The transition from an agricultural to an INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY took more than a century in the United States, but that long development entered its first phase from the 1790's through the 1830's. The INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION had begun in Britain during the mid-18th century, but the American colonies lagged far behind the mother country in part because the abundance of land and scarcity of labor in the New World reduced interest in expensive investments in machine production. Nevertheless, with the shift from hand-made to machine-made products a new era of human experience began where increased productivity created a much higher standard of living than had ever been known in the pre-industrial world.
The start of the American Industrial Revolution is often attributed to SAMUEL SLATER who opened the first industrial mill in the United States in 1790 with a design that borrowed heavily from a British model. Slater's pirated technology greatly increased the speed with which cotton thread could be spun into yarn. While he introduced a vital new technology to the United States, the economic takeoff of the Industrial Revolution required several other elements before it would transform American life.
Another key to the rapidly changing economy of the early Industrial Revolution were new organizational strategies to increase productivity. This had begun with the "OUTWORK SYSTEM" whereby small parts of a larger production process were carried out in numerous individual homes. This organizational reform was especially important for shoe and boot making. However, the chief organizational breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution was the "FACTORY SYSTEM" where work was performed on a large scale in a singlecentralized location. Among the early innovators of this approach were a group of businessmen known as the BOSTON ASSOCIATES who recruited thousands of New England farm girls to operate the machines in their new factories.
The most famous of their tightly controlled mill towns was LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS, which opened in 1823. The use of female factory workers brought advantages to both employer and employee. The Boston Associates preferred female labor because they paid the young girls less than men. These female workers, often called "LOWELL GIRLS," benefited by experiencing a new kind of independence outside the traditional male-dominated family farm.
The rise of WAGE LABOR at the heart of the Industrial Revolution also exploited working people in new ways. The first strike among textile workers protesting wage and factory conditions occurred in 1824 and even the model mills of Lowell faced large STRIKES in the 1830's.
