century. But whether or not it was a woman who transformed the textile industry by inventing the cotton gin, the fact remains that this invention transformed the lives of millions of women by forever removing from the domestic fireside woman's ancient industrial tools: the spinning-wheel and the loom.
Two other inventions, just preceding the cotton gin, helped to establish the textile industries in America: the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The first spinning-jenny seen in America was exhibited in Philadelphia in 1775 by Tenche Cox, known as the father of American industries. It led to the establishment of spinning mills where hundreds of women found employment, while the yarn was still sent out among farmers' wives, to be woven on their hand-looms in their own homes. The earliest textile factories were all spinning mills. Weaving became a factory occupation only after the introduction of the power-loom, invented in 1785 by Cartwright, but not applied to practical use until 1814. In that year the first power-loom went into operation in Waltham, Mass., in the first real cotton factory that comprised all the processes of cotton manufacture. Massachusetts was particularly adapted by nature to be a manufacturing state, owing to its abundance of swift flowing streams, and here the first factories were erected. But soon the other New England States, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania followed in rapid succession, and by 1830 the textile industries had passed into the factory system. Though other industries still lingered in the home, and though the domestic system and the factory system continued to be interwoven for many years, the old household manufactures steadily decreased and by 1850 were rapidly disappearing. When the first half of the nineteenth century had passed, the factory system in the United States had become fully established. The home had ceased to be the work-shop of the nation.
WOMAN LEAVES HER FIRESIDE
When the old, domestic spinning-wheel had become a mere toy beside the spinning-jenny, when the old-fashioned hand-loom was rendered useless and valueless by
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