Not So Innocent

Our exhibit about the impact of mills on slavery. 

The most recent task in Honors History 10 has been to create a museum exhibit based on sources relating to the industrial revolution. In order to create our exhibit, my group had to analyze sources. We did this in order to come to an overall conclusion as to how all the sources fit together, and to make a statement about the industrial revolution. We used our sources as evidence to back up our conclusion.  In order to analyze the sources, we looked at them and decided what someone could learn from each source and what motivated the author to write or draw it. Our exhibit shows how slavery in the south and the development of textile mills in the north are related. On our exhibit, we have a graph that is titled “U.S. Slavery Statistics from 1770 to 1860”. This graph shows the increase of slaves in many states after 1820, when the industrial revolution began. We also had a picture of the Boott Cotton Mill and explained that the mill produced products such as fancy dress goods and yarns, along with other goods. There is also another graph on our exhibit that shows the relationship between the slave population and the number of textile mills in Lowell, MA. As the number of textile mills increases from 50 to 60 mills, the slave population increases by about one million slaves. Another illustration we had on our exhibit showed an hourglass with a slave working at the top, and the mills running in the bottom half. This depiction of slavery shows that slavery in the south was directly influenced by the need for resources (cotton) at the mills in the north. Lastly, we had a picture of Cotton Spinning Frame. This cotton frame speeds up the process of making textiles. We came up with the name for our exhibit by relating slavery to the spinning of cloth, because a lot of cloth was made at the mills in the north, and called it “Spinning into Slavery.” The northern United States is not as innocent as we would like to think when talking about slavery. The mills in the north were the reason there was a need for cotton and the slaves in the south picked this cotton. We hope that people will learn that the people in the northern United States had a big impact on slavery in the south. 

This picture of child labor in mines was found on the exhibit titled
"Condemning the Innocent".

After creating our exhibit and displaying it, we looked at other group’s exhibits. At the exhibit titled “Condemning the Innocent”, I learned that work conditions in some mills were awful. Some children were forced to pull carts in mines, and children worked with no shoes on while operating machines. These horrible work conditions led to people making an effort to stop child labor by instituting child labor laws. At another display, I learned that lots of pollution also accompanied the industrial revolution. Rivers, along with the air, in England were becoming polluted from the factories. This pollution affected the entire country of England. During the exhibit about transportation, I learned that the development of the steam engine led to many innovations in transportation. Steam boats and trains were starting to be powered by the steam engine. This allowed them to travel an astonishing 5 miles per hour, which made transportation faster. The development of the British Handloom and spinning jenny were also very important to textile production. They allowed wool to be spun faster, which led to textile mills being created. Because wool was spun faster, textile production increased and many families were financially supported with new jobs spinning wool. I learned a lot about the influence of mills during the industrial revolution.