AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 469 



stitutes still another distinct subdivision of the business. While 

 this minute subdivision of the industry is largely the outgrowth 

 of conditions rather than a tendency evolved from experience, it 

 may be said to be definitely determined that the best results are 

 attained by it. Under this system a community like Bradford in 

 England is a great beehive of interdependent industries, the 

 separate stages of the manufacture being carried on in separate 

 establishments. The whole energy of the management, in each 

 branch, is devoted to securing the best results in that particular 

 branch under the most economical conditions. Here, in a radius 

 of 75,000 acres, with a population of 500,000 people, is consumed 

 nearly or quite one half of the total quantity of wool worked up 

 in Great Britain. Here a capital of 40,000,000, employing 140,000 

 operatives, turns out each year a product of manufactured wool 

 valued at nearly the total amount of its capital. Here, built up 

 within the century, is an aggregation of organized industrial de- 

 velopment without a parallel among the princely cities of an- 

 tiquity the most striking, the most tangible, of the many results 

 of the evolution of the wool manufacture. The complete organi- 

 zation of the Bradford manufacture indicates the ultimate develop- 

 ment of the industry. 



It is not difficult to understand why the development of Great 

 Britain and France, in this particular, with its striking concen- 

 tration of the textile industries in towns like Bradford, Huddles- 

 field, Manchester, and Leeds, and Rheims and Roubaix, has not 

 been duplicated in the United States. While the factory system 

 here has superseded a household industry, it is in no sense an out- 

 growth from it. We have seen why not, in the difficulties which 

 attended the procurement of machinery in the early days of man- 

 ufacture here. The first factories were stock companies, necessa- 

 rily, for few individuals had the capital necessary to found mills. 

 These original mills performed all the operations of the manu- 

 facture, because there were no agencies through which any part 

 of these operations could be independently carried on. Water- 

 power being then the great desideratum, they were widely scat- 

 tered on the streams of the New England and Middle States. 

 This scattering created the necessity for the equipment of com- 

 plete mills under one management. Time is gradually effecting 

 something of a concentration of kindred industries, as in Phila- 

 delphia, which is called the textile center of the United States, 

 and in New England towns like Fall River, Lawrence, and Lowell. 

 With this concentration, there is gradually evolving a system of 

 subdivision. This tendency we may look to see increase in the 

 wool manufacture, with a corresponding gain in the stability of 

 the industry, and in the variety and the excellence of its products. 



Surveying the whole field, we are struck by two features in 



