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Rh that the spreading population easily sustained itself upon the fruits of the soil, and satisfied the tastes of a simple society with the products of neighbourhood handicrafts, there was no incentive to any real development of a factory economy. This has been, for the most part, a development since the Civil War.

No attempt was made in the census enumerations of 1790 and 1800 to obtain statistics of manufactures. In 1810 Congress provided for such a report, but the results were so imperfect that there was never published any summary for the country, nor for any state. Nor were the data secured in 1820 and 1840 of much value. Since 1850, however, provision has been made on an ample scale for their collection, although the constant modifications of the schedules under which the statistics were arranged makes very difficult comparisons of the latest with the earlier censuses.

From 1850 to 1900 fairly full industrial statistics were gathered as a part of each decennial census. In 1905 was taken the first of a new series of special decennial censuses of manufactures, in which only true factories—that is, establishments producing standardized products intended for the general market—were included, and mere “neighbourhood” (local) establishments of the hand trades were excluded. Without corrections, therefore, the figures of earlier censuses are not comparable with those of the census of 1905. Thus of 512,254 establishments included in the reports of 1900, six-tenths, employing 11.2% of the total number of wage-earners and producing 12.3% of the total value of all manufactures, must be omitted as “neighbourhood” establishments in order to make the following comparison of the results of the two enumerations of 1900 and 1905. The magnitude in 1905 of each of the leading items, and its increase since 1900, then appear as follows: number of factories, 216,262, increase 4.2%; capital invested, $12,686,265,673, increase 41.3%; salaries, £574,761,231, increase 50.9%; total wages, $2,009,735,799, increase 29.9%; miscellaneous expenses, $1,455,019,473, increase 60.7%; cost of materials, $8,503,949,756, increase 29.3%; value of products, including custom work and repairing (in such factories), $14,802,147,087, being an increase of 29.7%. Of the last item $3,269,757,067 represented the value of the products of rural factories (that is, those in cities of under 8000 inhabitants). The increase of the different items during the five years was greater in every case in the rural than in the urban factories. There was a very slight decline in the number of child labourers both in city and country, their total number in 1905 being 159,899 and in 1900 161,276. The total wages paid to children under 16 years, however, which was in 1905 $27,988,207, increased both in the city and, especially, in the country, and was 13.9% greater in 1905 than five years earlier. In the same period there was an increase of 16.0% in the number and of 27.5% in the wages of women workers of 16 years (and upwards) of age.

Deducting from the total value of manufactured products in 1905 the cost of partially manufactured materials, including mill supplies, a net or true value of $9,821,205,387 remains. Partially manufactured articles imported for use in manufactures are not included. Deducting from this the cost of raw materials and adding the cost of mill supplies, the result-$6,743,399,718—is the value added to materials by manufacturing processes.

The extent to which manufactures are controlled by large factories is shown by the fact that although in 1905 only 11.2% of the total number reported products valued at $100,000 or over, these establishments controlled 81.5% of the capital, employed 71.6% of the wage earners, and produced 79.3% of the value of the products, of all establishments reported. 52.3% of the total number, employing 66.3% of all wage-earners, and producing 69.7% of the total product-value, were in urban centres.

Only six establishments in a thousand employed as many as 500 workers, and only two in a thousand employed as many as 1000 workers. Cotton mills are most numerous in the last class of establishments. The manufacture of lumber and timber gave employment to the largest total number of workers; and this industry, together with those of foundry and machine shops (including locomotives, stoves and furnaces), cotton goods (including small wares), railway car and repair shops, and iron and steel, were (in order) the five greatest employers of labour.

Measured by the gross value of products, wholesale slaughtering and meat packing was the most important industry in 1905. The products were valued at $801,757,137. In each of four other industries the products exceeded in value five hundred millions of dollars, namely, those of foundry and machine shops, flour and grist mills, iron and steel, and lumber and timber. In one other, cotton goods, the value was little less. These six industries contributed 27/2% of the value of all manufactured products. Both in 1905 and in 1900 the group of industries classed as of food and kindred products ranked first in the cost of materials used and the value of products; the group of iron and steel ranking first in capital and in wages paid; and textiles in the number of wage-earners employed.

The close relation of manufactures to agriculture is reflected in

the fact that, of the raw materials used, 79.4% came from the farm. The remainder came from mines and quarries, 15.0%; forests, 5.2%; the sea, 0.4%.

Four states—New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts—each manufactured in 1900 products valued at over $1,000,000,000; New York exceeding and Pennsylvania attaining almost twice that sum. The manufacture of some products is highly localized. Thus, of silk goods, worsteds, the products of blast furnaces, of rolling mills and steel works, glass, boots and shoes, hosiery and knit goods, slaughtering and meat products, agricultural implements, woollens, leather goods, cotton goods and paper and wood pulp, four leading states produced in each case from 88.5%, in the case of silk goods, to 58.6% in the case of pulp.

M. G. Mulhall (Industry and Wea tl lt h of Nations, 1896) assigned fourth place to the United States in 1880 and first place in 1894 in the value of manufactured products, as compared with other countries. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (Les États-Unis au xxème Siècle, Paris, 1904) would assign primacy to the United States as far back as 1885. Since the English board of trade estimated the exports of British manufactured goods at from 17 to 20% of the industrial output of the United Kingdom in 1902, this would indicate a manufactured product hardly two-thirds as great as that of the true factory establishments of the United States in 1900. But exact data for comparison do not exist for other countries than the United States. In the production of pig iron, the share of the United States seems to have been in 1850 about one-eighth and that of Great Britain one half of the world's product; while in 1903 the respective shares were 38.8 and 19.3%; and Germany's also slightly exceeded the British output. In the manufacture of textiles the United States holds the second place, after Great Britain; decidedly second in cottons, a close competitor with Great Britain and France in woollens, and with France in silks. In the manufacture of food products the United States holds a lead that is the natural result of immense advantages in the production of raw materials. No other country produces half so much of leather. In the dependent industry of boots and shoes her position is commanding. These facts give an idea of the rank of the country among the manufacturing countries of the world. The basis of this position is generally considered to be, partly, immense natural resources available as materials, and, partly, an immense home market.

For Agriculture, see the article ; for Fisheries, see
 * and for Forestry, see.

Minerals.—In 1619 the erection of “works” for smelting the ores of iron was begun at Falling Creek, near Jamestown, Va., and iron appears to have been made in 1620; but the enterprise was stopped by a general massacre of the settlers in that region. In 1643 the business of smelting and manufacturing iron was begun at Lynn, Mass., where it was successfully carried on, at least up to 1671, furnishing most of the iron used in the colony. From the middle of the 17th century the smelting of this metal began to be of importance in Massachusetts Bay and vicinity, and by the close of the century there had been a large number of ironworks established in that colony, which, for a century after its settlement, was the chief seat of the iron manufacture in America, bog ores, taken from the bottom of the ponds, being chiefly used. Early in the 18th century the industry began to extend over New England and into New Jersey, the German bloomery forge being employed for reducing the ore directly to bar iron, and by the middle of that century it had taken a pretty firm hold in the Atlantic colonies. About 1789 there were fourteen furnaces and thirty-four forges in operation in Pennsylvania. Before the separation of the colonies from the mother country, the manufacture of iron had been extended through all of them, with the possible exception of Georgia. As early as 1718 iron (both pig and bar) began to be sent to Great Britain, the only country to which the export was permitted, the annual amount between 1730 and 1775 varying ordinarily between 2000 and 3000 tons, but in one year (1771) rising to between 7000 and 8000 tons.

The first metal other than iron mined by whites within the territory of the United States was lead, the discovery of which on the American continent was recorded in 1621. The first English settlers on the Atlantic bartered lead of domestic origin with the Indians in the 17th century, and so did the French in the upper Mississippi Valley. The ore of the metal occurring in the Mississippi basin—galena—is scattered widely and in large quantities, and being easily smelted by the roughest possible methods was much used at an early date. In the second half of the 18th century, during the period of French and Spanish domination in the valley, lead was a common medium of exchange, but no real mining development took place. Copper was the next metal to be mined, so far as is known. The first company began work about 1709, at Simsbury, Conn. The ore obtained there and in New Jersey seems to have been mostly shipped to England. A few years later attempts were made to work mines of lead and cobalt in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The first mining excitement of the United States dates back to the discovery of gold by the whites in the Southern states, along the eastern border of the Appalachian range, in Virginia, and in North and South Carolina. The existence of gold in that region had been long known to the aboriginal inhabitants, but no attention was paid to this by the whites, until about the beginning of the 19th century, when nuggets were found, one of which weighed 28 ℔.