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than even Wellington. Their lives had more influence on their country's future than the career of the great general. His victories secured his country peace for rather more than a generation. Their inventions gave Great Britain a commercial supremacy which neither war nor foreign competition has yet destroyed.

A series of extraordinary inventions at the commencement of the present century had supplied Great Britain with a new manufacturing vigor. Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright had developed, to a remarkable degree, the producing power of man; Watt had given a new significance to their inventions by superseding the feeble and unequal forces, which had hitherto been used, with the most tractable and powerful of agents. And Davy, by his beneficent contrivance, had enabled coal to be won with less danger, and had relieved the miner's life from one of its most hideous perils. The ingenuity of these great men had been exercised with different objects; but the inventions of each of them had given fresh importance to the discoveries of the others. The spinning jenny, the water frame, and the mule would have been deprived of half their value, if they had not been supplemented with the power loom; the power loom would, in many places, have been useless without the steam engine; the steam engine would have been idle, had it not been for coal; the coal would not have been won without danger, had it not been for Sir H. Davy. Coal, then, was the commodity whose extended use was gradually revolutionizing the world; and the population of the world, as the first consequence of the change, gradually moved towards the coal fields.

4. The Growth of the Factory System in the United States 1

In this country, as well as in England, the germ of the textile factory existed in the fulling and carding mills; the former, dating earlier, being the mills for finishing the coarse cloths woven by hand in the homes of our ancestors; in the latter, the carding mill, the wool was prepared for the hand wheel. At

1 From Tenth Census, II, 537-541.

the close of the Revolution the domestic system of manufactures prevailed throughout the states.

The first attempts to secure the spinning machinery which had come into use in England were made in Philadelphia early in the year 1775, when probably the first spinning jenny ever seen in America was exhibited in that city. During the war the manufacturers extended their enterprises, and even built and run mills which writers often call factories, but they can hardly be classed under that term. Similar efforts, all preliminary to the establishment of the factory system, were made in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1780. In 1781 the British Parliament, determined that the textile machinery by which the manufactures of England were being rapidly extended, and which the continental producers were anxious to secure, should not be used by the people of America, reenacted and enlarged the scope of the Statute of 1774 against its exportation. By 21 George III, c. 37, it was provided that any person who packed or put on board, or caused to be brought to any place in order to be put on any vessel for exportation, any machine, engine, tool, press, paper, utensil, or implement, or any part thereof, which now is or hereafter may be used in the woolen, cotton, linen, or silk manufacture of the kingdom, or goods wherein wool, cotton, linen, or silk are used, or any model or plan of such machinery, tool, engine, press, utensil, or implement, should forfeit every such machine, etc., and all goods packed therewith, and £200, and suffer imprisonment for one year. In 1782 a law was enacted which prohibited, under penalty of £500, the exportation or the attempt to export "blocks, plates, engines, tools, or utensils used in or which are proper for the preparing or finishing of the calico-, cotton-, muslin-, or linen-printing manufactures, or any part thereof." The same act prohibited the transportation of tools employed in the iron and steel manufactures. Acts were also passed interdicting the emigration of artificers. All these laws were enforced with great vigilance, and were of course serious obstacles to the institution of the new system of manufacture in America.

The manufacturers of this country were thus compelled either to smuggle or to invent their machinery. Both methods were practiced until most of the secrets of the manufacture of common goods were made available here.

The planting of the mechanic arts in this country became a necessity during the War of the Revolution, and afterwards the spirit of American enterprise demanded that New England and the Middle States should utilize the water powers which they possessed, and by such utilization supply the people with home manufactures.

When the people of the states saw that the treaty of Paris had not brought industrial independence, a new form of expression of patriotism took the place of military service; and associations were formed, the object of which was to discourage the use of British goods; and as the Articles of Confederation did not provide for the regulation of commerce, the legislatures of the states were besought to protect home manufactures. The Constitution of 1789 remedied the defects of the articles in this respect, and gave Congress the power to legislate on commercial affairs. The Constitution was really the outcome of the industrial necessities of the people, because it was on account of the difficulties and the irritations growing out of the various commercial regulations of the individual states that a convention of commissioners from the various states was held at Annapolis in September, 1786, which convention recommended the one that framed the new or present Constitution of the United States.

Of course those industries whose products were called for by the necessities of the war were greatly stimulated, but with peace came reaction and the flooding of our markets with foreign goods. The second act under the Constitution was passed July 4, 1789, with this preamble:

"Whereas it is necessary for the support of the government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and the protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported;

"Be it enacted, etc."

Patriotism and statute law thus paved the way for the importation of the factory system of industry, and so its institution here, as well as in England, was the result of both moral and economical forces.

As early as 1786, before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the legislature of Massachusetts offered encouragement for the introduction of machinery for carding and spinning by granting to Robert and Alexander Barr the sum of two hundred pounds to enable them to complete a roping machine, and also to "construct such other machines as are necessary for the purpose of carding, roping, and spinning of sheep's wool, as well as of cotton wool." The next year these parties were granted six tickets in a land lottery. Others engaged in the invention and construction of cotton-spinning machines at Bridgewater, being associated with the Barrs, who came to Massachusetts from Scotland at the invitation of Honorable Hugh Orr, of Bridgewater, and for the purpose of constructing spinning machines. There is no doubt that the machinery built by them was the first in this country which included the Arkwright devices; the first factory, however, in America expressly for the manufacture of cotton goods was erected at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787. This enterprise was aided by the legislature. The factory at Beverly was built of brick, was driven by horse power, and was continued in operation for several years; but its career as a cotton mill was brief, and no great success attended it. About the same time other attempts had been made in Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania, but principally in Rhode Island and that part of Massachusetts contiguous to Rhode Island.

The honor of the introduction of power-spinning machines in this country, and of their early use here, is shared by these lastnamed states; for while Massachusetts claims to have made the first experiments in embodying the principles of Arkwright's inventions and the first cotton factory in America, Rhode Island claims the first factory in which perfected machinery, made after the English models, was practically employed. This was the factory built by Samuel Slater, in 1790, in Pawtucket,

Rhode Island, which still stands in the rear of Mill street in that city, and the hum of cotton machinery can still be heard within its walls. Previous to 1790 the common jenny and stock card had been in operation upon a small scale in various parts of the United States, but principally in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts; but every endeavor to introduce the system of spinning known as waterframe spinning, or Arkwright's method, had failed. The introduction of this system was the work of Slater, whom President Jackson designated "the father of American manufactures." Samuel Slater was born in Belper, Derbyshire, England, June 9, 1768, and at fourteen years of age was bound as an apprentice to Jedediah Strutt, Esq., a manufacturer of cotton machinery at Milford, near Belper. Strutt was for several years a partner of Sir Richard Arkwright in the cotton-spinning business, so young Slater had every opportunity to master the details of the construction of the cotton machinery then in use in England, for during the last four or five years of his apprenticeship he served as general overseer, not only in making machinery, but in the manufacturing department of Strutt's factory. Near the close of his term his attention was drawn to the wants of the states by accidentally seeing a notice in an American paper of the efforts various states were making by way of offering bounties to parties for the production of cotton machinery. Slater knew well that under the laws of England he could carry neither machines nor models nor plans of machines out of the country; so, after completing his full time with Mr. Strutt, he continued some time longer with him, superintending some new works Mr. Strutt was erecting. This he did that he might so perfect his knowledge of the business in every department that he could construct machinery from memory without taking plans, models, or specifications. With this knowledge Slater embarked at London, September 13, 1789, for New York, where he landed November 17, and at once sought parties interested in cotton manufactures. Finding the works of the New York Manufacturing Company, to whom he was introduced, unsatisfactory, he corresponded with Messrs. Brown & Almy,

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