CHAPTER XIV THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION New Ways of Working and Living.-Prior to the second half of the eighteenth century the work on the farms and in the shops everywhere in the world had been done by hand Inventions with the aid of a few simple tools. But about the time of the cause a American Revolution a great change in industry was taking industrial great place in England. This change was brought about by the revolution in invention of labor-saving machines with which one man could England do as much work as many men had done by hand. This transformation from hand labor to machine production is called the Industrial Revolution. It has had a greater influence upon our ways of working and living than all the changes in politics and government in the last two hundred years. America Between the close of the Revolutionary War and the end of the War of 1812 the influence of the Industrial Revolution began to be felt in America. Articles that hitherto had been Similar made by village artisans or plantation mechanics began to changes in be manufactured by machinery in factories. Our people have a special aptitude for invention, and the use of labor-saving machinery has steadily increased in our country for a hundred years. As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, brought about by this widespread use of machinery, greater changes have taken place in our ways of manufacturing, in our mode of travel, in our commerce, and in our methods of agriculture during the last century than the world had witnessed in the preceding five thousand years. Spinning and Weaving. The first step in the Industrial Revolution was the invention of new machinery for spinning and weaving. Ever since the dawn of civilization thread and New yarn had been spun with a simple spinning wheel and woven machines for spinning into cloth upon a hand loom. As it took a great deal longer to spin the thread than it did to weave it into cloth, men were eager to find some way of spinning more rapidly. In 1764 James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver of Lancashire, England, The power loom invented a machine with which eight threads could be spun at the same time. Hargreaves named this machine the "Spinning Jenny" in honor of his wife. Before long a "spinning jenny" was made with which as many as eighty threads could be spun at once. About the same time a better method of spinning was invented by another Englishman named Hargreave's Spinning Jenny Richard Arkwright. Arkwright's machine had to be driven by artificial power, and it was called the "water frame" because of the water wheels that were used to run it. In Arkwright's First Spinning Frame At first the thread made with the new spinning machines was woven into cloth upon the old hand looms. But during Crompton's Spinning Mule the closing years of the eighteenth century Edward Cartwright, a clergyman in the South of England, gradually perfected a new power loom which soon came into general use. The machines which were thus revolutionizing the manufacture of cotton were soon adapted to the spinning and weaving of wool and other textile materials. Cloth could now be woven much more rapidly than ever before. In the meantime great improvements had been made in all the other processes in the manufacture of cotton, woolen, and linen goods, such as combing and carding the raw material and fulling and dyeing the finished product. In the old days when textile goods were made by hand their manufacture was carried on in private houses or in small shops. At the close of our colonial period, for example, there The rise of was a spinning wheel in almost every house and hand looms the factory were found in many homes. But the new machinery for making system cloth, whose invention we have just described, was large and heavy and required great power to run it. It was soon found to be an advantage to put it in large establishments called factories and to employ in these factories the spinners and weavers who had previously worked at home. During the nineteenth century the factory system was gradually extended to many other lines of manufacturing until it almost entirely displaced the old-time household industries. the United The new machines for spinning and weaving were invented in England, but their introduction into the United States began the very year that Washington became president. In 1789 Early Samuel Slater, a young Englishman who had been employed factories in in the Arkwright factory, came to America and was engaged States to build and operate a spinning mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Slater made the machinery for spinning, taught the workmen how to operate it, and from the start, his mill was a success. For some years the manufacture of cotton grew slowly in the United States, but after 1807 the Embargo, the Non-Intercourse Law, and the War of 1812 greatly quickened it. The eight thousand spindles in the country in 1808 had increased to five hundred thousand in 1815. In 1814 the power loom was introduced into our country by Francis C. Lowell. The factory system of making textiles spread rapidly and soon there were many factory towns in New England and in the middle states. The Steam Engine. The value of the new inventions for making textiles depended upon the possession of power to run the heavy machinery and of raw material out of which to Power and manufacture the cloth. Fortunately these necessary factors raw material were supplied by the steam engine and the cotton gin, two needed epoch-making inventions which were made about the time. the machines for spinning and weaving were being perfected. The power of steam had long been known, and a very crude form of the steam engine had been used to pump water Watt invents out of mines for some time; but steam power was not available for manufacturing purposes until James Watt, a Scotch inventor, developed an improved steam engine in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Watt's invention was first patented in the steam engine It takes the place of water power Picking Cotton 1769, and he began the manufacture of steam engines in 1781. Four years later a steam engine was used for the first time to drive the machinery in a cotton mill. The earliest factories both in England and America were run by water power, and of course could only be built where such power was available. But when the steam engine began to come into general use factories could be built wherever desired. In the course of time steam power very largely superseded water power for driving machinery. The wonderful changes which the Industrial Revolution has wrought in the world are due in large part to the inventive genius of James Watt. hand The Cotton Gin.-The enormous development of cotton factories which followed the invention of the modern machines. for spinning and weaving would have been impossible without Cleaning a corresponding increase in the cotton crop. The culture of cotton by cotton was introduced into our country about the time of the Revolutionary War, but at first very little was grown because of the difficulty of separating the seed from the fiber. This work had to be done by hand, and one person could clean only about one pound of cotton in a day. In the meantime it was found that our would become one of the leading industries of the United States. This difficulty was solved by the cotton gin, one of the most important machines ever invented. The inventor, Eli Whitney, was a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Whitney Yale College. Shortly after his graduation Whitney went to invents the cotton gin Georgia to teach. Here his attention was called to the difficulty of separating cotton from its seed. He procured a pound of raw cotton and began to study it. Working under great difficulties, for he had to make even his own tools, Whitney finally made a machine by which one person could clean three hundred pounds of cotton in a day. The cotton gin soon came into general use throughout the South. The production |