274 Percy Wells Bidwell 



put which would now be considered insignificant. The largest of 

 the five woolen mills in New England from which Secretary Gallatin 

 received reports in 1809 employed only 28 persons.^ The output of 

 the only woolen mill in Massachusetts enumerated in the Census of 

 1810 was 6,800 yards per annum, while that of two mills in Kent 

 County, Rhode Island, was 11,000 yards for both. Altogether 

 there were, perhaps, 20 or 25 such factories in southern New England 

 in 1810.2 The mills established by General Humphreys at Derby, 

 Conn., shortly after 1800, described in D wight's Travels, III. 375- 

 377, are hardly typical. Besides carding and fulling machines of 

 improved pattern they contained two jennies, a billy with 40 spindles, 

 two newly invented shearing machines, four broad looms, eight 

 narrow looms, and eighteen stocking frames. One writer says: 

 "This is a fairly complete picture of the best woolen mill that existed 

 in the United States up to the War of 1812. For its day it was far in 

 advance of the times, and far superior to many which existed a quar- 

 ter of a century later."* 



CoUon Spinning. 



Although the birth of the cotton manufacturing industry in New 

 England, and in the United States as well, is formally dated from the 

 arrival of Samuel Slater in Providence, Rhode Island, and the erection 

 of the first cotton mill there in 1790, yet up to 1807 the growth had 

 been inconsiderable, only 15 factories employing some 6,000 spindles 

 having been put into operation.'* A great stimulus was given to the 

 new industry in the next few years by the prohibition of the import 

 of foreign-made goods in the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts of 

 1807 and 1809, so that at the end of 1809 Secretary Gallatin had re- 

 ceived reports from 62 mills in operation with a total of 31,000 

 spindles.* In the reports collected by the census officials in 1810, 



' Gallatin's Report on Manufactures. American State Papers, Finance, Vol. 

 n, p. 434. This mill was situated in Warwick, Rhode Island, and produced 

 10,000 yards annually. 



2 According to the Digest of Manufactures prepared by Tench Coxe from the 

 Census returns of 1810, there were 15 mills in Connecticut, 2 in Rhode Island, 

 and only 1 in Massachusetts. The returns for the last state were defective, 

 however, and perhaps a half dozen or more mills were in operation there. See 

 Dickinson, R., Geographical and Statistical View of Massachusetts. 1813. p. 66, 



' North, S. N. D. The New England Wool Manufacture. In the New Eng- 

 land States (W. T. Davis, editor). 4 vols. Boston. 1897. Vol. I., p. 205. 



* Gallatin, Op. cit., p. 427. Twelve of these were in Rhode Island, two in 

 Massachusetts, and one in Connecticut. 



* Ibid. 



