Part 26

“With the invention of the jenny and water frame,” says Ellison, “commenced a new era in the history of the cotton trade; in fact, so far as Europe is concerned, it may be said that the history of the cotton manufacture, as a separate and distinct industry, began with the invention of these two machines; for until the introduction of Arkwright’s contrivance for spinning by rollers, it was impossible to produce a piece of cloth composed wholly of cotton.”

Still another important device for use in the manufacture of cotton cloths was the “carding machine.” Originally the raw cotton was prepared for spinning by the use of brushes made of short pieces of wire instead of bristles, the wire being stuck into a sheet of leather at a certain angle, the cotton being spread upon one piece and combed with another until the fibers were laid straight, when it was ready for the use of the spinner. In 1748 a carding machine was devised to supersede the hand process, but it was not until toward the close of 257 the century that carding machines took such form as to become an important factor in the cotton-manufacturing industry. Even in the closing quarter of the eighteenth century the prejudice on the part of hand laborers against machines was so great that for several miles around Blackwell every spinning jenny containing more than 20 spindles was destroyed, while a mill erected by Arkwright near Chorley was destroyed by a mob. A little later another machine was invented by Samuel Crompton, which he designated the “spinning mule,” which combined the drawing rollers of Arkwright and the jenny of Hargreaves; and it was looked upon as an improvement upon the machines of Arkwright and Hargreaves. These devices--the spinning jenny of Hargreaves, the water frame of Arkwright, and the combination of those principles in the spinning mule of Crompton--revolutionized the cotton-manufacturing industry and the principles thus embodied are still the chief factors in the great cotton-manufacturing establishments of the world today.

Another device which added greatly to the manufacturing possibilities with reference to cotton was the invention by Eli Whitney in America of the cotton gin, a machine for stripping the cotton fiber from the seeds and technically called the “gin,” probably a contraction of the word engine. It performs its work through the operation of a series of revolving saws which come in contact with the cotton through openings sufficiently narrow to prevent the passing of the seeds but permitting the fibers torn therefrom to pass downward into a receptacle, while the seeds, freed from the fiber, pass through another opening and are subsequently utilized in the manufacture of oil; though this utilization of the seeds did not develop until long after the cotton gin had become an important factor in the cotton-manufacturing industries of the world.

Through the application of these machines--the spinning jenny, the 258 water frame, the spinning mule, and the cotton gin, driven by power generated by water or steam, and in more recent years applied, in some cases in the form of electricity--the cotton manufacturing of the world has been transferred from hand work to that of machines, and the world’s consumption of cotton today is many times as much as that of the period in which these machines were being perfected, while the quantity of cotton goods produced from a given amount of cotton is, through the refinement of machine processes, much greater than formerly. The quantity of cotton cloth produced at the present time through the development of machinery and the encouragement which its use has given to production of cotton and consumption of cotton goods multiplies many times that of the period in which the transformation from hand to machine production began, and has made cotton the leading textile material of the world.

True, other branches of the textile industry have also benefited by the application of machine methods of spinning and weaving similar to those above described; but no other important textile has seen such a remarkable growth under the stimulus of machine production as has cotton. Even as late as 1830 the cotton consumed by those sections of the world for which statistics are available only amounted to about 500 million pounds, against 8,500 million in 1907, while, as already indicated, a pound of cotton under present conditions of manufacture produces probably twice as much of a given line of manufactures as a century ago. When it is remembered that the population of the world has only doubled since 1830 and the consumption of cotton is 17 times as great as at that time, the relative growth of cotton consumption to population will be seen to have been very great.

The above figures relating to consumption of cotton and to comparison of present consumption with that of a century ago relate chiefly to 259 Europe and the United States. Statistics of consumption are available, in addition to Europe and the United States, for India and Japan, and a few communities in which the consumption is small, such as Canada, Mexico and Australia. In addition to this, however, it must be remembered that large quantities of cotton goods are still being manufactured in certain parts of the world by the crude processes which prevailed in Europe and the United States before the adoption of the machine methods above described. In China, for example, large quantities of cotton are turned into yarn by hand spinning, and into cloth by hand weaving, and there is reason to believe that the quantity of cotton cloth manufactured in China by hand weaving, partly from yarns spun by hand and partly from yarns manufactured by machine methods, is greater than that manufactured by modern machinery. In many of the oriental countries, in large portions of South America, in large sections of Africa, and in the islands of the Pacific, millions, hundreds of millions of people are still clothed with textiles--cotton, wool, silk, or fibers--manufactured by hand processes or by simple machines operated by man power. In Europe and the United States, however, the system has been completely transformed, and machinery and money, in combination with a steadily decreasing percentage of human labor, now manufacture the cotton goods worn not only by their own people, but by large sections of the inhabitants of the oriental countries and the continents of Africa, South America and Australia.

The relative growth in the manufacture of cotton in recent years by the principal countries in which this industry has developed is indicated by the fact that the quantity of cotton consumed in Great Britain in 1887 was 2,955,000 bales and in 1907, 3,900,000 bales; that of the continent of Europe, in 1887, 2,912,000 bales, in 1907, 5,460,000 bales; in the United States, in 1887, 1,939,000 bales, in 260 1907, 4,950,000 bales; in India, in 1887, 569,000 bales, in 1907, 1,600,000 bales; in Japan, in 1892, the first year for which statistics are available, 99,000 bales, and in 1907, 925,000 bales; and in all other countries for which figures are available, in 1891, 106,000 bales, and in 1907, 171,000 bales.

With this elaborate use of machinery and increase of cotton production, manufacture and consumption, has come great reduction in cost of production and in prices. “In the last half of the nineteenth century,” says S. N. D. North, late Director of the Census, in the Encyclopedia Americana, “there was an increase in value of textile products in the United States of about six times and not less than ten times if it were possible to measure this product by quantity instead of by value. Even the largest figures convey an inadequate idea of the relative importance of our textile mills in the industrial economy of the nation, for those mills supply the materials for a great group of subsidiary factory industries, such as the wholesale clothing manufacture, etc. When we aggregate these, and add to them the value of the products of the linen, jute, hemp, and bagging mills of the country, we find that the product of our textile mills is larger in value than that of any single line of related industries, iron and steel excepted. The decrease in the cost of goods during the last half of the century has been one of the most striking phases of the development. This decrease is due--in some measure, of course, to the decreased price of the raw materials, but in even larger measure to the remarkable advance in methods of manufacture--to the new and more perfect machinery employed, in the invention of which American mechanical genius has contributed certainly as much as that of any other people, and perhaps more. All the fundamental inventions in spinning-machinery were of English origin. The French and Germans have also done much in the invention of labor-saving textile machinery, but the American record may be shown to have surpassed them all. 261 The wool-carding machinery of all countries owes its chief improvement over the machines of a century ago to the invention of John Goulding, of Worcester, Mass. The modern cotton spindle, making 10,000 revolutions a minute, is an evolution of our own mechanics, and the saving effected by new forms of spindles invented and adopted in the United States since 1870, when 5,000 revolutions per minute was the average speed, has been more than equal to the capacity of all the warp-spinning machinery in use in this country in that year. In structural equipment, the modern American mill,” continues Mr. North, “is, in some respects, superior to the average foreign mill. It is not so massive a structure, nor so solidly built, brick being used here while the English usually use stone; and in the lightness and airiness of its rooms, in economy of arrangement and general completeness of equipment and care for the comfort and convenience of the operatives, it is usually superior. While many parts of the machinery required for the equipment of our textile mills are still necessarily imported from England because not made, or less perfectly made, in the United States, our machine manufacturers have been advancing as rapidly in recent years as the textile mills themselves, and the time cannot now be far distant when every new mill built in America will be equipped throughout with American-made machinery. The American textile mills now supply practically every variety of fabric made in the world, with the exception of linens and the very finest grades of other fabrics.”

The Census of 1905 shows the value of cotton manufactures of the United States in 1850, 62 million dollars; in 1860, 115 million; in 1880, 192 million; in 1900, 331 million; and in 1905, 442 million; the capital invested in 1850, 75 million dollars; and in 1905, 605 million; the wages paid in 1860 (no figures for 1850), 24 million dollars; in 1905, 94 million; the number of wage-earners in 1850, 262 122,000; in 1905, 310,000; the number of spindles, in 1860, 5¼ million; in 1905, 23 million; the number of looms, in 1860, 126,313; in 1905, 540,910; the cotton consumed, in 1860, 423 million pounds; in 1905, 1,873 million pounds.

A marked characteristic of the cotton industry of the United States in recent years has been the gradual movement of the industry away from New England, where it was originally established, toward the cotton-producing section, the South. The number of cotton-manufacturing establishments in the New England States fell from 439 in 1880 to 308 in 1905, while those in the South increased from 161 to 550 in the same time. The number of spindles as shown by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor, in the Northern States as a whole, increased from 10 million in 1880 to 17⅓ million in 1908, while those in the Southern States increased from a little over a half million in 1880 to over 10 million in 1908. In the principal cotton-manufacturing countries of the world the increase in spindles during the last decade has been as follows: Great Britain, from 44½ million in 1897 to 52 million in 1907; continental Europe, from 30⅓ million in 1897 to 36 million in 1907; the United States, from 17 million to 25¾ million; India, from 4 million to 5⅓ million; and Japan, from a half million to a little over 1½ million. The 36 million cotton spindles in continental Europe are, according to Ellison, distributed as follows: Germany, 9 million; Russia and Poland, 7 million; France, 6 million; Austria-Hungary, 3¾ million; Italy, 3 million; Spain, 2¾ million; Switzerland, 1½ million; Belgium, 1⅓ million, and the remainder distributed among Switzerland, Holland, Portugal and Greece.

VIII. THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 263

The fact that this story of the world’s manufactures is intended primarily for the information of people of the United States, coupled with the further fact that the United States is itself the world’s largest producer of manufactures, seems to justify a somewhat detailed study of the manufactures of this country, the growth of the manufacturing industry, and especially the part which they bear in our foreign commerce. Originally the United States, like all new countries, devoted its attention chiefly to agriculture. The products of the soil are man’s first requirements. He must have food. When he obtains food his next thought is of clothing, but that he can obtain temporarily from the skins of the beasts whose bodies supply him with food. So the production of manufactures was of secondary importance in the early development of that part of the North American Continent which is now known as the United States. The eastern part of the area being densely wooded, the work of the first and second and third generations of our forefathers was to fell the trees and prepare the ground for agriculture for the production of the wheat and corn and other foodstuffs which they must have to sustain life. If there came as a result a given quantity of potash and pearlash and leather and other manufactures of this crude type which could be utilized by the people or exported to foreign countries they accepted this thankfully, but made no special effort to develop the manufacturing industry. During the colonial days little effort was made in the development of manufacturing, except to supply the household requirements. The housewife spun and wove the wool and flax into threads and cloth, and a large part of the population was clothed in “linsey-woolsey,” produced in this manner. Even during the period of the Confederation, which immediately followed the Revolutionary War, conditions in the 264 manufacturing industries did not materially change and nobody seems to have thought them of sufficient importance to justify any governmental attention or action. Shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, however, Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, submitted to the Congress of the United States, in 1791, a “Report on Manufactures,” which pictured manufacturing conditions in this country at that day. He enumerated some 17 industries which had “grown up and flourished with a rapidity which surprises, affording an assurance of success in future attempts.” These 17 industries were as follows:

1. Skins.--Tanned and tawed leather, dressed skins, shoes, boots and slippers, harness and saddlery of all kinds, portmanteaus and trunks, leather breeches, gloves, muffs and tippets, parchment and glue.

2. Iron.--Bar and sheet iron, steel, nail rods and nails, implements of husbandry, stoves, pots and other household utensils, the steel and iron work of carriages, and for shipbuilding, anchors, scale beams and weights, and various tools of artificers, arms of different kinds; though the manufacture of these last has diminished for want of a demand.

3. Wood.--Ships, cabinet wares and turnery, wool and cotton cards and other machinery for manufacture and husbandry, mathematical instruments, coopers’ wares of every kind.

4. Flax and hemp.--Cables, sail cloth, cordage, twine and pack thread.

5. Bricks and coarse tiles and potters’ wares.

6. Ardent spirits and malt liquors.

7. Writing and printing paper, sheathing and wrapping paper, pasteboard, fullers’ or press papers, paper hangings.

8. Hats of fur and wool and mixture of both, women’s stuff and silk 265 shoes.

9. Refined sugars.

10. Oils of animals and seeds, soap, spermaceti and tallow candles.

11. Copper and brass wires, particularly utensils for distillers, sugar refiners and brewers; andirons and other articles for household use, philosophical apparatus.

12. Tinware for most purposes of ordinary use.

13. Carriages of all kinds.

14. Snuff, chewing and smoking tobacco.

15. Starch and hair powder.

16. Lampblack and other painters’ colors.

17. Gunpowder.

In addition to the industries above enumerated, which were carried on as regular trades in many localities, Mr. Hamilton went on to describe--“a vast scene of household manufacturing, which contributes more largely to the supply of the community than could be imagined without having made it an object of particular inquiry--” and he continues--

“Great quantities of coarse cloths, coatings, serges and flannels, linsey-woolseys; hosiery of wool, cotton and thread; coarse fustians, jeans and muslins; checked and striped cotton and linen goods; bed ticks, coverlets and counterpanes; tow linens; coarse shirtings, sheetings, toweling and table-linen, and various mixtures of wool and cotton, and of cotton and flax are made in the household way and, in many instances, to an extent not only sufficient for the supply of the families in which they are made, but for sale, and even, in some cases, for exportation. It is computed in a number of districts that two-thirds, three-fourths and even four-fifths of all the clothing of the inhabitants are made by themselves. The importance of so great a progress as appears to have been made in family manufactures within a few years, both in a moral and 266 political view, renders the fact highly interesting. Neither does the above enumeration comprehend all the articles that are manufactured as regular trades. Many others occur, which are equally well established, but which, not being of equal importance, have been omitted. And there are many attempts, still in their infancy, which, though attended with very favorable appearances, could not have been properly comprised in an enumeration of manufactories already established. There are other articles, also, of great importance, which, though, strictly speaking, manufactures, are omitted as being immediately connected with husbandry, such as flour, pot and pearl ashes, pitch, tar, turpentine and the like.”

The “manufactories carried on as regular trades,” and included in Mr. Hamilton’s category, says the U. S. Census Report of 1900, comprised such as would naturally spring up in a new country to supply the immediate necessities of the inhabitants, together with those whose materials were most abundant and inviting. Agricultural implements and other tools of industry were made in quantities fully equal to the demand. Firearms were also made. The dressing of skins, especially tanning, had become an important industry, and was carried on both in establishments exclusively devoted to the purpose, and by many shoemakers and farmers as a subsidiary occupation. The number of brewers and distillers was remarkable, and nearly the entire domestic demand for beverages was supplied by home production. Sawmills, gristmills, brick kilns, wool-carding mills, and fulling mills existed in great number, but always on a small scale, supplying only local needs. The manufacture of paper, which had been a successful colonial industry, also supplied the domestic requirements, and several glass works existed. “Iron works have greatly increased in the United States,” said Mr. Hamilton, “and are prosecuted with much more advantage than formerly.” The shipbuilding industry was particularly 267 well developed and widespread. In 1793 the tonnage of the United States exceeded that of every other nation except England. In the main, however, the people had confined themselves to such manufactures as could not be imported to advantage. Foreign goods, chiefly textiles, were largely imported in exchange for agricultural products.

Such was the general condition of our manufactures at the opening of the nineteenth century. Although some progress in this direction has been made, the occupations of the people were chiefly agricultural; commerce was becoming a factor of constantly increasing importance in the development of the industrial resources of the country, while manufactures occupied the third and subordinate position.

In 1810 Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, in response to a resolution of the House of Representatives of June 7, 1908, made a report which is an admirable summary of the condition of American manufactures at that date. Secretary Gallatin estimated that in 1809 the value of the products of American manufactures exceeded $120,000,000. Tench Coxe’s estimate, based upon the returns obtained at the Census of 1810, was $198,613,471. The censuses of 1810, 1820, 1830 and 1840 gave certain figures on the manufacturing industries of the United States, but they did not approach the completeness of the censuses of recent years, and the figures of those earlier records must be accepted only with this view of their incompleteness. Tench Coxe, as already shown, estimated the real value of the manufactures of 1810 at a little less than 200 million. The censuses of 1820 and 1830 were confessedly incomplete and their showing of manufactures does not compare favorably with the Coxe estimate for 1810. In 1840 the value of the manufactures was put at about 500 million dollars; in 1850, at one billion; in 1860, a little less than 2 billion; in 1870, 4¼ billion; in 1880, 3⅓ billion; in 1890, 9⅓ billion; in 1900, 13 268 billion; and in 1905, 16 billion--a sum three times the estimated value of manufactures of the next great manufacturing nation, the United Kingdom.

It must be remembered, however, that these figures of the value of the manufactures of the United States are “gross values,” or, in other words, contain many duplications, as explained elsewhere, and that the net or real value of the manufactures of the country was but two-thirds of the figures above named. Even this estimate which puts the net or true value of the manufactures of the country at about two-thirds of the census gross valuation still leaves the United States so far in the lead that there can be no doubt that it is the greatest manufacturing nation of the world. Tables printed elsewhere in this text show that her production of manufactures is, even under an acceptance of the “net” value and an exclusion of certain articles not classed as manufactures by other countries, far in excess of that of any other country.

The growth by industries cannot be shown in detail in a work of this character. Suffice to say that every line of manufactures is now produced in the United States, save only those in which the work is wholly, or chiefly, performed by hand labor. The growth of the more important industries, such as iron and steel, textiles, etc., is pictured in sections devoted to those industries, and an outline of the growth in the principal articles is shown in the table on another page which presents official figures of the number of factories, persons employed, capital invested and product turned out in the principal manufacturing industries of the country in 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1905.