In 1791 two
million pounds had been raised; in 1804 forty-eight million; the
invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793, stimulating to the utmost the
enthusiasm of the South over this new road to fortune.
It is with the birth of the cotton industry that the work and wages of
women begin to take coherent shape; and the history of the new
occupation divides itself roughly into three periods. The first includes
the ten or fifteen years prior to 1790, and may be called the
experimental period; the second covers the time from 1790 to 1811, in
which the spinning-system was established and perfected; and the third
the years immediately following 1814, in which came the introduction of
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.
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