AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 467 



ances and machinery of the present day. This was the date of 

 the erection of the Middlesex Mills, of Lowell, of whose history 

 it has been written that " it covers the entire life of the successful 

 woolen industry of this country." In the earlier days of our 

 manufacture, the products of our mills were chiefly the coarser 

 fabrics. Until about 1840 they consisted almost wholly of sati- 

 nets, flannels, and blankets. The manufacture of fine broad cloth 

 was indeed early attempted, and with considerable success. Grad- 

 ually, amid many vicissitudes, and with great loss of capital, large 

 mills were established and succeeded in maintaining themselves 

 and in diversifying the industry. 



We shall not attempt to state the statistics of this development. 

 They are accessible in the census reports to those specially inter- 

 ested. By 1880 the product of all our mills, employed in the 

 manipulation of wool in any form, was stated at 6207,000,000, and 

 the census of 1890 will show this product not far, if any, short of 

 $350,000,000. Next to England the United States is to-day the 

 largest wool manufacturing nation, and the people of the United 

 States consume a much larger quantity of wool per capita than 

 any other people. Indeed, the increasing capacity of our woolen- 

 mills barely keeps pace with the increasing consumption of our 



people. 



Economic Aspects of the Evolution. 



The evolution of the wool manufacture has had an economic 

 influence upon civilization more marked even than that which has 

 to do with the cost of clothing. Indeed it is a disturbing element, 

 in estimating this reduced cost, because that which was once 

 fabricated at home, by the members of the family, the labor of 

 some of whom at least would otherwise have counted for nothing, 

 is now bought in the shops. This evolution has substituted the 

 factory system for the household industry, almost obliterating 

 the latter in all countries which are within reach of commerce. 

 We have seen how important an element in the household economy 

 of the American colonies and the early republic the making of the 

 cloths for clothing was. It was of even greater importance in Eng- 

 land and France, and particularly in England, where, up to the 

 introduction of automatic machinery, the handling of wool, both 

 for domestic use and export, continued to be the most important 

 occupation of the people next to agriculture, with which it was so 

 closely allied. We can trace the gradual development of the old 

 English system into the new. The founders of the great houses 

 which now conduct the industry were, many of them, the hand 

 combers or spinners or weavers of the primitive industry. They 

 were the forehanded among these laborers, who gradually took 

 others into their employment, and, as machinery came into vogue, 

 were able to utilize it. Thus the minute subdivision of the house- 



