466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1810, 1,040,000 yards of cloth and flannel were woven in families 

 and dressed in these mills. In 1840 there were 2,585 fulling and 

 carding mills in the United States. Forty years later this num- 

 ber had been reduced to 991 ; and, in the decade since 1880, the 

 mortality among them has been even greater. In the mills which 

 still remain, on the outskirts of civilization, the operation of 

 fulling has been almost wholly abandoned, and custom-carding 

 only is done for the neighbors who still spin and weave their 

 homespun. 



Of the early stages of the introduction of wool-spinning 

 machinery in this country the records are exceedingly deficient. 

 Spinning jennies, built by Arthur Scholfield as early as 1800, 

 were the first actually utilized in this country, and are described 

 as containing from twenty to thirty spindles, upon which a single 

 woman could spin from twenty to thirty runs of fine yarn a day 

 "in the best manner."* These jennies cost about fifty dollars' 

 and were operated by a crank moved by hand. In the history of 

 the oldest woolen manufactory in Rhode Island, the Peace Dale 

 Company, founded by Rowland Hazard in 1802, spinning and 

 weaving were carried on wholly by hand, until about 1819, when 

 a spinning jack of fifty-two spindles was operated.! 



The power-loom for weaving broad goods was not introduced 

 until 1828. The date of 1830 has been fixed upon by Dr. Hayes 

 as marking the successful introduction of the woolen manu- 

 facture in this country substantially with the principal appli- 



round and round ; the elderly lady, with long-neck gourd, pouring on more soap-suds, and 

 every now and then, with spectacles on nose and yard-stick in hand, measuring the goods 

 till they were shrunk to the desired length. Then the lassies stripped their arms above 

 the elbows, rinsed and wrung out the blankets and flannels, and hung them on the garden- 

 fence to dry." 



* The Philadelphia Magazine or American Monthly Museum for 1775 describes and 

 illustrates what it calls " the first spinning jenny introduced in this country " and made by 

 Christopher Tully in that year. The editor says of it : " The machine for spinning twenty- 

 four threads of cotton or wool at one time (by one person) having attracted the notice of 

 the public, and we being desirous to contribute everything in our power toward the im- 

 provement of America, engaged Christopher Tully, the maker of the machine, to furnish 

 us with an engraved plate and description thereof. . . . We have seen the machine per- 

 form and are convinced of its usefulness. The Society for the Improvement of Arts, 

 Manufactures, and Commerce in England repeatedly offered a premium of 100 sterling for 

 a machine on this plan, but never had any presented to them which would answer the pur- 

 pose. Notwithstanding which a very large one has been erected at Nottingham, in England, 

 which performs to great advantage, but no person as a speculatist is admitted to see it." 



t Mr. Ilazard has shown the progress of thirty years in the following statement : " In 

 1816 and later I used to employ scores of women to spin at their homes at four cents a 

 skein, by which they earned twelve cents a day at most. The wool was carded into rolls at 

 Peace Dale and transported to and from on the backs of horses. Some time ago I stood in 

 a manufactory in the same village and took note of a stripling who tended two highly im- 

 proved jennies, from which he was turning off daily as much yarn as six or seven hundred 

 formerly spun off wheels in the same time." 



