CHAPTER XII

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN AMERICA

Outstanding Features of the Period 1790-1860.-The years 1790 to 1860 marked a period in which the United States passed from a condition of economic dependence upon Europe to one in which the ordinary wants of manufactured goods could be supplied at home. It was also a period of industrial revolution in which household industries gave way to the factory system. These years may be roughly subdivided into three periods. The first, 1790-1815, was characterized by (1) economic dependence on Europe for manufactured goods, followed by (2) years when international disturbances brought succeeding crises in our economic life and (3) the birth of the factory system. The second period, 1815-40, showed (1) the gradual growth of manufactures and the entrance of these interests into political controversies, and (2) the dependence of these industries upon water transportation. The third period, 1840-60, profited from the discovery of the practical use of coal for smelting iron and for steam power, and was marked by (1) the rise of railroads, which allowed manufacturing to be carried on almost anywhere, (2) by the introduction of many new improvements in machinery which quickened the diversified manufacturing enterprises, both of which factors helped to bring about (3) the transition from household industry to the factory system. Taking the period as a whole, agriculture still continued to occupy the chief energies of the people. During most of the period from 1790 to 1860, shipping and the industries dependent upon it absorbed a disproportionately large share of capital and labor. Milling and meat packing, industries closely allied to agriculture, rose first, followed by textiles and then the metal industries. Unoccupied public land, across which the fron

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1 These divisions follow in general those made by Victor S. Clark in his History of Manufactures in the United States 1607-1860, chap. xi.

tier advanced, was a determining factor in the history of manufactures, especially as it affected the labor market.

Economic Dependence on Europe.-The Revolution, as we have seen, brought political independence, but not immediately economic independence. Industry which had thriven on the old "three-cornered traffic" was largely destroyed by the prohibition of trade with English possessions in the West Indies. Manufactures which had grown up during the Revolution were smothered by cheaper British goods which were thrown on the American market upon the resumption of peace. The growth of American manufacturing was held up not only by the uncertainty of foreign markets and the competition of foreign goods, but also by internal factors of equal importance. After two hundred years of settlement there remained still an apparently exhaustless supply of unoccupied land. The lure of an independent life with profits to be secured both from agriculture and from rising land values attracted the average man more than an existence as an industrial laborer. Agriculture was still the primary industry, the logical occupation from which the greatest returns were to be obtained. Unoccupied western land was the chief cause for the scarcity and consequently high cost of labor, a chief deterrent to the growth of manufacturing. Manufacturing had also to meet the competition of shipping. What loose capital was left over from agriculture was largely drawn into ship building and transportation. Marketing the agricultural products seemed the most important problem to be solved, and large amounts of liquid capital were drawn into schemes for canals, railroads, river and ocean ships. The infant manufactures had to compete with the shipping industry during the golden era of the merchant marine. The net earnings of the merchant marine between 1795 and 1801 were estimated at $32,000,000 a year, three-fourths the total value of agricultural exports during the same years; the tonnage built in American dockyards increased from 202,000 in 1789 to 1,425,000 in 1810. Nor were American carriers content with transporting their own produce. They scoured the seas in search of business. In the first decade of the century there were some years in which the value of foreign goods transported exceeded domestic prod

ucts. Between 1791 and 1800 35 per cent of the goods received were reëxported, largely on American ships.

With these contending factors, it is a source of wonder that any progress whatever was made. Yet it was during the years most discouraging to industrial life that the birth of the factory system took place and American manufactures established themselves. The chief contributing causes were: first, the partial shutting off of European imports during the Revolution (1775-81), during the years of the Embargo and Non-intercourse Acts and the War of 1812-15; second, the existence of an abundance of raw materials, especially cotton, iron, and fuel, and of water power; third, the immigration in continually increasing numbers of skilled and unskilled European laborers, in many cases persons unused to agriculture and willing to engage in industry; fourth, government aid through protective tariffs; fifth, the gradual appearance of small amounts of accumulated capital; and sixth, the versatility and inventive genius of a resourceful people. These influences combined with the savings on freight tended to overcome the higher cost of labor.

Although the small amount of surplus capital in the country was largely drawn into other fields, sufficient was attracted to manufacturing to give the latter a start. Considerable amounts came from commercial firms who withdrew their capital from commerce during the uncertain years preceding and subsequent to the War of 1812. In a similar way ship owners and sea captains during the same period turned from the carrying trade to cotton manufacturing. With the decline of the East Indian trade, the capital of Salem and Providence shifted to manufacturing as did that of New Bedford with the passing of the whaling industry. Merchants with surpluses, especially those who wished to assure themselves of a supply of the finished product, invested actively in manufacturing. But undoubtedly the larger number of establishments originated from small shops and water mills whose owners reinvested their accumulations until their enterprises assumed respectable proportions. The profits from manufacturing were normally large, affording both new capital for extension and a stimulation to outsiders to invest. From the

inaccurate census deductions it is probable that the capital invested in manufacturing was about $50,000,000 in 1820 and $1,000,000,000 in 1860.

The Industrial Revolution in England.-The Industrial Revolution in America was preceded and made possible by a similar transition in England. For thousands of years the economic processes were carried on in essentially the same manner. Thread was spun and cloth woven by hand. The same was true of other manufactured articles. These handicraft operations were usually carried on either in the home as a by-industry to farming or in a little shop attached to the house where the master craftsman, surrounded by his journeymen and apprentices, laboriously turned out his products. In the last half of the eighteenth century and first quarter of the nineteenth, various inventions were made which entirely revolutionized the world, changing more profoundly than had all previous ages the every-day life of mankind. England, the first of the European nations to free herself from the shackles of guild regulations, possessed of a thriving commerce and accumulated capital, free from the devastation of the Napoleonic wars, and rich in coal and iron, was a logical starting point for this great advance.

The Industrial Revolution was the result of thousands of experimenters, but certain names stand out preeminently. The beginning was in the textile industry. In 1738 John Kay invented the "fly-shuttle," a device by which a weaver, instead of reaching across to throw the shuttle back and forth, could jerk a string to accomplish the same purpose. This simple contrivance allowed the weaver to work on a much wider piece of cloth and with more rapidity. The speeding up of weaving brought increased demand for thread; but it was not until 1770 that James Hargreaves, a Lancashire weaver, patented an improvement on the old-fashioned spinning-wheel whereby eight spindles connected by a band to a horizontal wheel, and turned by a crank, could spin eight threads at a time. While Hargreaves was still working on his "spinning-jenny," Richard Arkwright, a barber of Preston, patented a water-power machine in 1769 which drew the carded cotton through a series of rollers, each set revolving at a

greater velocity than the preceding set, and turned out cotton thread strong enough to be used as warp. Arkwright's "water frame" made the manufacture of cotton goods a commercial possibility and himself a wealthy man. A further improvement in spinning was made in 1779 by Samuel Crompton, who combined the work of Hargreaves and Arkwright by building a machine called a mule, which would turn out a better thread at quicker speed. Since the spinners were now far ahead of the weavers, it was quite logical that the next advance should be in weaving. The invention, strange to say, was the result of the labors of Edmund Cartwright, a Kentish clergyman, who knew absolutely nothing of machinery when he first set to work on the problem. By 1785 he had constructed a power loom propelled by water which would weave cloth successfully. The demand for cotton was now so great that the southern planters in greater numbers turned from raising tobacco to cotton, a transition made possible by Eli Whitney's cotton gin. These inventions were but the beginning of the revolution in textiles. Other inventors constructed machines for the spinning and weaving of woolens and fabrics and for the various dependent processes.

Simultaneously with the improvements in textile machinery came the practical steam engine. The properties of steam had been known to the ancient Egyptians and interesting experiments had been made toward the end of the eighteenth century by Dennis Papin, a Frenchman, and by James Savery. Thomas Newcomen patented an engine in 1705 to pump water out of the mines, an engine capable of doing the work of fifty men, but slow and expensive to operate. In 1763 James Watt, a Scotch scientist, then employed in making astronomical instruments for the University of Glasgow, was given a model of one of Newcomen's engines to repair. In 1769 he patented an improved engine which effected a great saving in fuel and time by drawing off the steam into a separate condenser, thus keeping the cylinder continually warm and making it possible by automatic controls to use the same steam in forcing the cylinder both ways. In company with Mathew Boulton, a wealthy manufacturer, Watt commenced the commercial manufacture of steam engines. To a man of Watt's