AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 463 



woolen exports, no other country even approaching our own as a 

 consumer of English woolens. No wonder Great Britain took 

 drastic steps to preserve this splendid market. 



Neither of these pioneer enterprises was a success, either me- 

 chanically or financially. The machinery was imperfect and 

 inadequate, and the projectors learned by sad experience that 

 they could not equal the British fabrics either in quality or in 

 price. The Hartford factory struggled along until 1795, when 

 the machinery consisting of eight looms, two carding machines, 

 one spinning jenny, one twisting machine, and other odd imple- 

 ments was sold at auction. 



The year before the collapse of the Hartford factory the first 

 incorporated woolen company in the United States began opera- 

 tions at By field, Mass. The By field factory was operated for five 

 years under the superintendence of John and Arthur Scholfield, 

 two ingenious Englishmen, who are commonly spoken of as the 

 first woolen manufacturers in the United States, in the same sense 

 that Samuel Slater is described as the pioneer cotton manufacturer. 

 It is certain that theirs was the first instance of a successful 

 woolen manufactory with improved machinery of a character 

 which entitled it to rank with the mills which were plentiful in 

 Great Britain at the date of which we are speaking. The Schol- 

 fields introduced a new carding machine, of their own construc- 

 tion, based upon the machines they had seen in operation in their 

 native land. It was adapted to water-power, and the beginning 

 of the new era of woolen manufacture in the United States fairly 

 dates from it. 



For many years prior it was vaguely realized in the United 

 States that the world was upon the eve of a new and strange in- 

 dustrial development, from participation in which this country 

 seemed to be excluded by laws designed to keep it industrially 

 dependent. Tench Coxe states that he first became aware in 

 1786 that labor-saving machinery for spinning was being largely 

 used in Great Britain, and he then made unsuccessful efforts to 

 obtain models of these machines. The mother-country, thoroughly 

 awake by this time to the significance of the textile inventions of 

 her citizens, had passed laws by which she hoped to retain the 

 monopoly of the rich harvest their ingenuity promised. The first 

 of these statutes, enacted in 1774, a few years after Arkwright's 

 successful inauguration of the factory system with his new ap- 

 pliances, was entitled " an act to prevent the exportation to foreign 

 parts of the utensils made use of in the cotton, linen, woolen, and 

 silk manufactures of this kingdom " ; and its purpose, as set forth 

 in the preamble, was "to preserve as much as possible to his 

 Majesty's British subjects the benefits arising from these great 

 and valuable branches of trade and commerce." The statute pro- 



