Are you sick of being stuck in an office all day? Is that 40-hour work week too stressful and tiring? Well, I don't have a solution to your problems. But, perhaps taking a step back in time will make you look at your job in a different light and gain a newfound appreciation for the workingplace of today. When the nation made the switch from agricultural to industrial work, there were no rules or regulations. Industry needed people to operate machinery, bottom line. Workers had little to no rights, were mostly children, and rarely saw daylight. And to think this all started in Little Rhody.

Samuel Slater is the man who got the ball rolling, or shall I say, got the water wheels turning in the industrialization of America. He is often referred to as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution." Born in England and working at the Arkwright textile mills since he was 14, Slater believed the textile industry in England had reached its peak and secretly fled to America in 1789. Not only did he know how to operate textile machinery, but he also knew how to build it. Instead of bringing a blueprint of the machinery and mill with him to America, he memorized entire documents in case his belongings were questioned or seized. Slater then, with funding from Moses Brown and Providence investors and with 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. Over the next ten years the cotton industry really took off; over eighty mills rose from American soil; all owing their existence to Samuel Slater.

The system of child labor in Rhode Island mills began with the Slater Mill. Slater's first employees were all children from seven to twelve years of age. By 1830, 55% of the mill workers in Rhode Island were children. Many of these children worked long hours in unhealthy factories for wages less than $1 per week. They performed a wide variety of tasks from picking cotton clean of dirt, leaves, pods and other foreign matter, to operating, carding and spinning machines.

This seems insane to us now, but put into context of the times, this wasn't unusual. Before the introduction of mills and industry, families worked together on their self-sufficient farms and children were expected to work long hours. For some poor families struggling to survive, factory work was a decided improvement over farm labor. Mills did not put children to work, they simply changed the type and location of work they were already doing. The parents had no problem sending their children to the mills because they were earning money, which was rare during that time. Although, Slater later paid wages in store credit.

The textile machines themselves played a large part in encouraging the use of child labor. Early Arkwright machines were so easy to operate that unskilled children could easily operate them. The use of children workers on these machines was also beneficial because they had small hands and bodies. It would use a lot of power to shut off, and then turn back on a machine if something was caught, tangled, or needed adjustment. With kids working on them, they were small enough to fit underneath, or squeeze behind the large machines and use their little hands to reach and fix where needed. All the while keeping the machines running.

The children who worked at the mill usually worked six days a week, sun up to sun down. Most children's education, whether farm or factory, consisted of learning skills through experience. Formal education for mill children was often limited to the most basic reading, writing and arithmetic which was taught at Sunday school on the children's one day off.

Some children worked in these terrible conditions with their parents, although the kids were usually the ones to introduce an industrial way of life to their parents. Even for adults, life in the mills was difficult and unhealthy -- the workday was long and strenuous. The air in the mills was full of flying lint particles that often caused respiratory disease. The mills were cold and drafty in winter, hot and humid in summer; dirty, noisy, and uncomfortable at all times. Corporal punishment by overseers was common. The danger of working near machines was always present. A tired and sleepy child could easily loss a finger, arm, or scalp to the devouring machinery.

In early mill villages, the owner alone determined the hours, earnings and physical conditions of workers. Given their ultimate control, it was not unusual for owners to take advantage of less powerful workers. While there was eventually legislation in Rhode Island against child labor, it was not effective. In 1910 only 48% of Rhode Island children attended school. In much of Rhode Island, truancy laws were often ignored. It wasn't until 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act that child labor was finally eliminated.

By its third year of operation, the Slater Mill had 30 employees, almost all of them children. Because large, poor families were an attractive pool of labor, Slater built housing to attract them. This also concentrated the work force within easy walking distance to the mills. He would then hire the children of these large families, almost all the workers worked with their siblings.

Since mill workers had to buy everything that they needed to survive, Slater built company stores to provide for their needs. Paying wages in the form of credit at the company store also allowed him retain essential cash. To provide for his workers' spiritual needs, Slater built churches and established schools near his mills. These institutions were also used to socialize workers in ways that he approved.

Many Englishmen were trying to sell English expertise in America. Most failed. They simply didn't have Slater's uncanny gift for seeing that New England was not a new England at all. It was a new land with a new people. Its technologies had to be molded to that land and to that people. This young man, who promised himself to make his fortune in America, did just that. Industry spread across America like wildfire, building our economy to the world power it is today. At the time of his death in 1835, Samuel Slater was a millionaire.

Today in the Old Slater Mill Museum occupying the Old Mill, the original posts and beams of the section built in 1793 can be seen in their original locations. The mill was of hybrid construction, resembling the stout New England barns in some details and the quaint old saltbox farmhouses in others. Like the barns, it had well-braced, exterior posts mortised and pegged to heavy cross beams from which smaller, hewn beams were attached to carry the plank floors. Like the farmhouses, the mill had clapboard on its exterior and whitewashed plaster on the interior. The sloping roof was supported on "A" framed rafters.

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You can visit today where you can take part in the lives of the New England villagers, inventors, artisans, and entrepreneurs who created the American Industrial Revolution. Once you enter the authentic 18th and 19th century buildings you'll meet costumed interpreters eager to explain and demonstrate what life was like as America began moving from the farm to the factory in the 1830s. This is a Living History museum that should be experienced.

Slater Mill has great significance in not only Rhode Island history, but our nation's history. It introduced industry to a growing nation, where it flourishes still today. Although child labor and unhealthy working conditions accompanied this revolution, Slater's Mill in Pawtucket was the turning point in American history. There isn't any other place in the world, never mind in the state, that can claim the title as the American Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

You can call the museum at (401) 725-8638 for more information, or see it for yourself at 67 Roosevelt Ave. in Pawtucket. [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]