time before it came into general use in manufacturing operations; but as soon as it was adopted as part of the factory system, it gave a prodigious additional impulse to a branch of industry, which had already arrived at a great pitch of prosperity, by means of the spinning machinery. "The steam-engine," says Mr. Baines, "stands in the same relation to the spinning machines, as the heart does to the arms, hands, and fingers in the human frame; the latter perform every task of dexterity and labor; the former supplies them with all their vital energy." A French writer has drawn a still closer parallel between the animal mechanism and that of the steam-engine. "Heat," says he, "is the principle of its movement. It makes, in its different operations, a circulation like that of the blood in the veins, having valves that open and shut opportunely; it feeds and evacuates itself at proper intervals, and derives from its labor all that is necessary for its subsistence.”*

[To the foregoing papers on the British history of the cotton manufacture, the Editor has the satisfaction of appending the following notices of its American history, drawn up and placed in his hands by Dr. Elisha Bartlett of Lowell.

"The annals of the cotton manufacture in the United States would present many of the same great outlines, which distinguish its British history. From its feeble infancy, here as there, it has rapidly advanced, against various obstacles, and through many reverses, to its present immense extent and prosperous condition. The number and importance of the mechanical inventions and improvements made in this country, have been vastly less than those made in Britain; and the obstacles to the introduction of labor-saving machinery which have frequently been so great there, have never been experienced here; but the results of American ingenuity in this department of skill have been neither few nor trifling; and the difficulties, of one kind and another, with which the manufacture has had to struggle, have hardly been less on this side the Atlantic than on the other.

"The spinning of cotton in this country by Hargreaves' * Beledor, Architecture Hydraulique.

jennies, was commenced in the State of Massachusetts. In 1790, the General Court of that State passed an act for the purpose of encouraging and aiding a manufacturing company who had, three years before, in 1787, set up a cotton-mill in the town of Beverly. In 1786, two Scotch mechanics, brothers, by the name of Barr, were employed by Mr. Orr, of East Bridgewater, to erect machines for carding, spinning, and roping. Encouragement was extended to these mechanics, also, by the Legislature of the State. The first loom was put in operation on the 12th of April, 1788, at Philadelphia. In November, 1789, Mr. Samuel Slater, then but little more than twentyone years old, and who had been in the employment of Jedediah Strutt, Esquire, arrived in the United States from England. In 1790 and 1791, Mr. Slater, aided by Moses and Smith Brown, and William Almy, of Providence, Rhode Island, introduced the Arkwright machinery at Pawtucket, on the Blackstone river, four miles from Providence. From this period may be dated the successful introduction into America of the cotton manufacture. Mr. Slater commenced the cotton spinning with a single water-frame of twenty-four spindles, and he lived to see the business which he had thus commenced, taken up and extended from these small beginnings, till it created by the side of almost every waterfall in Rhode Island, and through many portions of all the other New England States, an active and flourishing community,-adding to the wealth, stimulating the enterprise and industry, promoting the comfort, and improving the mental and moral condition of the country.

“We are unable to state, with any considerable degree of accuracy, the present actual extent of the cotton manufacture in the United States. A very large proportion of it is carried on in small establishments, although there are several of considerable magnitude. A statement of some of the aggregate results in one of these latter may not be uninteresting in itself, while it will serve to illustrate the rapidity with which this branch of domestic industry has been advancing within the last fifteen or twenty years. In 1823, the first cotton-mill was put in operation on the Paw

IV.

20

X.

tucket falls of Merrimack river, in that part of the town of Chelmsford, which is now included in the city of Lowell. On the 1st of January, 1839, the amount of capital invested in the several kinds of manufacture there carried on, most of which are of cotton, was nine millions of dollars. The number of spindles in operation, was 163,404; the number of looms, 5094; the number of yards of cloth annually manufactured, was 55,185,000; the number of pounds of cotton consumed, was 18,059,600; the number of females, alone, employed in the mills, was six thousand four hundred and seventy!

"One of the most important inventions ever made, connected with the cotton manufacture, was that of the cotton-gin, a machine for cleaning the cotton from its seeds. The author of this invention was Eli Whitney, a native of Westborough, in the State of Massachusetts. Mr. Whitney was a man of great invention and mechanical genius, and of extraordinary and untiring perseverance. He conceived the plan of his machine, and constructed one with his own hands, during the winter of 1792-3, while a resident at Savannah, Georgia, in the hospitable mansion of Mrs. Greene, the widow of General Greene of the Revolution. Before the use of the gin, the labor of separating the seed from the cotton was so great, as to prevent, almost entirely, the cultivation of this staple in our Southern States. Cleaning one pound of cotton from the seed was a day's work for a woman. Mr. Whitney's machine was immediately and perfectly successful; and în his own language, contained in his indignant remonstrance to the legislature of South Carolina, enabled one man to perform the work of a thousand.'

"The culture of cotton in the United States has, since that time, more than kept pace with its manufacture. From a letter of Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, communicated to Congress in April, 1836, it appears, that the quantity of raw cotton, raised in the United States in 1789, was about one million pounds. In 1815, it amounted to one hundred millions of pounds; and in 1834, it had reached the enormous quantity of four hundred and sixty millions of pounds, making about one half of all the cotton raised in the world." AM. ED.]

EIGHTH WEEK-THURSDAY.

CLOTHING.-THE

WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE-ITS

HISTORY.

BRITISH

THE manufacture of wool, as it was probably among the first established in the world, so it was certainly more early than any other introduced into Britain. It was known in that country so far back as the period when the Romans were in possession of it. That remarkable people, who carried the arts of civilized life in the train of their arms, having persuaded the rude and savage inhabitants of the island, not only to exchange the skins in which, when they used any dress, they had been hitherto clothed, for the more comfortable attire of their conquerors, but also to turn their attention to the art of weaving, a manufacture was established at Winchester, of sufficient magnitude to supply the Roman army; and there is reason to believe that, as long as the Romans remained in possession of the country, the manufacture was continued. From the period of their quitting it, till the commencement of the tenth century, there are no evidences, either direct or indirect, by means of which we can judge of the state of this manufacture; but, at the latter period, from the prices of wool, which are mentioned as the current rate of the fleece, there is reason to suppose, that this article was cultivated with considerable attention. The demand for fine cloth, which seems to have been pretty general among the nobility, during the reign of Henry II., led to the introduction of Spanish wool; but this was soon prohibited by a statute which was framed for the encouragement of the British farmer, and the improvement of his wool. About the year 1240, the importation of fine cloth began to be encouraged; the consequence of which was, that English wool, being in some measure deprived of the home market, was sent to Flanders, where it was manufactured.

This kind of traffic subsisted nearly a hundred years without interruption, till, about the year 1330, the Eng

lish began seriously to encourage the manufacture of woollens among themselves; and the mode which they adopted for the purpose, displays a liberal and sound policy, very creditable to the times. Sensible of the superior expertness of the Flemings, they tempted them to come over and settle in their country.

From this period, the history of the manufacture remains for some time in a state of obscurity. That it materially suffered by the injudicious interference of an ignorant government, there can be no doubt. Not only did the legislature prohibit the exportation of the raw material, but they limited by name the towns, both in the north and west of England, in which it was to be carried on. The manufacture, however, was now so firmly established, as not to be easily destroyed. It not only maintained itself, but in 1614 underwent, in the west, a great improvement by the invention of what is called medley, or mixed cloth, for which Gloucester is still famous.

At the end of the seventeenth century, the total annual manufacture of woollens was estimated at eight millions value in pounds sterling. In the year 1770, as has been proved by documents laid before Parliament, the exports which, at the beginning of that century, amounted to somewhat more than two millions, had increased to four millions. I do not know what was the amount of the home consumption at that time; but thirteen years afterwards, I found the whole produce of the woollen manufacture rated at nearly seventeen millions.*

There are two grand seats of the woollen manufacture in England, where natural facilities exist for particular branches of the trade, namely, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of Gloucester, Wiltshire, and Somersetshire. In the former of these localities, as well as in some other places, it is interesting to remark, that

* [Although the manufacture of woollen goods in the United States, is not to be compared in extent with our cotton manufacture, it is yet of very great and increasing importance. The value of the domestic clip or fleece, of the year 1839, has been estimated at from twenty to thirty millions of dollars.-AM. ED.]