Samuel Slater, a young Englishman who had worked in a cotton mill, learns that the United States is offering bounties for the introduction of spinning-machine patents.

Despite the laws forbidding emigration of textile workers, Slater secretly travels to the United States and, from memory, reconstructs Richard Arkwright’s spinning machine with help from Moses Brown’s Rhode Island firm.

Moses Brown had returned briefly to the business world in 1788 , embarking on a textile venture in partnership with his cousin Smith Brown and his future son-in-law William Almy.

Moses Brown had become interested in recent British attempts to use water power in their textile mills, and has hired English emigrant Samuel Slater to help build a similar mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Moses Brown soon withdraws from active involvement in the firm, but remains a partner.

He moves on to a variety of new activities, including playing a role in Rhode Island’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1790.

Samuel Slater, despite shortages of tools and skilled mechanics, has some machinery in operation by 1791, and the factory becomes the first water-powered spinning mill in America, a seminal event generally considered the birth of the American Industrial Revolution.

Moses’ son Obadiah Brown soon replaces Smith Brown as a partner, and Samuel Slater is taken in as well, to create the new firm of Almy, Brown & Slater.

Samuel Slater knows the secret of the late Richard Arkwright's success—namely that account had to be taken of varying fiber lengths—but he also understands Arkwright's carding, drawing, and roving machines, plus the experience of blending the whole into a continuous production system.

During construction of his mill, Slater makes some adjustments to the designs to fit local needs.

The result is the first successful water-powered roller spinning textile mill in America, opened by Slater and Brown in Pawtucket in 1793.

Samuel's wife, Hannah (Wilkinson) Slater, also invents a type of cotton sewing thread, becoming in 1793 the first American woman to be granted a patent.

After creating this mill, Slater puts the principles of management in place that he had learned from Strutt and Arkwright.

They will lead to success by teaching people to be skilled mechanics.

Samuel Slater, now partners with Almy and Brown, constructs a new mill for the sole purpose of textile manufacture under the name Almy, Brown & Slater.

It is a seventy-two-spindle mill; the patenting of Eli Whitney's cotton gin on March 14, 1794, ensures ample supplies of cotton from the South.

Slater also brings the Sunday School system from his native England to his textile factory at Pawtucket, and hence to America.

Samuel Slater has drawn on his British village experience to create a factory system called the "Rhode Island System," based upon the customary patterns of family life in New England villages.

Children aged seven to twelve are the first employees of the mill; Slater personally supervises them closely.

The first child workers had been hired in 1790.

From his experience in Milford, it is highly unlikely that Slater resorted to physical punishment, relying on a system of fines.

Slater had first tried to staff his mill with women and children from far away, but that had fallen through due to the closely knit framework of the New England family.

He had then brought in whole families, creating entire towns.

He provides company-owned housing nearby, along with company stores; he sponsors a Sunday School where college students teach the children reading and writing.

In 1798, Slater splits from Almy and Brown and forms Samuel Slater & Company, in partnership with his father-in-law Oziel Wilkinson, to develop other mills in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.