I should have added - the children who worked in the mills didn’t have that choice to leave the mills. Some of the parents came over as indentured servants. They were required to stay working in the mills for the duration of their servitude.
On Northern children working in mills: everyone today agrees that was unacceptable, and it was eventually outlawed.
But we should push-back against suggestions that African slaves were “no different” from Northern indentured servants — that just ain’t so.
Indentured servants voluntarily contracted to work off their debts over a specified period of time.
That was hugely different from Africans kidnapped and held in involuntary bondage, not only for their lifetimes, but also the lifetimes of their descendants.
African slavery is a peculiar institution vastly different from, and more unacceptable than, traditional indentured service.