Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/482

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

1810, 1,040,000 yards of cloth and flannel were woven in families and dressed in these mills. In 1840 there were 2,585 fulling and carding mills in the United States. Forty years later this number had been reduced to 991; and, in the decade since 1880, the mortality among them has been even greater. In the mills which still remain, on the outskirts of civilization, the operation of fulling has been almost wholly abandoned, and custom-carding only is done for the neighbors who still spin and weave their homespun.

Of the early stages of the introduction of wool-spinning machinery in this country the records are exceedingly deficient. Spinning jennies, built by Arthur Scholfield as early as 1800, were the first actually utilized in this country, and are described as containing from twenty to thirty spindles, upon which a single woman could spin from twenty to thirty runs of fine yarn a day "in the best manner."[1] These jennies cost about fifty dollars' and were operated by a crank moved by hand. In the history of the oldest woolen manufactory in Rhode Island, the Peace Dale Company, founded by Rowland Hazard in 1802, spinning and weaving were carried on wholly by hand, until about 1819, when a spinning jack of fifty-two spindles was operated.[2]

The power-loom for weaving broad goods was not introduced until 1828. The date of 1830 has been fixed upon by Dr. Hayes as marking the successful introduction of the woolen manufacture in this country substantially with the principal appli-


    round and round; the elderly lady, with long-neck gourd, pouring on more soap-suds, and every now and then, with spectacles on nose and yard-stick in hand, measuring the goods till they were shrunk to the desired length. Then the lassies stripped their arms above the elbows, rinsed and wrung out the blankets and flannels, and hung them on the gardenfence to dry."

  1. The Philadelphia Magazine or American Monthly Museum for 1775 describes and illustrates what it calls "the first spinning jenny introduced in this country" and made by Christopher Tully in that year. The editor says of it: "The machine for spinning twenty-four threads of cotton or wool at one time (by one person) having attracted the notice of the public, and we being desirous to contribute everything in our power toward the improvement of America, engaged Christopher Tully, the maker of the machine, to furnish us with an engraved plate and description thereof. . . . We have seen the machine perform and are convinced of its usefulness. The Society for the Improvement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in England repeatedly offered a premium of 100 sterling for a machine on this plan, but never had any presented to them which would answer the purpose. Notwithstanding which a very large one has been erected at Nottingham, in England, which performs to great advantage, but no person as a speculatist is admitted to see it."
  2. Mr. Hazard has shown the progress of thirty years in the following statement: "In 1816 and later I used to employ scores of women to spin at their homes at four cents a skein, by which they earned twelve cents a day at most. The wool was carded into rolls at Peace Dale and transported to and from on the backs of horses. Some time ago I stood in a manufactory in the same village and took note of a stripling who tended two highly improved jennies, from which he was turning off daily as much yarn as six or seven hundred formerly spun off wheels in the same time."