the power loom and the growth of the modern factory system.

The experimental stage found an enthusiastic worker in the person of
Tench Coxe, known often as the "Father of American Industries," whose
interest in the beginning was philanthropic rather than commercial. Bent
upon employment for idle and destitute workmen, he exhibited in
Philadelphia in 1775 the first spinning-jenny seen in America. He had
already incorporated the "United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting
American Manufactures," and they at once secured the machine and made
ready to operate it. Four hundred women were very speedily at work 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