462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pearance on the stage clothed in fabrics of domestic manufacture. 

 Premiums were again offered to encourage both the growth of 

 the raw materials and their manufacture. Ladies' meetings for 

 patriotic spinning were inaugurated in various colonies, and these 

 continued down to and into the Revolutionary War. 



With the outbreak of that war, serious attempts at the manu- 

 facture of woolen goods in factories began. Samuel Wetherill 

 was regularly engaged in the manufacture of woolen fabrics in 

 Philadelphia about the beginning of the Revolution, and had a 

 contract with the Provincial Congress to supply army clothing. 

 In 1770 Edward Parker received three hundred pounds from the 

 Maryland Legislature to assist him in the manufacture of woolen 

 and linen goods. He had five looms. Charles Carroll, the signer 

 of the Declaration, had a similar establishment. Neither of these 

 parties, in all probability, used any power. The first mill in which 

 power was used was the Hartford Woolen Manufactory, estab- 

 lished in 1788 by a company of thirty-one gentlemen, most of them 

 Hartford merchants. The factory was erected on a small stream, 

 whose power operated two carding machines. For several years 

 this factory achieved an annual output of five thousand yards 

 of cassimeres and broadcloths, worth about five dollars a yard. 

 An Englishman named Wansey, who visited this country in 17 i4 

 and inspected the mill, wrote that these cloths could be sold for 

 about the same price as English goods, delivered in the stores at 

 Hartford, " but the fabric was very j>oor and hard in the spin- 

 ning, and dearer than the British, loaded with all the expense 

 of freight, insurance, merchant's profits, and nine and a half 

 cents duty." The Hartford company could not compete with 

 the English cloth, even with these advantages, as its early col- 

 lapse proved. While it lasted, it was quite the sensation of the 

 country round about. General Washington's visit to the factory 

 in 1789 is minutely recorded in his journal, and the patriotic spirit 

 was stirred by the fact that he appeared at his first inaugural clad 

 in a suit of broadcloth presented by the owners of the mill. Gen- 

 eral Washington noted the fact that " all the parts of the business 

 are performed at the manufactory except the spinning that is 

 done by the country people, who are paid by the cut." It was to 

 this factory that Hamilton alluded in his celebrated report on 

 manufactures. Another woolen factory was established at Stock- 

 bridge in 1780, and another at Watertown in 1700. The three 

 mills had a capacity of about 15,000 yards per annum, valued at 

 $75,000. In contrast with these figures we have the official value 

 of the woolens exported from England to the United States in 

 1709 at 2,803,400,* or more than two fifths of that country's total 



* Bischoff, vol. i, p. 270. 



