501 Critical Reading Questions
Critical Reading Questions
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501 Critical Reading Questions
Critical Reading Questions
(1) (5) (10) 3 9 could operate it. Nevertheless it was an English immigrant, Samuel Slater, who finally introduced British cotton technology to America. Slater had worked his way up from apprentice to overseer in an English factory using the Arkwright system. Drawn by American bounties for the introduction of textile technology, he passed as a farmer and sailed for America with details of the Arkwright water frame committed to memory. In December 1790, working for mill owner Moses Brown, he started up the first permanent American cot- ton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Employing a workforce of nine children between the ages of seven and twelve, Slater success- fully mechanized the carding and spinning processes. A generation of millwrights and textile workers trained under Slater was the catalyst for the rapid proliferation of textile mills in the early nineteenth century. From Slater’s first mill, the industry spread across New England to places like North Uxbridge, Massachusetts. For two decades, before Lowell mills and those modeled after them offered competition, the “Rhode Island System” of small, rural spinning mills set the tone for early industrialization. By 1800 the mill employed more than 100 workers. A decade later 61 cotton mills turning more than 31,000 spindles were operating in the United States, with Rhode Island and the Philadelphia region the main manufacturing centers. The textile industry was established, although factory operations were limited to carding and spinning. It remained for Francis Cabot Lowell to introduce a workable power loom and the integrated factory, in which all textile production steps take place under one roof. As textile mills proliferated after the turn of the century, a national debate arose over the place of manufacturing in American society. Thomas Jefferson spoke for those supporting the “yeoman ideal” of a rural Republic, at whose heart was the independent, democratic farmer. He questioned the spread of factories, worrying about factory workers’ loss of economic independence. Alexander Hamilton led those who promoted manufacturing and saw prosperity growing out of industrial development. The debate, largely philosophical in the 1790s, grew more urgent after 1830 as textile factories multiplied and increasing numbers of Americans worked in them. 501 Download 0.98 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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