The Industrial History of the United States (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ...eloquent over the industrial miracle achieved. 11,666-689, "These wonderful machines, working as if they were animated beings, endowed with all the talents of their inventors, laboring with organs that never tire, and subject to no expense of food or bed or raiment or dwelling, may be justly considered as equivalent to an immense body of manufacturing recruits, enlisted in the service of the country." The value of our cotton manufactures in 1810 was $4,000,000; in 1815 it was $19,000,000, and nearly adequate to the needs of the country. The supply of raw cotton kept pace with the demand. In 1800 the spinning mills consumed 500 bales of cotton, in 1805, 1000 bales; ten years later 90,000 bales were required to feed the half million spindles. Notwithstanding the increased domestic consumption, the price of cotton wool fell from 24 cents a pound in 1800 to 16 cents in 1810 because the English market was closed. Woolen Manufactures.--Cotton was "our only redundant raw material." The development of woolen manufactures, on the contrary, was retarded by the scarcity of wool. The effort to promote the raising of sheep, set on foot during the Revolutionary War, had not been very successful. The climate of New England, where the agitation was most earnest, proved too severe. Most of the wool made up in the United States was still imported in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the finer grades from Spain, Portugal, and Saxony, the coarse from Russia, Syria, and South America. The epoch of nonintercourse brought the necessity for a domestic supply forcibly before the public. Just at this juncture the Peninsular War threw the Spanish Census, i860, flocks upon the market. Enterprising farmers began imManufac-porting merino sheep, and by 1809 t...