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Industry
……Did you ever visit the Slater Mill? The Slater Mill Museum? In Pawtucket? If you grew up in Rhode Island, as I did, you might have learned about it in elementary school.
……The website logo: Samuel Slater, Father of the American Industrial Revolution. A big claim. ……The mill was opened in 1793. Two and a half stories. Forty two feet long. 29 feet wide. Powered by a water mill in the Blackstone River. It is an historic site.
……Why is it historic? It copied the cotton mills that had been established in England, the Arkwright system. Relying on water power and machinery, this continuous process which transformed raw cotton into yarn or thread became operational in 1771. This was mass production.
……Moses Brown, one of the founders of Brown University, had learned enough about the Arkwright system to create something that looked like a British Arkwright system factory. He did just that in 1789. He just couldn’t make it work.……At ten years old, Samuel Slater went to work in a mill creating yarn in 1778. Four years later when he was fourteen, his father died. Slater became an apprentice in the mill. Seven years later, in 1789, he was free. He was 21. He had learned the business.
……Britain prohibited transporting the machinery for this work or the designs for the machinery out of the country. They protected their technology.
……If he had blueprints, Slater could have been arrested. He memorized the entire factory. And left for New York. In America, he wrote to Moses Brown. He promised he could make the factory work. If not, he would would ask for no compensation. Slater’s 1790 contract promised that if the factory worked, he would get half the profits and half the capital value of the factory. The factory was operating in 1791 and fully operational in 1793.
……Slater was an American hero. He and Brown, their other partners, and those who copied their system became wealthy. They made New England into a textile factory powerhouse. They made America great.
……They were also exploiters. Whether relying on child labor or dormitory living young women, improvements in working conditions are another story and an incomplete one.
……Despite America’s textile industry success, Great Britain’s industry also thrived. Not always happily. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in the British Museum writing about communism. The Chartists were demanding the vote for working men.
……The textile industry is now dispersed around the world. It has been the first industry of mass production in most underdeveloped countries.
……Countries and industries still try to keep technological secrets. We see that in Aircraft design and manufacture, power plants, solar panels. We see it in American disputes with China. The Chinese want the technology that the United States and others rely on..
……In October, a Chinese intelligence officer was arrested in Belgium and extradited to the US. The Chinese have been hacking into government and corporate technology to learn our technological secrets. Are technology spies heroes to the Chinese?
……The Chinese will not stop seeking the most modern technologies from the most modern countries. Can hacking or spying be discouraged or stopped? Obama did it. There was an 18 month respite in Chinese technology hacking at the end of Obama’s presidency. Surely, the Chinese found other ways to gain the information they wanted. I just don’t know how.……Once Trump became President, the hacking returned. The Trump administration viewed contracts that required companies to provide access to technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market as technology theft. The same as hacking. ……Call it theft. Call it blackmail. The Trump administration was willing to create a trade war to stop it. Trump said a trade war was easy to win. Not if it jeopardizes the prosperity of American soybean farmers. Not that a trade war or a pause in the trade war will stop China from seeking the most up to date technology any way that they can. Xi Jinping meet Samuel Slater. Donald J. Trump meet Samuel Slater and Moses Brown.
……Secretaries of State……If we care about democracy, we need to care about how the Secretaries of State in our several states oversee voting. ………Georgia has a run off election on October 4. It is not too late to give money to John Barrow https://www.barrowforgeorgia.com to help him with that race. John Barrow is a moderate Democrat who was the last white Democratic Congressman from Georgia. He has gotten all out support from Stacy Abrams, the Democratic candidate for Governor cheated out of victory by the Republican Secretary of State who was elected governor. Help John Barrow win.
……Louisiana has a run off election on October 8. It is not too late to give some help to Gwen Collins-Greenup https://www.gwensos.com/either. Six candidates competed to replace the previous Secretary who resigned for sexual misconduct. Democrat Gwen Collins-Greenup received 19.8% of the vote against the former Secretary’s deputy who received 20.5% of the vote. Gwen Collins-Greenup is a graduate of Liberty University, has a law degree and a degree in theology. She has been a Deputy Clerk of Courts and Director of the Criminal Traffic Division Court in Baton Rouge. She would be the highest ranking African American in Louisiana state government if elected.
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