pany was incorporated, whose works at Beverly, Mass., had been begun in 1787, and were in operation there at the time of Washington's visit in 1789-the first cotton factory in America.

About the same time, Tench Coxe and others were actively promoting manufacturing operations in Pennsylvania. Machinery for making cotton goods was set up in Connecticut in 1790, in New Jersey in 1792, and in New York in 1794.

But Rhode Island was especially fortunate in securing the services of Samuel Slater, a practical machinist and manufacturer, who arrived from England near the close of the year 1789, and was soon employed by Moses Brown and Almy & Brown to take charge of their mills at Providence and Pawtucket.

The mills which had been started at Beverly, Providence, Paterson, (New Jersey,) and Philadelphia, had the spinning jenny; but it was Slater who first introduced Arkwright's machinery.

Thenceforward there was success, with rapid improvement, especially in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, attributable in a great degree to the skill and teaching of Slater.

Coxe's report upon the census of 1810 gives the number of cotton factories in the country as follows:

The number of spindles is not fully stated, but those of New Hampshire were less than 500 per mill, and in Rhode Island and Massachusetts less than 800 to each mill. The mills in the middle and western States were doubtless smaller still. Assuming the average of all at 400 per mill, the whole number of spindles would be 96,400.1 (In Woodbury's report to Congress, in 1836, the number for 1810 was stated at 87,000.)

1 Tench Coxe, in his "Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of America for the year 1810," (prepared in 1812, under instruction of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury,) says "the maximum of our exportation of cotton in any one year was sixty-four millions of pounds weight;" that it was "worth then 124 cents per pound at the planters' estates-$8,000,000 ;" and that if the 64,000,000 pounds of cotton could have been spun into yarn, (it would have required 1,160,000 spindles,) the weight of yarn would have been about 50,000,000 pounds, worth, at the price of the day, $1 124 per pound, and its value "would amount to $50,000,000, exceeding the aggregate value of all the exports of American articles in the most favorable year." He further says, that by weaving this quantity of yarn into cloth it would become worth $67,000,000, and by the process of printing and dyeing, its value would be further increased, so that "the aggregate value of our sur

The embarrassments to commerce growing out of the war in Europe, the Berlin and Milan decrees, orders in council, and our own embargo upon trade, had, prior to 1810, restricted the importation of foreign goods; and the consequent advance in prices gave impulse to a rapid increase in the production of such fabrics as could be manufactured here, particularly of cotton, to take the place of the foreign goods.

Mr. Batchelder, who was then making cotton goods, says, "The war with Great Britain in 1812 raised the price of goods to such extravagant rates that articles of cotton, such as had been previously imported from England at 17 to 20 cents per yard, were sold by the package at 75 cents. This state of affairs caused a further large increase of the manufacturing business during the war.

In 1811, Mr. Nathan Appleton1 and Mr. Francis C. Lowell, of Boston, having met in Edinburgh, determined upon plans for the introduction to this country of the power-loom, then recently put in operation in some of the cotton mills in Great Britain. Those plans were carried into effect by Messrs. Lowell, Appleton, Patrick T. Jackson, and others, and power-loom weaving was successfully established in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814.

Improvements to the machinery for spinning and weaving, for card ing and dressing, and other processes in cotton manufacture were discovered and applied in rapid succession by the ready invention of Paul Moody and others. These, brought into use by the enterprise and sagacity of Mr. Lowell and his associates at Waltham, gave, in the vicinity of Boston, an impulse which for its day was as valuable and effective as that given by Slater and his associates in the vicinity of Providence at an earlier date. The later one was a great advance upon the first, yet the value of either to the welfare of the whole country cannot well be over-estimated.2

With the return of peace in 1815 the importation of foreign goods was resumed. The sudden fall in prices which followed was destructive of all profit in manufacturing operations, and brought ruin to many who were engaged in them.

plus cotton, (64,000,000 pounds,) even when thus simply manufactured, would be raised from $8,000,000 or $9,000,000 to $75,000,000."

The supplementary observations of Mr. Coxe, bearing date September, 1814, "in regard to the uses of steam as applied to the manufactures of cotton and other materials, to “ the moving of boats and vessels freighted with those raw materials," and other labor-saving devices, are peculiarly interesting now.

See Memoir of Hon. Nathan Appleton, prepared for the Massachusetts Historical Society by Hon. R. C. Winthrop, for interesting particulars concerning the establishment of the earlier factories, introduction of the power-loom, &c.

2 Mr. Nathan Appleton, in the sketches of his own life, which he had drawn up about the year 1855, and handed to Mr. Winthrop a short time before his death in 1861, thus wrote of the labor-saving machinery in the arrangement adopted by Mr. Lowell for the mill at Waltham prior to 1816. "It is remarkable how few changes, in this respect, have since been made from those established by him in the first mill built in Waltham."

REPORT OF THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE IN 1815.

A report of a committee of Congress in 1815 gave the following as the statistics of the cotton manufacture in the United States at that date.

100,000 $15,000,0001

.lbs.. 27,000,000

Wages of the 100,000, at $1 50 per week, average..

Cotton consumed per year, 90,000 bales..

Yards of cloth produced..

Cost, averaging 30 cents per yard...............

$1,000,000 $24,300,000

A statement of the spindles in three States was made as a basis for assessments to pay the expenses of an agent at Washington. It appears to have been carefully and correctly made up, and was as follows:

The foregoing statistics of 27,000,000 pounds of cotton used, producing $1,000,000 yards of cloth, or three yards of yard-wide cloth per pound of cotton, indicate an average of about No. 15 yarn. At the probable rate of that day, there should have been about 350,000 spindles in the United States to consume the 27,000,000 pounds of cotton.

Up to this time (1815) the cotton machinery had been employed only in the production of yarn, which was woven upon hand looms, (the mill at Waltham, having power looms, being a recent exception.) Now came the necessity for adopting whatever would cheapen the process yet improve the product, and power looms soon came into general use.

The great profits of the owners of cotton factories for a few years prior to 1813, and the desire to participate in them, led to the erection of new mills and their machinery, to a great extent, upon credit. Many had not the capital, which would have been required in ordinary times for a proper conduct of the business, and had ventured without it under the temptation of extraordinary prices. While all suffered, these were utterly disabled by the change that came with peace.

All this large interest was prostrate. In the "Autobiographical Sketches" left by Nathan Appleton, he made notes of a visit which he and Mr. Lowell made to Rhode Island in 1816. He says: "We proceeded to Pawtucket. We called on Mr. Wilkinson, the maker of

Should be $150,000.

*

*

machinery. He took us into his establishment—a large one. All was silent-not a wheel in motion-not a man to be seen. He informed us that there was not a spindle running in Pawtucket, except a few in Slater's old mill, making yarns; all was dead and still. We saw several manufacturers; they were all sad and despairing." Congress was petitioned for relief in the form of a protective tariff, and the policy of encouraging American industry in this way was earnestly advocated and carried by Calhoun, Clay, and other leading southern men in Congress, against the strenuous resistance of representatives from the New England and other districts largely interested in shipping and foreign commerce.

The recovery from this extreme depression was slow and gradual. Adversity had compelled the adoption of the best labor-saving machinery which ingenious men could devise, and a resort to all the wise economies that should tend to cheapen the cost of production. Under favor of these benefits and the fostering effect of the protective tariff the manufacturing interest regained a profitable position, and began a new period of growth and prosperity. It has since passed through adverse times, making losses and encountering changes of legislative policy that were discouraging; but in spite of these and their checks to progress, it has increased from one decade to another, and has become one of the most important, as it is one of the most firmly established industries of our people.

In 1821 Messrs. Nathan Appleton, Kirk Boott, P. T. Jackson, and Paul Moody started the improvement of the water-power on the Merrimack river, which created the city of Lowell. It was the origin and type of the many great manufacturing towns which have become the seats of wealth-producing power.

Our limited time and space do not permit even a chronological statement in detail of the beginning and progress of the large manufacturing works at Saco, Biddeford, and Lewiston, in Maine; at Great Falls, Salmon Falls, Manchester, and Nashua, in New Hampshire; at Lawrence, Fall River, and the hundred other manufacturing cities and towns in Massachusetts; nor of the extension of this business in the States of Rhode Island and Connecticut, dotting them all over with factories wherever a water-power could be utilized under the influences which began with and flowed from the success of Slater in 1789–290.

The early, persistent, and successful efforts for the promotion of manufactures in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and the results achieved, deserve special mention, but, like the others, must be passed

over.

STATISTICS OF MANUFACTURE.

It remains now to present such statistics as are obtainable to show the growth of this business from one decade to another and its present condition.

The following table is made from the data gathered and presented to Congress by Mr. Woodbury in his special report, March 4, 1836. Few, if any, of its quantities could have been taken from actual returns, and all are more or less the subjects of estimate. (The spindles in 1815 must have been over 300,000.) Mr. Woodbury explains that the quantities of cotton stated as consumed included the cotton used in families for home spinning and all other purposes.

Number of spindles and consumption of cotton from 1805 to 1835 inclusive, according to Woodbury.

The following table of statistics was compiled from the census returns of 1840. The number of cotton mills then returned exceeds the number now in existence. Either many have been discontinued, or some were included then that were not properly cotton factories.

It will be noticed that there were no cotton mills in the States of Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, nor in the District of Columbia.

Statistics of the cotton manufacture of the United States according to the census returns of 1840.