COTTON 
307 
A century later more than 1,650,000,000 pounds 
were consumed in making cotton goods, these hav- 
ing a commercial value of nearly $400,000,000. 
For 1904-05 her consumption is estimated as 
1,794,000,000 pounds. 
But while England early became noted for cotton 
manufacturing and has always led in cotton con- 
sumption and in number of spindles operated, 
America has had no small part in this wonderful 
development. At first progress was made slowly. 
Although the Southern States shared largely in 
starting cotton manufacturing, the first factory 
being in South Carolina, the Cotton States soon 
addressed themselves more exclusively to cotton 
farming, yielding to New England the supremacy 
in manufacturing the goods. One of the earliest 
manufacturing plants was established at Slater- 
ville, R. I., and as early as 1816 consumed 100,000 
bales of cotton, turned out 181,000,000 yards of 
cloth, employed thousands of operatives, and 
had a working capital of many millions of dollars. 
The greatest center of cotton manufacture has 
been in the city of Fall River, Mass. As late as 
1900 the two adjoining counties of Bristol in Mass- 
achusetts (in which Fall River is located) and 
Providence in Rhode Island contained about 
thirty per cent, of the spindles in the United States. 
The power loom was first put in use in mills at 
Waltham, Mass., from which place, after the ex- 
periment had been found successful, it went in 
every direction where cotton manufacturing had 
gone. 
SIZE OF THE WORLD'S INDUSTRY IN SPINDLES 
The unit of production in the cotton industry is 
the spindle. A large number of spindles is nec- 
