Industrial Revolution - United States

United States

The United States originally used horse-powered machinery to power its earliest factories, but eventually switched to water power, with the consequence that industrialisation was essentially limited to New England and the rest of the Northeastern United States, where fast-moving rivers were located. Horse-drawn production proved to be economically challenging and a more difficult alternative to the newer water-powered production lines. However, the raw materials (cotton) came from the Southern United States. It was not until after the Civil War in the 1860s that steam-powered manufacturing overtook water-powered manufacturing, allowing the industry to fully spread across the nation.

Thomas Somers and the Cabot Brothers founded the Beverly Cotton Manufactory in 1787, the first cotton mill in America, the largest cotton mill of its era, and a significant milestone in the research and development of cotton mills in the future. This cotton mill was designed to utilise horse-powered production, however the operators quickly learned that the economic stability of their horse-drawn platform was unstable, and had fiscal issues for years after it was built. Despite the losses, the Manufactory served as a playground of innovation, both in turning a large amount of cotton, but also developing the water-powered milling structure used in Slater's Mill.

Samuel Slater (1768–1835) is the founder of the Slater Mill. As a boy apprentice in Derbyshire, England, he learned of the new techniques in the textile industry and defied laws against the emigration of skilled workers by leaving for New York in 1789, hoping to make money with his knowledge. Slater founded Slater's Mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793. He went on to own thirteen textile mills. Daniel Day established a wool carding mill in the Blackstone Valley at Uxbridge, Massachusetts in 1809, the third woollen mill established in the U.S. (The first was in Hartford, Connecticut, and the second at Watertown, Massachusetts.) The John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor retraces the history of "America's Hardest-Working River', the Blackstone. The Blackstone River and its tributaries, which cover more than 45 miles (72 km) from Worcester to Providence, was the birthplace of America's Industrial Revolution. At its peak over 1100 mills operated in this valley, including Slater's mill, and with it the earliest beginnings of America's Industrial and Technological Development.

While on a trip to England in 1810, Newburyport merchant Francis Cabot Lowell was allowed to tour the British textile factories, but not take notes. Realising the War of 1812 had ruined his import business but that a market for domestic finished cloth was emerging in America, he memorised the design of textile machines, and on his return to the United States, he set up the Boston Manufacturing Company. Lowell and his partners built America's second cotton-to-cloth textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, second to the Beverly Cotton Manufactory After his death in 1817, his associates built America's first planned factory town, which they named after him. This enterprise was capitalised in a public stock offering, one of the first uses of it in the United States. Lowell, Massachusetts, utilising 5.6 miles (9.0 km) of canals and ten thousand horsepower delivered by the Merrimack River, is considered by some to be a major contributor to the success of the American Industrial Revolution. The short-lived utopia-like Lowell System was formed, as a direct response to the poor working conditions in Britain. However, by 1850, especially following the Irish Potato Famine, the system had been replaced by poor immigrant labour.

The industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854 also in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Waltham Watch Company, with the development of machine tools, tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro precision required for watches.