ork at
hand spinning and weaving; and though the company presently turned its
attention to woollen fabrics, a large proportion of women was still
employed.

Till the building of the great mill at Waltham, Mass., in which every
form of the improved machinery found place, spinning was the only work
of the factories. All the yarn was sent out among the farmers to be
woven into cloth, the current prices paid for this being from six to
twelve cents a yard. American cotton was poor, and the product of a
quality inferior to the coarsest and heaviest-unbleached of to-day; but
experiment soon altered all this.

To manufacture the raw product in this country was a necessity. For
England this had begun in 1786; but she guarded so jealously all
inventions bearing upon it that none found their way to us. Our
machinery was therefore of the most imperfect order, the work chiefly of
two young Scotch mechanics. In 1788 a company was formed at Providence,
R.I., for making "homespun cloth," their machinery being made in part
from drawings from English models. Carding and roving were all done by
hand labor; and the spinning-frame, with thirty-two spindles, differed
little from a common jenny, and was worked by a crank turned by hand.

Even at this stage England was determined that America should have
neither machinery nor tools, and still held to the act passed in 1789
which enforced a penalty of five hundred pounds for any one who
exported, or tried to export, "blocks, plates, engines, tools, or
utensils used in or which are proper for the preparing or finishing of
the calico, cotton, muslin, or linen printing manufacture, or any part
thereof."

Nothing could have more stimulated American invention; but there were
many struggles before the thought finally came to all interested, that
it might be possible to condense the whole operation with all its
details under one roof,--a project soon carried out.

Thus far all had been tentative; but the building in 1790 at Pawtucket,
R.I., of the first large factory with improved machinery gave the
industry permanent place. Another mill was erected in the same State in
1795, and two more in Massachusetts in 1802 and 1803. In the three
succeeding years ten more were built in Rhode Island and one in
Connecticut, altogether fifteen in number, working about 8,000 spindles
and producing in a year some 300,000 pounds of yarn. At the end of the
year 1809 eighty-seven additional mills had been put up,