USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Fall River > Centennial history of Fall River, Mass. : comprising a record of its corporate progress from 1656 to 1876, with sketches of its manufacturing industries, local and general characteristics, valuable statistical tables, etc. > Part 9
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"Cotton Mills (150,000 spindles), water-power and land. $2,000,000
Print Works. 200,000
Woollen Mill 50,000 Iron Works 1,000,000 Furnaces 20,000
Steamboats. 700,000
Bank Capital and Deposits. 2,000,000
1500 Dwellings. 1,500,000 Real Estate, including Wharves
1,000,000
Miscellaneous Stocks. 250,000
Invested in Trade and Merchandise
150,000
Invested in Vessels. 100,000
Market and Cemetery 100,000
Religious Edifices .. 150,000
Educational Edifices. 70,000
$9,290,000
68
FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
" At the present time therc arc ten or possibly morc residents worth $100,000 and over; onc may be estimated at half a million. Probably there arc from twelve to fifteen worth $50,000. In the year 1831, two of our citi- zens reckoned up a list of ten persons worth $10,000 and upwards, and in 1837 were able to add to it seven others."
Such plain and simple figures as the foregoing introduce with almost dramatic effect the statistical exhibit of Fall River in 1876, which wc cxtract from Mr. Sanborn's interesting paper rcad before the Social Science Associa- tion, at its meeting in Saratoga, in September.
"The population of Fall River fifty years ago was less than 3000; in 1840 it was 6738; in 1850, 11,524; in 1855, 12,680; in 1860, 14,026; in 1865, 17,481. Up to that time, which was the close of the civil war, its increase had been no greater than that of other thriving towns in Massachusetts. Exclusive of the 3300 inhabitants gained from Rhode Island by annexation in 1862, it had neither increased nor diminished its population during the civil war ; while some Massachusetts cities, Worcester and Springfield, for example, had gained from twenty to forty per centum during the war; and others, Lowell and New Bedford, for example, had lost from six to fifteen per cen- tum of their population. But immediately upon the close of the war Fall River began to gain in population and wealth with remarkable rapidity. In 1870 it contained 26,766 inhabitants, or almost twice as many as in 1860; in 1875 it contained 45,340, or more than three times the population in 1860. The only other Massachusetts city that has trebled its population in these fifteen years is Holyoke, which from 5000 in 1860 grew to 16,260 in 1875.
" But Holyoke shows no such gain in wealth as Fall River made during the same period. The assessed valuation of Fall River, which in 1861 was but $II,261,065, and which so late as 1869 was but $21,400,000, had risen in 1873 to $47,416,000, and in 1875 to $51,401,000. Holyoke, which in 1861 had a valuation of $2,270,439, and in 1869 of $5,370,000, had only risen to $8,578,000 in 1873, and to $9,681,000 in 1875. Thus the taxable and actually taxed wealth of Fall River increased nearly 400 per centum in the fifteen years from 1860 to 1875, and it more than doubled (an increase of 121 per centum) in the four years preceding the panic of 1873.
" The growth of a single industry in Fall River since the civil war is even more extraordinary. In 1865 the city reported fifteen cotton-mills, with only 241,218 spindles; in 1875 there were thirty-eight mills, with 1,280,000 spindles. In 1865 the annual product of these mills was reported at less than 30,000,000, while in 1873 it was more than 330,000,000 yards, or eleven times as much. The reported capital in 1865 was but $3,126,500 ; in 1875 it was $20,368,000, or more than six times as much. Between 1870 and 1874 the number of cotton-manufacturing corporations was increased from eighteen to thirty-four. In 1865 the reported number of cotton factory operatives, in a population of 17,481, was 2654, of whom 1037 were males and 1617 females. In 1875 the number of cotton factory operatives, in a population of 45,260, was 11,514, of whom 5467 were males and 6047 were females. Within ten years,
69
COTTON MANUFACTURE A.D. 1860-76.
therefore, this portion of the population had increased from fifteen per centum of the whole to more than twenty-five per centum of the whole. In fact, the persons of suitable age and capacity to labor, who are directly or indirectly at work upon the cotton industries of Fall River, are no doubt more than half, and may reach two thirds, of the whole industrious population. The capital employed in cotton manufactures bore even a larger ratio to the whole capital of the city in 1875, and so did the value of the manufactured product to the whole product of the city industries. Thus the whole capital reported in 'manufactures and related occupations' being $23,078,000, that employed in cotton manufactures was $20,484,000, or almost 90 per centum ; while of the manufactured product ($23,027,000) $20,228,000, or about the same percentage, were of cotton goods. In 1870 the whole manufactured product of cotton goods in the United States was valued at less than $180,000,000, so that Fall River manufactures more than a tenth part of all that are produced in the country. There is no single city in the United States that manufactures so much cotton as Fall River, and it has even been asserted that there is no city in the world which has a larger cotton manufac- ture. This is a mistake-for Manchester in England, in 1871, employed 20,346 persons in its one hundred and elcven cotton factories. But when we consider that Manchester has ten times the population of Fall River (476,000 in 1871), while Fall River employs more than half as many cotton spinners as Manchester, it is easy to see that our American city may soon surpass its English prototype in this special industry. Ten years more like the last ten would see this accomplished.
" It is proper to mention in conclusion, that the wealth of Fall River is owned almost wholly by residents, and that its business interests are con- trolled by its own people, rather than by persons living at a distance. This is one of the causes of its prosperity ; for all its citizens have a direct interest in making it prosperous, and work industriously to that end. It is also, perhaps, the chief reason why the cotton manufacture there has not given way during the depression of prices for two years past. 'If you want your work well done,' says the proverb, 'you must do it yourself.' The Fall River manufac- turers have attended to their own investments, and their operatives, being citizens of the town, and having a deep interest in its success, have submitted to restrictions and reductions of wages which might not have been available in cities like Lowell. In the recent conflicts between capital and labor at Fall River there have been faults on both sides, but the result seems to show that on neither side was serious injustice done. The future is uncertain, but there is a fair prospect that the overgrowth of a single industry there will prove to have been but a slight excess, which was, perhaps, unavoidable in firmly establishing a manufacture that may prove itself able to compete in the markets of the world with the same industry in countries where it has been long established."
The forty cotton mill structures of Fall River are located in groups, and may be distinguished as those on the stream, those at Mechanicsville at the north, those at .Globe Village (originally Tiverton) at the south, and a small
70
FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
number on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. Ascending the stream are situ- ated the Metacomet, Annawan, Fall River Manufactory, Fall River Print Works, Watuppa, Quequechan, Pocasset, and Troy. These are the oldest mills in the place, and all of them are below the dam.
On the stream above the dam, following nearly to its head along its east side, are the Union Nos. 1 and 2, Durfee Nos. 1 and 2, Granite Nos. I and 2, Crescent, Merchants, Barnard, Wampanoag, Stafford, Flint, and Merino, the last five, with their tenements, forming a community by themselves known as Flint's Village.
On the west bank of the stream, above the dam, are the Tecumseh No. I, Robeson, Davol, Richard Borden, Tecumseh No. 2, and Chace Mills.
Some two miles north of the stream, at Mechanicsville, are located the Mechanics, Weetamoe, Narragansett, Sagamore, and Border City Nos. I and 2.
At the extreme south, some four miles from the Mechanicsville group, taking their water from Laurel Lake, are the Slade, Montaup, Osborn, King Philip, and Shove Mills.
The American Print Works, the Fall River Iron Works, the American Linen Company's Mills, Nos. 1 and 2, and the Mount Hope Mill are located successively on the Bay southward from the stream.
THE GROWTH
OF THE
COTTON INDUSTRY IN AMERICA.
T HE first culture of cotton in the United States for the purpose of raising a material to be worked up into a fabric was pursued on the peninsula between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays as early as 1736, it having been before that time chiefly regarded as an ornamental plant, and reared only in gardens on the eastern shore of Maryland, the lower counties of Delaware, and occasional localities in the Middle States. Previously to this date-about 1733-its culture seems to have been experimentally undertaken in South Carolina, where it was to be met with in gardens. An exportation of seven bags from Charleston, in 1747-8, is recorded; but doubt is thrown upon its growth in the colony. A few years later it was a recognized production of the Carolinas, in a very small way, as also of French Louisiana. But cotton was not to any appreciable extent a production of the Southern States ante- rior to the Revolutionary War, and its use as a material to bc spun and woven, with its relative value as an article of national wealth, was hardly thought of in comparison with hemp and flax. Whatever was raised was consumed at home, and in 1770 the total entries of American cotton at Liverpool amounted to three bales from New York, four from Virginia and Maryland, and three bar- rels from North Carolina.
In 1784 an importation of eight bags of cotton at Liverpool was seized, on the assumption that so large a quantity could not have been of American production. The next year, however, the exportation from Charleston regu- larly commenced, one bag being shipped to England from that city. During the same twelvemonth twelve bags were entered at Liverpool from Philadel- phia, and one from New York. Thc increase thenceforward was marked. The bag averaged 150 lbs., and from 1786 to 1790 the following quantities were exported : 1786, 6 bags; 1787, 109 bags; 1788, 389 bags; 1789, 842 bags; 1790, 81 bags-aggregating 1441 bags, or 216,150 lbs.
72
-FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
In 1786 the culture of cotton had become so successful that Mr. Madi- son, in a convention at Annapolis, Md., called to consider the depressed con- dition of the country, remarked, in his address, that "there was no reason to doubt the United States would one day become a great cotton-growing country."
The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney in 1793-4, by which the labor of one man could clean for market a thousand pounds of cotton instead of the five or six pounds by the usual hand process, at once gave an impulse to the culture of the plant. In 1795 South Carolina exported $1,109,653 in valuc of production, and the growth of the whole country rcached 8,000,000 lbs., of which three quarters were shipped abroad. In 1801 the product aggre- gated 40,000,000 lbs., of which half was exported, South Carolina alone yield- ing 8,000,000 lbs.
The following table, carefully prepared by B. F. Nourse, Esq., of Boston, and perfected to the present time, shows the total annual production of cotton in the United States from 1825 to the present year, inclusive :
Years ending August 31.
Production. Bales.
Consumption. Bales.
Exports. Bales.
Average Net Weight per Bale.
Average Price per lb. N. Y. Cents.
1825-'26
720,027
1826-'27
957,281
149,516
854,000
331
9.29
1827-'28
720,593
120,593
600,000
335
10.32
1828-'29
870,415
118,853
740,000
341
9.88
1829-'30
976,845
126,512
839,000
339
10.04
1830-'31
1,038,847
182,142
773,000
341
9.71
1831-'32
987,477
173,800
892,000
360
9.38
1832-'33
1,070,438
194,412
867,000
350
12.32
1833-34
1,205,394
196,413
1,028,000
363
12.90
1834-'35
1,254,328
216,888
1,023,500
367
17.45
1835-'36
1,360,725
236,733
I,II6,000
373
16.50
1836-'37
1,423,930
222,540
1, 169,000
379
13.25
1837-'38
1,801,497
246,063
1,575,000
379
10.14
1838-'39
1,360,532
276,018
1,074,000
384
13.36
1839-'40
2, 177,835
295, 193
1,876,000
383
8.92
1840-'41
1,634,954
267,850
1,313,500
394
9.50
1841-42
1,683,574
267,850
1,465,500
397
7.85
1842-43
2,378,875
325,129
2,010,000
409
7.25
1843-44
2,030,409
346,750
1,629,500
412
7.73
1844-45
2,394,503
389,000
2,083,700
415
5.63
1845-'46
2, 100,537
422,600
1,666,700
4II
7.87
1846-'47
1,778,65I
428,000
1,241,200
431
II.2I
1847-48
2,439,786
616,044
1,858,000
417
8.03
1848-'49
2,866,938
642,485
2,228,000
436
7.55
1849-'50
2,233,718
613,498
1,590,200
429
12.34
1850-51
2,454,442
485,614
1,988,710
416
12.14
1851-52
3, 126,310
689,603
2,443,646
428
9.50
1852-53
3,416,214
803,725
2,528,400
428
II.02
1853-54
3,074,979
737,236
2,319, 148
430
10.97
1854-55
2,982,634
706,417
2,244, 209
434
10.39
1855-'56
3,665,557
770, 739
2,954,606
420
10.30
1856-'57
3,093,737
819,936
2,252,657
444
13.51
1857-'58
3,257,339
595,562
2,590,455
442
12.23
1858-59
4,018,914
927,65I
3,021,403
447
I2.OS
1859-'60
4,861,292
978,043
3,774,173
461
11.00
12.19
73
COTTON AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
Years ending August 31.
Production. Bales.
Consumption. Bales.
Exports. Bales.
Average Net Weight per Bale.
Average Price per lb. N. Y. Cents.
1860-'61
3,849,469
843,740
3,127,568
477
13.01
1861-'62
....
31.29
1862-'63
..
67.21
1863-'64
. ....
101.50
1864-'65
83.38
I865-'66
2,269,3IO
666, 100
1,554,654
441
43.20
1866-'67
2,097,254
770,630
1,557,054
444
31.59
1867-'68
2,519,554
906,636
1,655,816
445
24.85
1868-'69
2,366,467
926,374
1,465,880
444
29 OI
1869-'70
3,122,557
865,160
2,206,480
440
23.98
1870-'71
4,362,317
1, 110,196
3, 166,742
442
16.95
1871-'72
3,014,357
1,237,330
1,957,314
443
20.98
1872-73
3,930,508
1,201,127
2,679,986
464
18.15
1873-'74
4, 170, 388
1,305,943
2,840,981
466
19.30
1874-75
3,832,99I
1,207,60I
2,684,410
468
I8.
1875-'76
4,669,288
1,356,598
3,252,994
47I
13.
The history of cotton manufacture in the United States commences with the organization of a factory at Beverly, Mass., in 1787. Previously whatever cotton had been made into cloth had been spun on the ordinary spinning- wheel, which was a property of nearly every household, and woven on the hand-loom. The first spinning-jenny seen in America was exhibited in Phila- delphia, in 1775, constructed by a Mr. Christopher Tully after the plan of Hargreaves. This machine, spinning twenty-four threads, was secured by an association of persons desirous to establish domestic enterprise, who formed themselves into a company, termed " The United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures." This Company, besides operating Tully's machine, employed four hundred women in hand-spinning and weaving. The Company was speedily a success, the stock rising from its par value of £10 to £17 6s. 6d. in two years. The business, however, was not long carried on by the Company, but in a few years was controlled by one of the directors, Samuel Wetherill, who during the Revolution had contracts for woollen fabrics for the army.
Though some years before the close of the war the spinning-frames of Arkwright had been operated in England, it was next to impossible to pro- cure patterns, or even drawings, of them for the United States. Not only did parliamentary legislation prohibit the exportation of new inventions, but the statutes were rigidly enforced, to the degree even of searching private effects and preventing the emigration of skilled artificers from the country. Thus in 1786 a complete set of brass models of Arkwright's machines, packed for Philadelphia, was seized on the eve of shipment ; and in 1784 a German was fined £500 for attempting to form a colony of English workmen for one of the Low Countries.
74
FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
In 1786, the Hon. Hugh Orr, of Bridgewater, Mass., employed two brothers, Robert and Alexander Barr, recently come from Seotland, to eon- struet for him, at his machine-shops, three earding, roving, and spinning machines. It is probable Col. Orr did not contemplate himself inaugurating a manufacturing enterprise, but was actuated by a desire to promote a new industry. At any rate he succeeded in securing a favorable report from a Legislative committee appointed to examine the machines, and a grant of {200 to the machinists, supplemented by the gift of six tickets in the State Land Lottery, in which there were no blanks, " as a reward for their ingenuity in forming those machines, and for their public spirit in making them known to this Commonwealth."
The cost of the machines was {187, and they included probably the first stoek eard in the country.
The approval of the Commonwealth was next given to a model of an early and imperfeet form of Arkwright's water-frame, brought from England by Thomas Somers. Col. Orr, still the medium of the State's liberality, was commissioned to advanee {20 to the artisan, who had visited England at his own risk and expense, for the purpose of perfecting his construction, which was exhibited with the machines of the Barr Brothers, and ealled the " State's Model." A water-frame, built from drawings made after this model by Daniel Anthony, of Providence, who had engaged with Andrew Dexter and Lewis Peek to establish a manufacture of jeans and other " homespun cloth " of linen warp and cotton filling, was subsequently set up and operated in Providenee.
The factory at Beverly, previously alluded to as the first establishment in the United States actually produeing eloth by machinery, was equipped with one or more spinning-jennies and a earding-machine, the latter imported at a cost of $1100. The Legislature appropriated {500 as a publie aid to the enterprise. The factory was visited by General Washington during his New England tour in 1789, and his diary refers to the processes pursued as follows: " In this manufactory they have the new invented earding and spinning machines. One of the first supplies the work, and four of the latter, onc of which spins 84 threads at a time by one person. The eotton is prepared for these machines by being first (lightly) drawn to a thread on the common whcel. There is also another machine for doubling and twist- ing the threads for particular cloths; this also does many at a time. For winding the cotton from the spindles and preparing it for the warp, there is a reel which expedites the work greatly. A number of looms (fifteen or six- teen) were at work with spring shuttles, which do more than double work. In
75
COTTON AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
short, the whole seemed perfect, and the cotton stuffs which they turn out excellent of their kind; warp and filling both cotton."
The Beverly factory was a brick structure run by horse-power, a pair of large bay horses, driven by a boy, giving motion to the wheels. The establishment, under the management of John Cabot and Joshua Fisher, was continued for some years. The raw cotton was obtained from the West Indies in exchange for fish, "the most valuable export in possession of the State." In 1790, in answer to a petition for State aid, another grant of £1000, to be raised in a lottery, was made conditionally upon the proceeds being used "in such a way as will most effectually promote the manufacturing of cotton piece goods in this Commonwealth."
Up to this time (1790), it is believed-notwithstanding the efforts of Somers and the Barrs to construct Arkwright's machinery-that spinning was done at Beverly and in Rhode Island by the jenny alone. The Bridge- water essays, probably imperfect realizations of a very crude original knowl- edge of the English invention, had served but to stimulate the public mind to patronize domestic enterprise.
In such a situation of the industry, the deus ex machina appeared in the person of Samuel Slater.
Samuel Slater, a native of Derbyshire, born in 1768, when fourteen years of age was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt, at Milford, a cotton manufacturer and partner with Sir Richard Arkwright in the spinning business. He served Mr. Strutt the full time of his engagement (six years and a half ), and con- tinued still longer with him superintending the construction of new works, his design in so doing being to perfect his knowledge of the business in every department. Previous to the termination of his apprenticeship, Slater had read a newspaper account of the interest awakened in America, and the bounties offered for the production of suitable machincry for cotton manu- facture, and had quietly determined, after thoroughly familiarizing him- self with the improved machine processes, to try his fortune in the New World.
Aware of the impossibility of taking away models or drawings, as the custom-house officers scrupulously searched every passenger, Slater pursued his study of the minutiæ of the business with the most diligent and thought- ful exactness of observation, and-thanks to a rare retentiveness of memory controlled by a very clear and positive brain power-made himself an abso- lute master of the industry in all its details.
On the 17th of November, 1789, he landed at New York. The follow- ing January, dissatisfied with the opportunities offered by the New York Manufacturing Company, with which he had corresponded, for developing
76
FALL RIVER AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
his ideas, he came to Providenee and contracted with Brown & Almy to pro- duce a " perpetual card and spinning" system for them. This firm, at the head of which was the then venerable Moses Brown, had already operated a sort of hybrid spinning devicc construeted after the Bridgewater designs, which turned out " too imperfeet to afford much encouragement," and was predis- posed to patronize the thorough aequirements of one who claimcd to have worked under both Strutt and Arkwright. On the 18th of January, Mr. Brown took Slater out to Pawtucket, and, providing him with the needed facilitics, sct him at once at the production of the improved machines. Laboring almost entirely by himself, Slater suececded on the 20th of Decem- ber in starting threc cards, drawing and roving, with seventy-two spindles, entirely upon the Arkwright principle. They were run by the water-wheel of an old fulling-mill for the period of twenty months.
In April, 1793, Almy, Brown & Slater erected a small mill, known to this day in Pawtucket as the Old Factory, running at first seventy-two spindles, and gradually inereasing machinery and space as the business warranted.
In 1798 Slater, associating himself with Oziel and William Wilkinson and Timothy Green, under the firm name of Samuel Slater & Co., started a new factory in Pawtucket. In 1806, in connection with his brother John, who came from England bringing a knowledge of the most recent improve- ments and processes, he organized a ncw establishment in Smithfield, R. I., which developed into the present large village of Slatersville.
David Anthony, one of the founders of cotton manufacturing in Fall River, who died in 1867, from 1808 to 1812 was in the employ of Samuel Slater, and of the brothers Wilkinson. For the former he entertained a most exalted esteem, often speaking of him as "the father of the cotton manufacturing business in this country." " He was not only a manufacturer of cotton and the first in the business, as machinist and mathematician, but he was a rarc business man. He was always attired in his business suit of velvets" (the dress worn in the cotton mills of the period), " and looked like an overseer so far as outward appearance indicated his position. His pay for taking the agency of two mills was $1.50 per day from each. He was, of course, by no means an educated man, but he was a constant worker, saying of himsclf that sixteen hours' labor a day, Sundays excepted, for twenty years, had been no more than fair exercise."
The introduction of the Arkwright " perpetual spinning" system by Samuel Slater gave an almost immediate impulse to cotton manufacturing throughout the country. Several persons, lcarning the processes under him, left his employment and started individual enterprises. Thc celebrated
77
COTTON AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
" New York Mills" at Utica originated in a small factory put up in 1807-8, by B. S. Wolcott, Jr., who worked in Pawtucket. The first factory in New Hampshire was put in operation in 1804, by one Robbins, another of Sla- ter's graduates. At Cumberland, R. I., a mill was started in 1801 ; and at Rehoboth, Mass., opposite to Pawtucket, R. I., a second factory (the first being Slater's " White Mill") was erected in 1805.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gallatin, in his report on domestic industry, April 17, 1810, made the following statement : "During the three succeeding years, ten mills were erected or commenced in Rhode Island, and one in Connecticut, making altogether fifteen mills erected before the year 1808, working at that time 8000 spindles. Returns have been received of 87 mills, which were erected at the end of the year 1809, 62 of which were in operation, and worked 31,000 spindles, and the other 25 will be in operation in the course of the year 1810."
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