AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 459 



Dr. Grothe, the distinguished German investigator of textile 

 evolution, has testified that the contributions of American in- 

 ventors to finishing machinery exceed in extent and value those 

 of any other nation ; and he adds that, as a result of his investiga- 

 tions, he is " happy to award the merit of priority in invention, 

 frequently claimed for England, to America, the country which 

 has created inventors through her system of home industry and 



personal liberty." 



We have now completed our tour of the woolen-mill and our 

 hasty examination of the machines which have superseded the 

 earlier inventions in these establishments. Not less striking than 

 their wonderful ingenuity is their multiplicity. We find not only a 

 separate machine for each of the twenty-three different operations 

 enumerated by Ure in 1834, but we also find, in the larger mills, 

 great numbers of these separate machines. A modern factory is, 

 therefore, something almost entirely different from anything 

 which existed a century ago. It contains vast rooms, each de- 

 voted to separate branches of the industry. In one we find the 

 scouring machines ; in another, the carding machines ; in another, 

 if it be a worsted-mill, the combs and gilling machines ; in another, 

 long rows of whirling spindles tire the eye, and in another the 

 clatter of hundreds of looms suggests pandemonium. Everything 

 is systematized, and the surroundings of the operatives, with 

 abundance of light, with perfect ventilation, with steam-heat, 

 with convenient retiring-rooms, justify the statement that the 

 gain of the manufacture through improved machinery is no 

 greater than the gain of the operative, which has come through 

 the accompanying improvement in the construction and arrange- 

 ment of the buildings in which these operations are conducted. 



The Wool Manufacture in the United States. 



The development of the wool manufacture in the United 

 States occupies a unique relation in this narrative. It is contem- 

 poraneous with the period of the actual mechanical florescence of 

 the industry. Up to the time when our independence was asserted, 

 we were a nation dependent upon our household industries and 

 our foreign commerce. We used but little cotton that little, 

 strange as it now seems, being imported. Men and women were 

 clad in homespun, spun and woven on the domestic wheel and 

 loom. Almost every man was literally his own weaver. The 

 earliest records show that the subject of their clothing was an 

 object of solicitude to the primitive law-makers of the colonies. 

 They were without any raw material whatever. They found no 

 important fiber indigenous here, and their solicitude was great 

 to domesticate sheep. 



The first approach to a woolen-mill in the colonies of which 



