In 1789, aged 21, Samuel Slater memorised the plans needed to build the machinery, disguised himself as a farm labourer to evade the law, and emigrated to the United States. He was not the first person with textile manufacturing experience to do so. He was however the first with the knowledge of how to build the machinery to produce those textiles. His emigration was directly responsible for ushering in the American Industrial Revolution.

Slater landed in New York in November 1789 and subsequently worked in a small textile mill in the city. During the course of his new employment he learned of the experiments of a Quaker merchant, Moses Brown, that were being conducted in Pawtucket. Brown had purchased all of the important Arkwright-type machines in Rhode Island, and moved them to a mill in Pawtucket. He then hired his son-in-law, William Almy, and his nephew, Smith Brown, to operate the mill. Unfortunately the Almy-Brown partnership faced serious problems with the design of their spinning frames, which were too heavy for hand-cranking, but too weak for water power. The company became convinced that they needed an individual experienced in textile machine construction and management. In 1790 chance, and some opportunism on Slater's part, eventually brought Almy-Brown and Slater together.

Slater was very disappointed with the quality of the machines at Pawtucket. Moses Brown was equally disappointed with Slater's assessment of the machines. The two men nevertheless reached a compromise; Slater agreed to prove himself by working without a contract for the first ten weeks whilst he rebuilt a water-powered spinning frame. Moses Brown, for his part, agreed to remove the old machines and to sponsor construction of two new water-powered spinning frames. Slater then trained others to operate the machinery, and by the end of 1790 the mill was producing cotton equal in quality to that produced by the English mills. At the end of 1792, the year Arkwright died, the mill was deemed so successful that Slater became a partner, and Almy-Brown prepared to construct a new mill, Almy, Brown and Slater, which is known these days as Slater Mill.

Nevertheless, Slater's views on running a successful business differed from those of his partners. He had shown that a mill specialising in a single process was viable; however Almy-Brown wanted a business that produced both yarn and finished knitted goods. In 1797 Samuel left the Almy-Brown partnership to build his own White Mill on the other side of the river. His marriage in 1791, to Hannah, the daughter of a wealthy Quaker, Oziel Wilkinson, proved useful in the development of his business plans; Slater and his in-laws went into business together, building spinning equipment and establishing further mills. When Samuel's brother arrived from England in 1806 with more tool and pattern designs, the business expanded further. In 1812, Samuel Slater set up mills in Oxford, Massachusetts and began manufacturing wool around 1815. He also began manufacturing iron. He was subsequently hailed by President Andrew Jackson, as The Father of American Manufactures. Samuel Slater died on April 21 1835 in Webster, Massachusetts, owning all or part of thirteen textile mills and consequently a very wealthy man. Needless to say the workers in the Derwent Valleymills did not share Andrew Jackson's appreciation of Slater's success. Fearing competition from American mills, they dubbed him "Slater the Traitor”.

The secret behind Slater's business success lay in his technological knowledge, his approach to business and in his organizational methods. These were to have a profound effect on the development of American industry. For example, Almy-Brown had been making yarn to order, which caused peaks and troughs in production, and thus uneven profits. Slater's approach, by contrast, was to run the mill at full capacity, and create a market for its output. Such sustained production however required a large permanent labour force. Slater followed Arkwright's model and enlisted large, poor families as a workforce. In order to attract these families, he built company-owned housing, which concentrated the workforce within easy walking distance of the mills. Similarly, since the mill workers had to buy everything that they needed, Slater built company stores to provide for their needs, and paid wages in the form of credit at the company store. This latter approach allowed him retain essential cash. Like Arkwright before him, Slater also provided company schools and churches for the developing community.

By contemporary standards there was a philanthropic element to what became known as the Rhode Island System, in that Slater provided good housing and education for his workforce. Nevertheless there were also good practical business reasons for providing such amenities for his employees, and Slater's system became the model for other textile manufacturers in the Blackstone River Valley. The result was that mill villages developed around small, rural, water-powered textile mills. One of the earliest of these was Slatersville; by 1807, the village included the Slatersville Mill, the largest and most modern industrial building of its day, two tenement houses for workers, the owner's house, and the company store.

The history of textile production in the Amber Valley is therefore inextricably linked with the American Industrial Revolution. Factory production methods introduced by Slater were refined and applied to other fields. Water power gave way to steam and then to electricity. The New England mill villages, although picturesque these days, were the forerunners of later company owned towns in the rest of the United States. For example, the ghost town of Fiborn Junction in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was run on principals identical to those found in Slater's mill villages, right up until the quarry's closure in the 1930s. Similarly company scrip - credit issued on the company store - still existed in the American mining industry as late as the early 20th century, whilst company stores themselves survived until the 1950s.