Description Son of a yeoman farmer, Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England on June 9, 1768. He become involved in the textile industry at the age of 14 when he was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, a partner of Richard Arkwright and the owner of one of the first cotton mills in Belper. Slater worked for Strutt for eight years and rose to become superintendent of Strutt's mill. It was in this capacity that he gained a comprehensive understanding of Arkwright's machines. Believing that textile industry in England had reached its peak; Slater immigrated secretly to America in 1789 in hopes of making his fortune in America's infant textile industry. While others with textile manufacturing experience had emigrated before him, Slater was the first who knew how to build as well as operate textile machines. Slater, with funding from Providence investors and assistance from skilled local artisans, built the first successful water powered textile mill in Pawtucket in 1793. By the time other firms entered the industry, Slater's organizational methods had become the model for his successors in the Blackstone River Valley. Later known as the Rhode Island System, it began when Slater enlisted entire families, including children, to work in his mills. These families often lived in company owned housing located near the mills, shopped at the company stores and attended company schools and churches. While not big enough to support the large mills which became common in Massachusetts, the Blackstone River's steep drop and numerous falls provided ideal conditions for the development of small, rural textile mills around which mill villages developed. One of the earliest of these mill villages was Slatersville. Located on the Branch River in present day North Smithfield, Rhode Island, Slatersville was built by Samuel Slater and his brother John in 1803. By 1807, the village included the Slatersville Mill, the largest and most modern industrial building of its day, and two tenement houses for workers, the owner's house and the company store. In the early twentieth century, industrialist and preservationist Henry P. Kendall took a personal interest in the village and initiated many of the improvement projects, which give the village its traditional New England Charm. Impact The system of child labor in Rhode Island mills began with Rhode Island's first textile mill - the Slater Mill. Samuel Slater's first employees were all children from seven to twelve years of age.
Samuel Sewall lived a very Puritan life in early colonial Boston. As a man who cared deeply for his religion and his family, Sewall dearly loved his family and viewed their good and poor health as God’s reward or punishment. He did not, however, simply attend to his family to satisfy what he believed was God’s will. Rising rapidly to a position of prominence in society, Sewall was blessed with money and a close relationship with his wife and children. He aided them individually through illnesses, moral dilemmas, and he guided them through the mourning process after any deaths in the family, though he himself suffered most. Samuel Sewall’s relationship with his family was one of close ties and a strong religious orientation; they prayed and read together from the Bible daily which in turn allowed them to grow closer.
Veto, Robert Elliott. Looms and Weavers, Schools and Teachers: Schooling in North Carolina Mill Towns, 1910-1940 . Michigan: Bell and Howell Information Company, 1989.
In 1822, a group of Boston merchants and traders began their campaign to transform a riverbank below the thirty-foot falls of the Merrimack River into "the greatest textile manufacturing establishment in the country." These capitalists dug and improved the Merrimack canal, constructed machine shops, and built housing for mill executives, foremen and operatives. The cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, and other New England sites began to employ the first female industrial labor force in the United States. Almost twenty years later, factory workers wrote and edited the Lowell Offering, a literary magazine showcasing the virtues and talents of the female operatives in verse, essays and short fiction (Eisler, 13-22).
In the year 1786, at the pressing invitation of his friend, Colonel Howard, he removed from Annapolis to Baltimore. By this gentleman, he was generously presented with a square of ten lots of land, upon a spot in which he erected a house, in which he lived until his death. On his removal from Annapolis, the corporation of that city tendered to him the expressions of their respect, in the following address: "Sir, the mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen of the city of Annapolis, impressed with a due sense of the services rendered to this corporation by you, in the capacity of recorder thereof, do take this occasion to assure you of their entire approbation of your conduct in the performance of the duties of that trust, and to acknowledge your ready exertion, at all times, to promote the interest and welfare of this city, They sincerely regret the occasion of this address, as your removal from the city of Annapolis will deprive this body of a faithful and able officer, and the city of a valuable citizen. You have our warmest wishes for your happiness and welfare.''
Labor leader and advocate of legislative labor reform, Samuel Gompers was globally recognized for being a cornerstone in the sustaining legacy that is the American Federation of Labor. Gompers was born to a Jewish working class couple in London on the 27th of January in 1850. His childhood was short lived, for he was forced to mature early on. After only four years of receiving an elementary school education, Gompers was taken in and apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of ten. He would quickly switch off trades and become apprenticed to a cigar maker in the east end of London; Gompers would continue with the cigar trade for a quarter of a century.
Born in Groton, Conn., Samuel Seabury was the son of the Reverend Samuel Seabury Sr. His Father was a pioneer of New England Anglicanism who followed the example of Samuel Johnson. Samuel Jr.,broke away from the Congregationalists and pursued Anglican ordination. He graduated from Yale in 1744 and received his B.A in 1748. He married Abigail Mumford and went abroad in 1784 to obtain consecration as an Anglican Priest. On December 23, 1753, Samuel Seabury was ordained a deacon and two days later a priest of the Anglican Church. He was licensed by the church to preach in New Jersey. He preached in various places, but none suited his fancy. A preacher in Westchester was charged with drunkenness and sexual assault, which opened up the preaching position. Samuel filled the position and preached in an uneventful ministry. He also ran a school in Westchester.
Lowell mills were located in Lowell, Massachusetts and specialized in manufacturing cotton cloth. The strong currents from the surrounding streams of water powered the mills machinery. More often then not, a mill was a community's largest employer and mill owners frequently had other business investment in the neighborhood such as general stores, real estate, and residential properties (Inventing America p.391).
Child labor started during the industrial revolution, cheap labor was needed, and the machines could be operated by children. Many children worked because of poverty, they were forced to work to help out their families. The lack of government regulations that enforced safety standards or that said how long the children were to work. They would work very long hours with nothing to show for it. Since children were so small they could fit into small spaces that the adult workers could
Factories were utilizing children to do the hard work. They employed children as young as five or six to work as many as twenty hours a day. According to Document C, children worked in factories to build up muscles and having good intellect in working rather than getting an education. They became a different person rather than conventional children. There were additionally health issues due to child labor: rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing loss, higher chemical absorption rates, and developing ability to assess risks. Progressive Era reformers believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society. They believed that children should be protected from harmful environments, so they would become healthy and productive adults. In 1912, Congress created the Children’s Bureau to benefit children. The Keating-Owen Act was passed in 1916 to freed children from child labor only in industries that engaged in interstate commerce. However, it was declared unconstitutional sinc...
Many factories and mines hired children, because they were able to fit in smaller spaces and the factories could pay them less. They also hired children, because children were easier to control. During this time it was just common for kids to work; most people were okay with child labor at the time. “In colonial America, child labor was not a subject of controversy. It was an integral part of the agricultural and handicraft economy. Children not only worked on the family farm but were often hired out to other farmers
Johnson states that in the early 19th century, the United States of America was developing as both a liberal democratic society, with an ethos of individualism, and as a capitalist economy, with influential middle and business classes. In the early decades of the 19th Century, Rochester was a rapidly growing and economically developing community. Its position on the early canal system helped make it a center for regional trade and early manufacturing. The manufacturing and sale of products came to be increasingly based in specialized buildings, which utilized management and wage laborers. A growing middle class and business owning class arose in the city, whose conditions included a relatively increased standard of living, and higher levels
Samuel Sewall born in 1652 in England. He was taken as a child to Newbury, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1671. He became a minister but gave up the role to take management of a printing press in Boston and entered upon a public career. He was elected in 1683 to the general court and was a member of the council. As one of the judges who tried the Salem witchcraft cases in 1692, he shared the responsibility for the conviction of nineteen persons. However, he became convinced of the error of these convictions and in 1697 in Old South Church, Boston, publicly accepted the “blame and shame” for them. Sewall served for thirty-seven years as judge of the superior court of the colony, being chief justice during the last ten years of his service. Sewall was also a well-known author and his most famous work was his three-volume diary, which is very revealing of Samuel Sewall and the period he lived in. Sewall was a respected figure of his time and shared relations with other prominent icons of the colonial era. When Sewall entered Harvard he shared a home for two years with Edward Taylor, a famous American poet who became a lifelong friend of Sewall’s. Also in the year of the Salem witch Trials Samuel Sewall was appointed as one of nine judges by Govenor Phips, another fellow judge on this board was Cotton Mather. A famous individual of colonial times he was a minister of Boston’s Old North Church and was a true believer in witchcraft. Sewall and Mather were both puritans, authors, and shared similar views. Samuel Sewall died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1730, January 1st.
In the nineteenth century America plunged into the Industrial Revolution. In the eighteenth century, goods were produced in home system operations. The remarkable development of capitalism in Boston became evident after the French and Indian war of 1812. Two of huge factories privately owned in Boston were Francis Lowell's Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham and Merrimack Manufacturing Company in Lowell. As the role of women in society became more indiscriminate, young females dominated factory towns such as Lowell. They came from all over New England's farms and small towns, worked for a few years and then returned. Thus the mill populations were transient. With mechanization of textiles, new styles and fashions developed. Thus newness was becoming a virtue rather than peril.
Sam Houston Sam Houston was, as legend reports, a big man about six feet and six inches tall. He was an exciting historical figure and war hero who was involved with much of the early development of our country and Texas. He was a soldier, lawyer, politician, businessman, and family man, whose name will be synonymous with nation heroes who played a vital part in the shaping of a young and prosperous country. He admired and supported the Native Americans who took him in and adopted him into their culture to help bridge the gap between the government and a noble forgotten race. Sam Houston succeeded in many roles he donned as a man, but the one most remembered is the one of a true American hero.
The first key player in the American industrial revolution was Francis Cabot Lowell. In 1810, in Waltham, Massachusetts, Lowell was responsible for building the first American factory for converting raw cotton into finished cloth. Large factories were built along the river to house the new water driven power looms for weaving textiles. At the same time that more factories were built to keep up with the growing demands of the consumer, the numbers of immigrants to the United States grew (Kellogg). This new labor force could be employed with even less pay and provided with a much lower standard of housing. This in turn increased the profit margi...