Origins & Firsts
The year Samuel Slater built the first American factory, right after George Washington became president.
1790
Factories shifted the economic base away from this sector, drawing people from the countryside into cities.
Agriculture
He built the first American factory from memory to produce spindles of yarn.
Samuel Slater
Factories in the Northeast preferred this group of workers because they could be paid lower wages than men.
Women and children
These two brothers from England built the first factory to manufacture woolens in Massachusetts, three years after Slater's mill.
John and Arthur Scholfield
The average hourly wage in early American factories.
Approximately 20 cents per hour
Built from memory, Slater's factory started with this many spindles powered by this many children pushing foot treadles.
72 spindles powered by 9 children
This older production system, where workers made goods at home was replaced by factory wage labor.
The putting-out system