Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/483

Rh and machinery of the present day. This was the date of the erection of the Middlesex Mills, of Lowell, of whose history it has been written that "it covers the entire life of the successful woolen industry of this country." In the earlier days of our manufacture, the products of our mills were chiefly the coarser fabrics. Until about 1840 they consisted almost wholly of satinets, flannels, and blankets. The manufacture of fine broad cloth was indeed early attempted, and with considerable success. Gradually, amid many vicissitudes, and with great loss of capital, large mills were established and succeeded in maintaining themselves and in diversifying the industry.

We shall not attempt to state the statistics of this development. They are accessible in the census reports to those specially interested. By 1880 the product of all our mills, employed in the manipulation of wool in any form, was stated at 6207,000,000, and the census of 1890 will show this product not far, if any, short of $350,000,000. Next to England the United States is to-day the largest wool manufacturing nation, and the people of the United States consume a much larger quantity of wool per capita than any other people. Indeed, the increasing capacity of our woolen mills barely keeps pace with the increasing consumption of our people.

The evolution of the wool manufacture has had an economic influence upon civilization more marked even than that which has to do with the cost of clothing. Indeed it is a disturbing element, in estimating this reduced cost, because that which was once fabricated at home, by the members of the family, the labor of some of whom at least would otherwise have counted for nothing, is now bought in the shops. This evolution has substituted the factory system for the household industry, almost obliterating the latter in all countries which are within reach of commerce. We have seen how important an element in the household economy of the American colonies and the early republic the making of the cloths for clothing was. It was of even greater importance in England and France, and particularly in England, where, up to the introduction of automatic machinery, the handling of wool, both for domestic use and export, continued to be the most important occupation of the people next to agriculture, with which it was so closely allied. We can trace the gradual development of the old English system into the new. The founders of the great houses which now conduct the industry were, many of them, the hand combers or spinners or weavers of the primitive industry. They were the forehanded among these laborers, who gradually took others into their employment, and, as machinery came into vogue, were able to utilize it. Thus the minute subdivision of the