Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/24

 many minor discoveries and inventions led up to that great change in the methods of production from the manual tool to the machine, from the domestic work-shop to the factory. But looking back upon the course of events to-day, with minor factors obliterated and important ones standing out forcibly and clearly, we may say—broadly speaking—that the industrial revolution dates, from the invention of Watt's steam engine in 1769. Before this great invention, England had already witnessed many and varied improvements in the processes of manufacture, particularly in the textile industry, such as the invention of machines for carding and spinning and other notable improvements on the old methods of manufacture by hand. But the application of steam-power, as introduced by Watt, made possible that manufacture on a large scale that led to the building of factories, to the rapid growth of the English factory towns, and to the coming into existence of a large and steadily increasing class of male and female wage-workers. When the factory system, with its concomitant woman and child wage labor, and with all the crying evils of its early history, was already fully established in England, industry was still carried on under the old domestic system in the American colonies. This was due to the fact that England—eager to become mistress of the world in industry, as she was mistress of the world in discovery and conquest—jealously guarded her inventions, her machinery and her skilled artisans. The exportation of machinery was forbidden, and so was the emigration of persons who knew how to operate the machines and were acquainted with their construction. But England's prohibitory laws had the effect of making the American colonists doubly eager to develop and promote their own industries, and so we find manufacturing establishments coming into existence here and there, even before any of the improved machinery was introduced that was already in use in England.

These early factories—"manufactories" they were called—differed considerably from what we should call factories to-day. They marked the period of transition from the old domestic system to the true modern factory system. For the most part they were merely large rooms, rarely entire buildings, where a number of looms were brought