First American Cotton Mill

Bird's Eye View of Pawtucket & Central Falls, Rhode Island, 1877.
Map Collections (1500-Present)

On December 20, 1790, water-powered machinery for spinning and carding cotton was set in motion in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Based on the designs of English inventor Richard Arkwright, the mill was built by Samuel Slater, a recent English immigrant who apprenticed Arkwright's partner, Jebediah Strutt.

Slater had evaded British law against emigration of textile workers in order to seek his fortune in America. Considered the father of the United States textile industry, he eventually built several successful cotton mills in New England and established the town of Slatersville, Rhode Island.

Prior to the Civil War, textile manufacture was the most important American industry. The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell. Soon textile mills dotted the rivers of New England transforming the landscape, the economy, and the people. Initially, mill work was performed by daughters of local farmers. In later years, immigration became the source of mill "hands."

Sparta Cotton Mill, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1909.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

By the 1920s, the South eclipsed New England in textile production. Not only were Southern plants located closer to raw materials, but also Southern laborers were often desperate for work. Entire families labored together in the textile mills of Georgia and the Carolinas. As in New England a century before, cheap labor was essential to high profits.

Textile worker Fannie Miles remember her transition from farm to factory at the age of nine:

I was just nine years old when we moved to a cotton mill in Darlington, South Carolina, and I started to work in the mill. I was in a world of strangers. I didn't know a soul. The first morning I was to start work, I remember coming downstairs feelin' strange and lonesome-like. My grandfather, who had a long, white beard, grabbed me in his arms and put two one-dollar bills in my hand. He said, "Take these to your mother and tell her to buy you some pretty dresses and make 'em nice for you to wear in this mill." I was mighty proud of that.

"I'm Not Lonesome," December 1, 1938.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Myrtle Bagwell, One of the Youngest Spinners in Spartan Mills, Spartanburg, South Carolina
Lewis Hine, photographer, May 1912.
National Child Labor Committee Collection

Often, workers moved between farming and mill work. John William Prosser described his situation in the 1920s:

I figured we could do better at a cotton mill, so we moved to Darlington, South Carolina. I got a job that paid ten cents an hour, and the boys picked up a little work every now and again. But I guess I had the movin' habit by that time, and we moved from one place to another. We'd sharecrop for a while, and then we'd rent. I'd work at a sawmill, and then blacksmith again, till we settled down and come to Columbia.

"Ain't It So, Corrie?," February 6, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

At the Mary-Leila Cotton Mill, Greensboro, Georgia
Jack Delano, photographer, October 1941.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945

Learn more about American textile workers in the following collections:

• Search the American Life Histories, 1936-1940 collection on cotton mill or textile mill to find more recollections of life in the cotton mills, as well as descriptions of mill villages compiled by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writer's Project.
• Search FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 on cotton mill to locate photographs of cotton mills and textile workers.
• Read the related Today in History features on the boll weevil and Carson McCullers (who grew up in Columbus, Georgia, another city whose history boasts a thriving textile industry).
• Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present, although not completely digitized, does have many related images. Search the collection on the term textile. A search on cotton will also show sites where ginned cotton is pressed and bailed before being made into textiles.
• The National Park Service preserves and interprets the history of the American Industrial Revolution at the Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Overhead Bridge Connecting Napping Building with Cloth Room, in Massachusetts Mills, Cloth Room, Lowell, Massachusetts
Ernest Gould with Christopher Closs, photographers, April 1989.
Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present

The town of Lowell, Massachusetts was named after the inventor of the power loom, Francis Cabot Lowell. Conditions in Lowell's mills were considered exemplary in 1800s. Nevertheless, Lowell factories saw a number of strikes, including the first successful mass strike which was led by the Industrial Workers of the World (the "Wobblies") in 1912. Lowell factories, well connected to Boston by canal and railroad, provided an early model for subsequent U.S. corporate and entrepreneurial organization.

Among the famous from Lowell are the painter James McNeill Whistler and the literary icon Jack Kerouac. The writers Robert Lowell, Amy Lowell and James Russel Lowell, although not born in Lowell, were members of the prominent Lowell family.

Hamilton Canal in Hamilton Canal, Jackson Street, Lowell, Massachusetts
Jack Boucher, photographer, 1976.
Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present