The relative growth in the manufacture of cotton in recent years by the principal countries in which this industry has developed is indicated by the fact that the quantity of cotton consumed in Great Britain in 1887 was 2,955,000 bales and in 1907, 3,900,000 bales; that of the continent of Europe, in 1887, 2,912,000 bales, in 1907, 5,460,000 bales; in the United States, in 1887, 1,939,000 bales,
in 1907, 4,950,000 bales; in India, in 1887, 569,000 bales, in 1907, 1,600,000 bales; in Japan, in 1892, the first year for which statistics are available, 99,000 bales, and in 1907, 925,000 bales; and in all other countries for which figures are available, in 1891, 106,000 bales, and in 1907, 171,000 bales.
With this elaborate use of machinery and increase of cotton production, manufacture and consumption, has come great reduction in cost of production and in prices. “In the last half of the nineteenth century,” says S. N. D. North, late Director of the Census, in the Encyclopedia Americana, “there was an increase in value of textile products in the United States of about six times and not less than ten times if it were possible to measure this product by quantity instead of by value. Even the largest figures convey an inadequate idea of the relative importance of our textile mills in the industrial economy of the nation, for those mills supply the materials for a great group of subsidiary factory industries, such as the wholesale clothing manufacture, etc. When we aggregate these, and add to them the value of the products of the linen, jute, hemp, and bagging mills of the country, we find that the product of our textile mills is larger in value than that of any single line of related industries, iron and steel excepted. The decrease in the cost of goods during the last half of the century has been one of the most striking phases of the development. This decrease is due—in some measure, of course, to the decreased price of the raw materials, but in even larger measure to the remarkable advance in methods of manufacture—to the new and more perfect machinery employed, in the invention of which American mechanical genius has contributed certainly as much as that of any other people, and perhaps more. All the fundamental inventions in spinning-machinery were of English origin. The French and Germans have also done much in the invention of labor-saving textile machinery,
but the American record may be shown to have surpassed them all. The wool-carding machinery of all countries owes its chief improvement over the machines of a century ago to the invention of John Goulding, of Worcester, Mass. The modern cotton spindle, making 10,000 revolutions a minute, is an evolution of our own mechanics, and the saving effected by new forms of spindles invented and adopted in the United States since 1870, when 5,000 revolutions per minute was the average speed, has been more than equal to the capacity of all the warp-spinning machinery in use in this country in that year. In structural equipment, the modern American mill,” continues Mr. North, “is, in some respects, superior to the average foreign mill. It is not so massive a structure, nor so solidly built, brick being used here while the English usually use stone; and in the lightness and airiness of its rooms, in economy of arrangement and general completeness of equipment and care for the comfort and convenience of the operatives, it is usually superior. While many parts of the machinery required for the equipment of our textile mills are still necessarily imported from England because not made, or less perfectly made, in the United States, our machine manufacturers have been advancing as rapidly in recent years as the textile mills themselves, and the time cannot now be far distant when every new mill built in America will be equipped throughout with American-made machinery. The American textile mills now supply practically every variety of fabric made in the world, with the exception of linens and the very finest grades of other fabrics.”
The Census of 1905 shows the value of cotton manufactures of the United States in 1850, 62 million dollars; in 1860, 115 million; in 1880, 192 million; in 1900, 331 million; and in 1905, 442 million; the capital invested in 1850, 75 million dollars; and in 1905, 605 million; the wages paid in 1860 (no figures for 1850), 24 million dollars; in 1905, 94
million; the number of wage-earners in 1850, 122,000; in 1905, 310,000; the number of spindles, in 1860, 5¼ million; in 1905, 23 million; the number of looms, in 1860, 126,313; in 1905, 540,910; the cotton consumed, in 1860, 423 million pounds; in 1905, 1,873 million pounds.
A marked characteristic of the cotton industry of the United States in recent years has been the gradual movement of the industry away from New England, where it was originally established, toward the cotton-producing section, the South. The number of cotton-manufacturing establishments in the New England States fell from 439 in 1880 to 308 in 1905, while those in the South increased from 161 to 550 in the same time. The number of spindles as shown by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor, in the Northern States as a whole, increased from 10 million in 1880 to 17⅓ million in 1908, while those in the Southern States increased from a little over a half million in 1880 to over 10 million in 1908. In the principal cotton-manufacturing countries of the world the increase in spindles during the last decade has been as follows: Great Britain, from 44½ million in 1897 to 52 million in 1907; continental Europe, from 30⅓ million in 1897 to 36 million in 1907; the United States, from 17 million to 25¾ million; India, from 4 million to 5⅓ million; and Japan, from a half million to a little over 1½ million. The 36 million cotton spindles in continental Europe are, according to Ellison, distributed as follows: Germany, 9 million; Russia and Poland, 7 million; France, 6 million; Austria-Hungary, 3¾ million; Italy, 3 million; Spain, 2¾ million; Switzerland, 1½ million; Belgium, 1⅓ million, and the remainder distributed among Switzerland, Holland, Portugal and Greece.
VIII. THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
The fact that this story of the world’s manufactures is intended primarily for the information of people of the United States, coupled with the further fact that the United States is itself the world’s largest producer of manufactures, seems to justify a somewhat detailed study of the manufactures of this country, the growth of the manufacturing industry, and especially the part which they bear in our foreign commerce. Originally the United States, like all new countries, devoted its attention chiefly to agriculture. The products of the soil are man’s first requirements. He must have food. When he obtains food his next thought is of clothing, but that he can obtain temporarily from the skins of the beasts whose bodies supply him with food. So the production of manufactures was of secondary importance in the early development of that part of the North American Continent which is now known as the United States. The eastern part of the area being densely wooded, the work of the first and second and third generations of our forefathers was to fell the trees and prepare the ground for agriculture for the production of the wheat and corn and other foodstuffs which they must have to sustain life. If there came as a result a given quantity of potash and pearlash and leather and other manufactures of this crude type which could be utilized by the people or exported to foreign countries they accepted this thankfully, but made no special effort to develop the manufacturing industry. During the colonial days little effort was made in the development of manufacturing, except to supply the household requirements. The housewife spun and wove the wool and flax into threads and cloth, and a large part of the population was clothed in “linsey-woolsey,” produced in this manner. Even during the period of the Confederation, which immediately
followed the Revolutionary War, conditions in the manufacturing industries did not materially change and nobody seems to have thought them of sufficient importance to justify any governmental attention or action. Shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, however, Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, submitted to the Congress of the United States, in 1791, a “Report on Manufactures,” which pictured manufacturing conditions in this country at that day. He enumerated some 17 industries which had “grown up and flourished with a rapidity which surprises, affording an assurance of success in future attempts.” These 17 industries were as follows: