work loads. Typically, their pay would be sent either directly to their families or be given to the girls who would then pass it along to their families anyways. Perhaps the most important and long lasting effect, however, is that the system also emphasized controlling all levels of manufacturing and worker life. Cotton would be cleaned, spun, woven, died, and cut all within the same building. Not only that, but workers often lived in mill owned and maintained housing, shopped at mill controlled stores, even sometimes worshipped in mill constructed and maintained churches! Eventually the demand for labor and pressures against ‘wage slavery’ and child abuse caused mills to increasingly seek out employees in poverty stricken and unorganized immigrant communities, especially the Irish, preying in part on their naïveté of the American legal and economic system and their desperation.
The long lasting effects of this are still hotly debated to this day, but there are a few interesting ones that I tend to agree with. Some historians believe that the reliance on female labor actually helped the feminism movement in New England and is a cause of the relative ease of social transition that woman have experienced in the area as opposed to areas like, say, the deep south. Likewise, although racism against European immigrants remained pervasive in New England well into the mid 20th century and still continues in some communities to this day, the transition from young girls to adult men and women played a major role in the unionizing movements in America in the late 19th century, as these men often had better means for defending themselves and organizing than, say, a 9 year old girl. A sense of community also grew among these worker groups. Working twelve hours a day and sleeping in houses two feet apart from each other will do that to you! This has played a large role in that quaint New England community that a couple of ethnographers have commented on, as well as their general harshness to outsiders.
Some major negative repercussions of the system lay more in New England’s inability to change and adapt to the times. Many areas of New England formerly made rich by their proximity to water power resources began to struggle when steam power and improved infrastructure allowed for factories to be built further inland in more easily maintained areas (if you’ve ever been to New England, you might be able to imagine how horrible it would be to try and build a factory on this land, for example). Cities like Pawtucket had built their entire economy around these mills. Remember that the owners wanted to control every aspect of their employees’ lives- oftentimes, stores, churches, recreation centers, and housing were all owned by the mill owner for the express intent of keeping workers in line. When the mill owners packed up and moved West, who was left to fund these projects? Pay the taxes? Maintain the housing? This is why Rhode Island, in many ways, was a part of this country’s first real rust belt. Millions of immigrants with few practical skills came over to work in the mills. The mills left and they simply didn’t have marketable skills. Mill housing still exists and in many places has become synonymous with poverty and low income areas. Cities formerly made rich by these mills have become poverty stricken and never been able to fully recover from the economic hit they took after the factories left town. (As a side note, Norwich, Connecticut has a fascinating history in this regard- will cite a few books below). Some cities were able to survive, however. Hartford, for example, built an economy on law and insurance and has done comparatively well. Boston has higher education and the jobs which that attracts, while the likes of Stamford have New York to cling on to economically.
In short, Rhode Island was a good fit for the first mills of the industrial revolution. The mills brought people and wealth which grew the area but controlled nearly all factors of modern life. When they left, they left behind millions of people who had nowhere else to go and millions of dollars of infrastructure left to rot. But they also managed to leave behind urban centers, a sense of unity in many communities, and a way of life for an entire people.
Some sources
Frances Manwaring Caulkin’s History of Norwich, Connecticut: From Its Possession by the Indians, to the Year 1866. Published, 1866.
Barbara May Tucker’s Samuel Slater and Sons the Emergence of an American Factory System, 1790-1860. Published, 1974.
Tamara K Hareven’s Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community. Published, 1982.
I’ll add more sources if I can think of them. This is what I pulled from to write this, most is either in my personal library, in the public domain, or I’ve used them for a class at some point. Hope you enjoyed and I’m open to any other questions you may have!
