1840 1,347,640
1850 2,136,083
1860 3,841,416
1870 4,024,527
1880 6,356,998
1890 8,562,089
1900 10,123,027
1910 11,608,616
1917 11,302,375

By this table it will be seen that the Civil War and the freeing of the
slaves held up production only temporarily. In 1914, the banner year, the
crop reached the tremendous total of 16,134,930 bales of five hundred
pounds each.

Some little spinning had been done in the seventeenth century, but in
1787-88 the first permanent factory, built of brick, and located in
Beverly, Massachusetts, on the Bass river, was put into operation by a
group headed by John Cabot and Joshua Fisher. This factory failed to
justify itself economically, chiefly because of the crudeness of its
machinery. But Samuel Slater, newly come from England with models of the
Arkwright machinery in his brain, set up a factory in Pawtucket in 1790.
From that time forth the growth was steady and sure, if not always
extremely rapid.

The following table,[A] which covers the whole country, relates
particularly to New England in the years before 1880, because the cotton
manufacturing industry until then was largely concentrated there. It
shows how the manufacturing interests of the country profited by the
discovery that brought wealth to the agricultural South:

=======+=======+============+=========+=============+==============
|_Number| |_Cotton | |
| of | _Number | Used | _Number | _Value of
_Year_ | Estab-| of | in | of | Product in
| lish- | Spindles_ | Million | Employes_ | Dollars_
| ments_| | Pounds_ | |
-------+-------+------------+---------+-------------+--------------
1810 | | 87,000 | | |
1820 | | 220,000 | | |
1830 | 795 | 1,200,000 | 77.8 | 62,177 | $32,000,000
1840 | 1240 | 2,300,000 | 113.1 | 72,119 | 46,400,000
1850 | 1094 | 3,600,000 | 276.1 | 92,286 | 61,700,000
1860 | 1091 | 5,200,000 | 422.7 | 122,028 | 115,700,000
1870 | 956 | 7,100,000 | 398.3 | 135,369 | 177,500,000
1880