More than a ‘Curious Cultural Sideshow’: Samuel Slater's Sunday School and the Role of Literacy Sponsorship in Disciplining Labor

Abstract

This article investigates the concept of literacy sponsorship through the introduction of textile factories and mill villages in New England during the American Industrial Revolution. Specifically, the article focuses on Samuel Slater’s mill villages and his disciplining and socialization of workers via the ‘family’ approach to factory production, and, in particular, his support of the Sunday school. As an institution key to managerial control and new to rural New England, the Sunday school captures the complicated networks of moral and literacy sponsorship in the transition to factory production.