Bishop, Bagnall, I, Ch. X. Development of Manufactures At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in spite of the encouragement, legislative and otherwise, that had been given to manufactures, the United States was still in the main an agricultural nation. We were producing more both of food products and raw materials than were consumed in the country, and we could not provide manufactured commodities sufficient to supply the home market. In the natural course of trade, our exports of raw materials and food stuffs paid for the imports of manufactured goods. This was satisfactory to the shipping interest since it ensured profitable cargoes, to the farmer since it opened foreign markets for his produce, and to the consumer since he secured goods of the best quality at low prices; but it placed manufactures at a disadvantage. Cotton Manufactures. -The Embargo, the Nonintercourse Act, and the War of 1812 gave domestic manufactures a virtual monopoly of the home market for a period of seven years. The exclusion of English goods, now as during the Revolutionary War, threw the country upon its own resources. Commerce at an end, business enterprise turned to manufactures as the most promising available venture. Much of the capital withdrawn from shipping was invested in cotton mills. Slater's success at Pawtucket had demonstrated the possibilities of this new textile industry, and men trained under his eye went out to set up rival establishments. The mills at Slatersville, Rhode Island, Pomfret, Connecticut, and Union Village, New York, were direct offshoots from the "Old Mill." For the first ten years development was slow. In 1804 four mills were in successful operation. When, however, English competition was excluded, an epoch of extraordinary progress opened. In 1807 there were fifteen cotton mills running 8000 spindles and producing 300,000 pounds of cotton yarn annually. In 1811 there were eighty-seven mills operating 80,000 spindles, producing 2,880,000 pounds of yarn per year and employing 4000 men, women, and children. In 1815, 500,000 spindles gave employment to 76,000 persons, with a pay roll of $15,000,000 per year. Rhode Island was the center of this flourishing industry. Within thirty miles of Providence were one. hundred and thirty mills running 130,000 spindles and employing 26,000 operatives. But other states were not far behind. Massachusetts chartered fifty textile companies between 1806 and 1814; New York chartered fifteen such corporations in the year 1813. There were five spinning mills in Paterson, New Jersey, and eleven in Baltimore. The mills of New England were generally run by water power, those of the West and South more often by horse power. Steam was first successfully used as a motor for spinning machinery in 1810, at Ballston, New York. of the Power Loom. The yarn spun in the mill was as yet woven on hand looms in the homes of the neighboring countryside. Many efforts had been made to imitate the power looms introduced into the cotton factories of England twenty-five years before. Machines had been patented in 1803 and 1804, but they proved impracticable. In 1814 Francis C. Lowell Appleton, returned from a European sojourn bent on establishing in Introduction Massachusetts a cotton factory such as he had seen in England. He devised and constructed the first successful power loom set up in this country, and built in Waltham the first cotton mill in which all the processes of spinning, weaving, and printing were carried on under one roof. The venture was a brilliant success. Other looms were Census, 1860, rapidly built and other factories equipped with this labor- Manufacsaving device. The machine was soon adapted to the weaving of sheetings, ginghams, and sail duck. Improvements were made in the processes of carding, spinning, and calendering, and in the central motor power. The work was so simple that the looms could be tended by women and the spinning frames by children, so that the more expensive labor of men was required only for the heavier tasks. From five to six sevenths of the operatives were women and children. Tench Coxe, writing in 1813, waxed eloquent over the industrial miracle achieved. tures, Am. State "These wonderful machines, working as if they were animated beings, endowed with all the talents of their inventors, laboring with organs that never tire, and subject to no expense of food or bed or raiment or dwelling, may be justly considered as equivalent to an immense body of manufacturing recruits, enlisted in the service of the country." The value of our cotton manufactures in 1810 was $4,000,000; in 1815 it was $19,000,000, and nearly adequate to the needs of the country. The supply of raw cotton kept pace with the demand. In 1800 the spinning mills consumed 500 bales of cotton, in 1805, 1000 bales; ten years later 90,000 bales were required to feed the half million spindles. Notwithstanding the increased domestic consumption, the price of cotton wool fell from 24 cents a pound in 1800 to 16 cents in 1810 because the English market was closed. Woolen Manufactures.- Cotton was "our only redundant raw material." The development of woolen manufactures, on the contrary, was retarded by the scarcity of wool. The effort to promote the raising of sheep, set on foot during the Revolutionary War, had not been very successful. The climate of New England, where the agitation was most earnest, proved too severe. Most of the wool made up in the United States was still imported in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the finer grades from Spain, Portugal, and Saxony, the coarse from Russia, Syria, and South America. The epoch of nonintercourse brought the necessity for a domestic supply forcibly before the public. Just at this juncture the Peninsular War threw the Spanish Census, 1860, flocks upon the market. Enterprising farmers began importing merino sheep, and by 1809 there were five thousand in the country. In 1811 was organized the Merino Society of the Middle States. Prizes were offered for essays on sheep husbandry and for the best specimens of the Spanish breed. The farmers of New York and New Jersey vied with each other in the quantity and quality of their wool clips. Prices justified heavy expenditure; merino wool Manufac tures, xxvi, xxvii, xxxi, xxxii. sold at seventy-five cents a pound in 1811 and ranged from two to three dollars in 1813. The textile machinery so successful in cotton manufac- Bagnall, ture was soon adapted to the spinning and weaving of I, Ch. VIII, woolen cloth. The manufacture of broadcloth was first attempted by two young Englishmen, the Scholfield brothers, X, XI. tures, xxix-xxx. who set up a carding machine, a spinning jenny, and a hand loom at Newburyport in 1794. The business was soon transferred to Pittsfield, where the Housatonic River Census, 1860 furnished reliable water power; and during the non- Manufacimportation period a successful industry was established. Here was woven the material for the suit of domestic broadcloth in which President Madison was inaugurated. The power loom was introduced into woolen manufacture by Rowland Hazard at South Kingston, Rhode Island. Hazard had made a fortune in the West India trade, but having lost heavily by confiscations under the orders in Council, he purchased the water power on Rocky Brook and devoted his energies to cloth manufacture. The machine he introduced was intended to weave boot, suspender, and girth webbing, but it was found that the work could be better done on the hand loom. The enterprise was, however, pursued with courage and persistence, until, by 1828, a complete woolen factory, equipped with carding, spinning, and weaving machinery, all run by water power, was in full operation. Iron Manufactures were furthered by the discovery of a new fuel, anthracite coal. When the first ark load of "stone coal" was brought down the Lehigh and Delaware rivers to Philadelphia in 1803, it was thought good for nothing but to "gravel foot-walks." The difficulty of igniting the lumps seemed an insuperable obstacle to its use as fuel. One Joseph Smith, the inventor and manufacturer of the iron plowshare, conceived the idea (1812) of building his fire over a grating so as to secure a stronger draft. The plan was successful. Heat sufficient to fuse iron was readily developed. The War of 1812 cut off the cargoes of bituminous coal from England, and since, with the clear Nicolls, Story of Am Swank, Ch. XIX, Am. State II, 425-431. ing of the forests, the supply of wood was growing scant, the iron masters of eastern Pennsylvania were forced to utilize the despised anthracite. In The most important development in the iron industry was west of the Alleghanies. Ore was discovered in the valley of the Youghiogheny and a furnace set up in 1790. In 1805 there were five furnaces and six forges in Fayette County. Three rolling and slitting mills and a steel furnace were successfully established by 1811. The iron deposits of the river valleys to the north were being developed in the same period. Pittsburg was the natural center for this rising industry because of her unexcelled advantages in the way of water transportation. Ore and pig iron were floated down the Allegheny River and the Monongahela to the foundries, rolling mills, and nail factories of the Smoky City. 1810 two hundred tons of cut and wrought nails were made here. The output of the iron works, of western Pennsylvania-nails, hinges, locks, and builders' tools, axes, spades, plows, and harrows for field work, knives, pots, skillets and spinning-wheel irons for household use were shipped down the Ohio to the settlements, and on by way of the Mississippi to New Orleans. Sugar kettles were supplied to the cane plantations of Louisiana in 1804. The Pittsburg ironmongers had the advantage of abundant supplies of ore and charcoal in the immediate vicinity, and could easily undersell the wares sent overland from Philadelphia. Iron was fast becoming the dominant industry of Pennsylvania east and west. The state boasted, in 1810, forty-four blast furnaces, seventyeight forges, eighteen rolling and slitting mills, and one hundred and seventy nail factories where nails and brads were cut by machinery. Pennsylvania was then furnishing half of the cast iron produced in the United States. According to Gallatin's Report on Manufactures, the total manufacturing output of the country in 1810 was valued at $121,000,000. In manufactures of wood, paper, leather, tallow, spermaceti, whale oil, and molasses, we were producing enough to supply the domestic market. |