Moses Brown: The Quaker Capitalist

Moses Brown provided the capital, connections, and Quaker respectability that made Slater's enterprise possible, through the firm of his son-in-law William Almy and his cousin Smith Brown. His own history embodies the moral contradictions of early American industry. As a partner in Nicholas Brown & Company, he shared in a family business built on spermaceti candles, rum, and the Hope iron furnace—and in the 1764–65 voyage of the slave ship Sally, on which at least 109 of the 196 Africans purchased died. After his conversion to Quakerism he freed the people he held in slavery in November 1773 and became one of Rhode Island's leading abolitionists, publicly opposing his brother John, who defended the slave trade. Yet the mills he helped launch ran on cotton that, within a generation, came overwhelmingly from enslaved labor in the American South.