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Slater Mill Quotations
| "From Samuel Slater to Moses Brown, Providence, RI. New York, December 2d, 1789. "Sir, A few days ago I was informed that you wanted a manager of cotton spinning, &c. in which business I flatter myself that I can give the greatest satisfaction, in making machinery, making good yarn, either for Stockings or twist, as any that is made in England; as I have had opportunity, and an oversight, of Sir Richard Arkwright's works, and in Mr. Strutt's mill upwards of eight years. . . . My intention is to erect a perpetual card and spinning. [Meaning the Arkwright patents.] If you please to drop a line respecting the amount of encouragement you wish to give, by favour of Captain Brown, you will much oblige, sir, your most obedient humble servant, SAMUEL SLATER." |
| "The Blackstone River Valley illustrates a major revolution in America's past: the Age of Industry. The way people lived during this turning point in history can still be seen in the valley's villages, farms, cities, and riverways--in the working landscape between Worcester, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. In 1790, American craftsmen built the first machines that successfully used waterpower to spin cotton. America's first factory, Slater Mill, was built on the banks of the Blackstone River. Here, industrial America was born. This revolutionary way of using waterpower spread quickly throughout the valley and New England. It changed nearly everything." John H. Chafee, Blackstone River Valley brochure, National Heritage Corridor, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. |
| "[T]he factory system emerged as an outgrowth of slavery when in 1790 Samuel Slater, an English immigrant who knew the secrets of English textile machinery, built a cotton-spinning mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for a merchant named Moses Brown. This mill, with 72 spindles, became the first successful American factory. By the end of the War of 1812, hundreds of factories, with an estimated 130,000 spindles, were in operation, and by 1840 the number of spindles reached 2 million. Enslaved Africans in the South picked the cotton that fed these spindles and fueled the growth of the textile industry in New England." Ronald Walters, Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the University of Maryland, "Reparations for Slavery?: Let's Resolve the Inequity," The World and I, issue 4, 2000. |
| "The rise of the Waltham-Lowell system began along the Charles River in Waltham [Massachusetts]. As the nineteenth century progressed, the ambitions of the Boston Associates outgrew the modest waterpower of the Charles. The search began for more substantial sources of energy, and before long the well-endowed water resources of the Merrimack River were tapped. The textile cities of the Merrimack valley--Lowell, Lawrence, Nashua, and Manchester--controlled water to an unparalleled degree." Theodore Steinberg, Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (1991), p. 12. |
| "Ecological side effects appeared as externalities hidden from economic calculations. To increase efficiency, wool and cotton were produced on northern farms or southern plantations and transported to New England textile mills for processing. But these commercial gains had ecological costs. Topsoil, fertility, and water quality were not part of the cost of raw materials. Air pollution, water pollution, and soil deterioration were not included in the calculation of profits. Runoffs, sewage, and chemical dyes were flushed away in streams. Steam engines discharged soot into the air. Mill dams blocked the progress of migrating fish. The costs of pollution and depletion were paid by the poor and by later generations." Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (1989), pp. 232-33.
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