The attempt to run them by water power failed, and they were sold
to Moses Brown of Pawtucket, who with his partner, William Almy,
had mustered an army of hand-loom weavers in 1790, large enough
to produce nearly eight thousand yards of cloth in that year.
Brown's need of spinning machinery, to provide his weavers with
yarn, was very great; but these machines he had bought would not
run, and in 1790 there was not a single successful power-spinner
in the United States.

Meanwhile Benjamin Franklin had come home, and the Pennsylvania
Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and Useful Arts was
offering prizes for inventions to improve the textile industry.
And in Milford, England, was a young man named Samuel Slater,
who, on hearing that inventive genius was munificently rewarded
in America, decided to migrate to that country. Slater at the age
of fourteen had been apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, a partner of
Arkwright. He had served both in the counting-house and the mill
and had had every opportunity to learn the whole business.

Soon after attaining his majority, he landed in New York,
November, 1789, and found employment. From New York he wrote to
Moses Brown of Pawtucket, offering his services, and that old
Quaker, though not giving him much encouragement, invited him to
Pawtucket to see whether he could run the spindles which Brown
had bought from the men of Providence. "If thou canst do what
thou sayest," wrote Brown, "I invite thee to come to Rhode
Island."

Arriving in Pawtucket in January, 1790, Slater pronounced the
machines worthless, but convinced Almy and Brown that he knew his