Part 18

The new and enlarged machines which were thus operated by water power and brought together in factories had been invented chiefly during the eighteenth century. John Kay, in 1738, invented what was known as the flying shuttle, which doubled the amount of weaving which could be performed by one man in a given time. Hargreaves, in 1764, invented 196 the spinning jenny, a machine which operated a number of spindles for spinning yarn, and so did many times as much as one spinner with a spinning wheel could do. Arkwright, a few years later, devised the water frame, by which the spinning jenny could be operated by water power. Crompton, a little later developed the “spinning mule,” which combined the important qualities of the spinning jenny and the water frame. Before the end of the century the steam engine began to supply power and was utilized in many cases where water power was not available. Then, in 1792, came Whitney’s cotton gin, by which the seeds were readily extracted from the cotton, and that valuable fiber rendered much more available for manufacturing purposes.

The effect of the development of the machine and factory system, through the devices of these thoughtful men, enormously increased the manufacturing industries of England and later of the other parts of the world. The importations of cotton into England prior to the invention of the spinning jenny averaged less than 2 million pounds per annum. With the invention of the spinning jenny and the water frame the importation of cotton and cotton manufacture quickly doubled and trebled and then grew at such rapid rate that by 1800 the importation was about 40 million pounds, by 1830, 260 million pounds and by 1840 over 400 million pounds. The importation of wool grew from less than 2 million pounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century to 150 million pounds in 1860 and over 700 million pounds in 1890, though in this article of manufacture the growth in importation was less strongly marked than in cotton because of the fact that much of the wool used in manufacture was produced at home, while all of the cotton used was imported.

In the iron and steel industry the growth in the use of machinery was even more closely connected with the great development of recent years than in that of textiles. It was quite natural that man should seek 197 the use of machinery in the iron and steel industry. The material to be handled was of such great weight that it could not be handled in quantities without the aid of extra-human power, and the fact that it must be manipulated while at an intense heat necessitated the use of devices of some sort for its handling. Yet a long time, a very long time, elapsed after the beginning of the manufacture of iron and steel before men developed the machinery which has resulted in such a wonderful development in the manufacture. The slow rate of growth in the earlier centuries, and the rapid rate in the past century may be measured in some degree by the world’s production of pig iron, the basis of all iron and steel manufactures. Mulhall estimates the world’s production of pig iron in the year 1500 at 60,000 tons, in 1700 at 100,000 tons, and in 1800 at 460,000 tons. Then the increase began to be more sharply defined, the production reaching 1 million tons in 1820, 2½ million in 1840, 7 million in 1860, 18 million in 1880, 40 million in 1900 and nearly 60 million in 1907. The increase in the eighteenth century was about one third of a million tons, and that of the nineteenth century was 39½ million tons, or more than 100 times as much as that of the eighteenth century. The great development in the transformation of iron into steel did not come until the second half of the nineteenth century, the world’s production of steel in 1850 being, according to Mulhall, 71,000 tons, in 1870, 540,000 tons, in 1880, 4 million tons, in 1890,12 million, in 1900, approximately 20 million, and in 1907 about 40 million. The growth in production of pig iron and steel was more rapid in Europe than in the United States in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, but in the latter part of that century the United States outstripped all her rivals, and her production of iron and steel is now more than that of any other two countries of the world.

These wonderful developments in the production of iron and steel were 198 even more dependent upon the development of machinery for transporting the material and handling it in the factory than was the case with the textiles. Pig iron cannot be made without having in immediate conjunction three natural materials, iron ore, limestone and some material to produce intense heat. The iron is only found in the form of “ore,” being iron mixed with rocks, earth or other matter which must be removed in order to use the iron. To do this the ore must be heated. Formerly this was done by placing small quantities of charcoal in a hole in the ground and placing the iron on top of it, and then more charcoal on top of the ore. By fanning the burning charcoal or blowing the fire from the lungs through a reed the heat was increased and the ore was softened, and by hammering it while hot the useless material was worked out. Then by further heatings it could be hammered into such form as desired. After a while it occurred to men to build a wall of stones and mud and place the ore and charcoal in this, and to make a bellows of the skin of some animal (the prototype of those which blacksmiths and other workers in metals now use), and so force the air into the bottom of the mass of charcoal and iron. With this the iron could be so heated that it actually melted and ran to the bottom of the furnace, and when cooled was ready for the finer processes by which it was made into the desired articles. After a time the walls of the furnace were built higher and if it could be located near to a waterfall the shaft of the water wheel was so adjusted as to operate the bellows and keep the stream of air flowing into the fire, for the heat of the burning charcoal was not sufficient to melt the iron without this forced draft.

This was the process by which men made iron for many generations. But it was a very expensive process, for the quantity of wood which must be used to produce the charcoal was so great that the forests were 199 soon depleted, especially in England, where iron making became active. Efforts were made to use coal instead of charcoal, but the weight of the iron ore was so great that it crushed out the fire in the coal which softened as it burned. Then after a time it occurred to somebody to treat the coal in a manner somewhat similar to that by which the wood had been transformed into charcoal, and coke was produced and successfully substituted for charcoal in heating the iron ore and making iron.

In the United States the charcoal process was used until a period much later than that of its abandonment in England, for the supplies of timber were very great and men who were clearing the land for use in agriculture were glad to turn the wood into charcoal and find a market for it. The simple charcoal furnace and forced draft by a simple process furnished the iron-making systems of the world until the early part of the nineteenth century. As a result there were hundreds of small furnaces, simply operated, and turning out small quantities of iron, in various sections of the United States. Meantime somebody discovered that if the air which was forced into the furnace was heated before being sent into the fire it would greatly increase the heat-giving power of a given quantity of charcoal or coke, and the hot blast became a part of the larger furnaces. Then it was found that the anthracite coal of the United States was hard enough to bear the weight of the ore and would produce a heat sufficiently intense to melt it; and so a great iron industry developed in the anthracite region of the United States. Then it was found that certain bituminous coal in western Pennsylvania would make excellent coke for the manufacture of iron, and the Connellsville coke became a successful competitor of anthracite coal, and later other cokes were also used. Later came the natural gas discoveries and they contributed to iron making and working. Meantime railways were built to carry the ore to 200 the coal or the coal to the ore or both the ore and coal to some convenient meeting point, and machinery began to be introduced for handling the ore and the coal along the railway and at the furnace. This led to the devising of other machinery for handling the iron after it left the furnace and of rollers for rolling the iron into bars and for giving it the sort of manipulation that the hammer of the earlier iron maker had given it when produced in the primitive furnaces. Then great deposits of iron ore, the richest known to the world, were discovered in the Lake Superior regions; and steam-driven machinery was devised to scoop it up from the beds in which it was found, place it in cars, which in turn carried it to the water’s edge, and dumped it into great receptacles from which it could run by the force of gravity into the hold of the steamer. Then other machinery operated by steam was devised to take it from the hold of the steamer and load it again on the cars which transported it to the furnace where it met the coal or the coke, produced, transported and handled by similar machine processes, and was turned into iron to also be handled by great machines.

While all this was happening--indeed long before the later happenings above mentioned--workers in iron had found that the pig iron coming from the furnaces contained so much carbon that it could not be successfully worked. So they managed to get rid of the carbon, by melting the iron in an open hearth and passing flames over it, and as the carbon is combustible it was gradually burned out. This made soft malleable iron, but not of the consistency to have the required strength or serve the purposes that are now served by steel. To bring it to the proper condition it was necessary to reintroduce a very small quantity of carbon so evenly that both the quantity and the distribution could be determined. This was done for many years by placing the bars of iron in a crucible or other closed receptacle 201 surrounded by charcoal, and subjecting them to intense heat for several hours or days. So the making of steel was a slow and expensive process until about the middle of the nineteenth century. Then Sir Henry Bessemer, an Englishman, discovered that by forcing air into the bottom of a great retort containing molten iron the oxygen of the air would combine with the carbon of the iron and in a few minutes the objectionable carbon would be all burned out, and that by then reintroducing in this molten mass of pure iron the required amount of carbon in the form of spiegel iron or ferro manganese, steel could be made much more cheaply and quickly than before. William Kelly, an American, also devised a similar process about the same time. Thus began the process of modern steel making, which has in a single half century increased tenfold the world’s consumption of steel and thus of iron, for a very large proportion of the iron now utilized in the world is transformed into steel before being applied to the service which it is to perform for men.

In all the processes by which iron and steel making have been transformed from the simple methods of a century or two centuries ago to the present system by which a single establishment may now make in a week or month or year as much iron or steel as the whole world then made in an equal length of time, machinery and capital have been the great causes of the development--machinery for digging iron and coal, for transporting them to the place of manufacture, for handling the material in the natural state, for handling it in the furnace, for handling it in the molten state, for rolling and shaping it after it passes from the molten state to that in which it begins to take the form of the finished product, and capital to purchase this machinery and the great quantities of material required. “The very richness of our resources,” says J. Russell Smith in The Story of Iron and Steel, “has made such a wealth of opportunity for occupation in the United States that labor is and has been scarce. As a consequence the 202 American iron industry has been driven over to a machine basis, and its very success has arisen from the fact that a scarcity of labor has compelled the introduction of machinery which has surpassed the dreams of its inventors. In the iron and steel industry of America man does little more than touch levers, while the balance is done by steam and electricity. Four large Bessemer converters, holding 15 or 20 tons of molten iron do their work by an air blast driven through the molten material by the force of an engine. The electric cranes swing the 20-ton charges and the heavy converters as easily as a schoolboy swings his dinner pail, and pours the new made steel into a metal mold which stands on a tram ready to take it to the hydraulic machine which draws the mold off the red-hot ingot. The manless way in which this great steel ingot is turned into a useful piece of steel never ceases to be a marvel. The great machines are seen but the plant seems to be deserted. Then there arises a rumble and roaring noise and the great piece of red-hot metal is seen to travel with all the independence of a serpent across a lot of black rollers and dive into the jaws of the rollers which squeeze it into flatter shape. Then it stops, turns over and dives again through the same rollers, which flatten it still more. After this has been repeated a few times you discover, standing on a high platform, a man or two pulling the levers which start the machinery of the six or seven thousand horsepower engines that drive the knowing rollers which are crushing and rolling the ingot into the shapes which man can use.”

“Perhaps the greatest difference between English and American steel works,” said an English writer on this subject, “is the absence of laborers in the American mills. The large and growing employment of propelling and directing machinery is responsible for this. In a mill rolling three thousand tons of rails in a day not a dozen men are to 203 be seen on the mill floor. To witness in such a mill the conversion in a half hour of a red-hot steel ingot weighing several tons into finished stamped steel rails ninety feet long, and all this perfectly, by the agency of unseen hands, is to gain new ideas of the possibilities of mechanism, of the subservience of matter to mind.”

These are some of the steps by which the systems of the manufacturing world have been, in the past 150 years, transformed from household work, or that of the small shop, into that of the factory--and the factory developed into enormous establishments through the investment of great sums of money in the purchase and installation of ever-improving machinery, more ingenious, more productive, more costly, but turning out more and better of the finished product with each new device and new investment of capital.

III. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM.

The inventions by which the manufacturing of the world was transformed from the household and the workshop to the great factory were the result of years, generations indeed, of study of conditions one by one as they arose. “No one of the inventions which were greatest in their effect,” says Hobson, “was in the main attributable to the effort or ability of a single man: each represented in its successful shape the addition of many successive increments of discovery; in most cases the successful invention was the slightly superior survivor of many similar attempts. This is the history of most inventions. The pressure of industrial circumstances directs the intelligence of many minds toward the comprehension of some single point of difficulty, the common knowledge of the age induces many to reach similar solutions, that solution which is slightly better adapted to the facts comes out victorious, and the inventor, purveyor or in some cases the robber is crowned as a great inventive genius.”

England was the earliest scene of the development of the factory 204 system, the bringing together of great buildings and centers of great masses of machinery operated by water or steam power and manned by great numbers of people--for however ingenious the machine a certain amount of human intelligence is necessary for its management and the conduct of the work which it is to perform. The reasons for the earlier development in England are not difficult to find. It had its colonies in all parts of the world, from which to draw the raw material and in which to market the manufactures, for it for many years discouraged or prohibited manufacture in the colonies; it had great shipping facilities for transporting its products to all parts of the world, and to bring raw material and food supplies to its workers at home; the ownership of its lands in great estates had a tendency to send to the cities and manufacturing centers that part of the population which under other circumstances would have employed itself in agriculture; the laboring population yielded more readily to the methods of the manufacturing interests than in other countries where trade guilds determined more definitely the occupations and methods of occupation of the working classes; and the comparative freedom from wars permitted a more rapid growth than that of other countries in which disturbances of this character were more frequent and more liable to frequency than in an insular country, England. “When Crompton’s mule, Cartwright’s power loom and Watt’s engines were transforming the industry of England,” says Hobson, “her continental rivals had all their energies absorbed in wars and political revolutions.”

Much of the wool and flax required in the English industries was produced at home. The colonies supplied the other fibers; the ships returning from their voyages to the colonies brought the raw silk; the absence of mountains to separate the country and the people into districts and classes enabled the interchange of labor and materials; the early development of rivers and canals gave cheap transportation; 205 the plentiful supply of coal encouraged the development of steam power; and the proximity of iron ore and coal aided in developing that other great manufacturing industry, iron and steel. Mr. Mulhall, the celebrated statistician, estimates the value of the manufactures of the United Kingdom in 1780 at 177 million pounds sterling, France 147 million, Germany 50 million, Austria 30 million, Russia, Italy and Spain 10 million each, and the United States 15 million. In 1896 he estimated the value of the manufactures of the same countries as follows: United Kingdom, 876 million pounds sterling; France, 596 million; Germany, 690 million; Austria, 328 million; Russia, 380 million; Italy, 190 million; Spain, 121 million; and the United States, 1,980 million. According to his estimate the gain in the 116 years, from 1780 to 1896, was: United Kingdom, from 191 to 876 million pounds sterling; France, from 115 to 596 million; Germany, from 50 to 690 million; Austria, from 30 to 328 million; Russia, from 10 to 380 million; and the United States, from 15 to 1,980 million. Mr. Mulhall’s estimates put the total value of the manufactures of continental Europe in 1780 at about 1½ times those of the United Kingdom; in 1896 at about 3 times those of the United Kingdom. His estimates put the value of manufactures in the United States in 1870 at about 3⅓ per cent that of all Europe; in 1896 at about 55 per cent that of all Europe.

It must not be supposed, however, that this transformation was, by any means, instantaneous. It was, in fact, a matter of slow growth, even in the older countries, and still more so in those countries which had not yet developed their natural products or their agricultural industries. In the case of the United States, for example, the transformation from the hand to the machine methods did not come until many years after that of the leading countries of Europe. The reason for this slow movement on the part of the United States is not 206 difficult to understand. Her people were chiefly engaged in agriculture, in felling the trees and clearing the lands in the eastern part of the country, and in opening farms on the prairies of the great West. Those who had capital to invest in enterprises other than that of agriculture gave their attention to the construction of methods of transportation, first, toll roads, stage coaches and pack trains, then, canals, and finally railways. This occupied the attention of the people of this new country for a generation after the people of Europe and especially England were engaged in developing their manufacturing industries.

So it is not surprising to see that Mr. Mulhall’s figures show that English manufactures in 1820 were nearly 6 times as much as those of the United States, and in 1840, 4 times as much as those of this country; and even in 1860, considerably exceeded our own. But in the next twenty-year period there came a great change. The Civil War in the United States, with the home demands in the manufacturing section, the North, rapidly developed the manufacturing industries, and the development thus created continued after the close of that unhappy period. So his figures indicate that in 1888, the next date which his table touches, that our manufactures were 1¾ times as much as those of the United Kingdom, and in 1896, 2¼ times as much in value as those of the United Kingdom and half as great as those of all Europe. Accepting the figures of Eugene Parsons, elsewhere referred to, for the European countries in 1904, and accepting the official figures of the United States for that same year, we find that the figures of the value of manufactures in the United States are nearly 3 times those accredited to the United Kingdom and but little less than those of all Europe.

It is proper to say, however, that these statements, whether of Mulhall, Parsons, or other authorities on this subject, are liable to be extremely misleading unless carefully and intelligently 207 considered. The reason of this is found chiefly in the fact that the official figures of the United States are made up on a materially different basis from those of the other countries in question. To be sure, the figures of the United States are official and therefore may be considered reliable as to the facts which they purport to show, but in fact some of the things which they purport to show are presumably quite different from those quoted for the other countries included in these estimates--for they can be only estimates for the other countries, since no country other than the United States takes a census of manufactures (England is taking one as this text is being issued, but has not yet completed it), and the figures quoted regarding their manufactures are necessarily estimates. Generally speaking, it may be said that the census of the United States includes certain articles which are not usually classified as manufactures in other countries, such as products of slaughtering, canning, the milling industry, etc. Aside from this it must also be remembered that the usually quoted figures of the United States’ manufactures include many duplications, due, as elsewhere explained, to the fact that the total so quoted is merely an aggregation of the product of all factories; and as the product of one factory often becomes the manufacturing material of another, its value is again reported by the manufacturer who reports merely the total value of his products. These duplications are so numerous and prevail in such important and costly articles that the census estimates the net or true value of our manufactures at but about two-thirds as much as the usually quoted figures of gross products. It would appear, therefore, that the usually quoted figures of “manufactures in the United States,” when compared with the estimate of manufacturing in other countries, should be reduced about one-third to make them properly comparable with those usually quoted for the other countries of the world. Even if this 208 were done, however, it would show the value of the United States’ manufactures probably about twice as great as those of the United Kingdom and probably little less than those of continental Europe.

Taking Mulhall’s figures for the other countries which he includes, as presented in a table on another page of this text, it will be seen that the chief growth in manufacturing during the 116 years covered by the table under consideration has occurred in the last third of the period. English manufactures, he says, grew from 177 million pounds sterling to 290 million in the 40-year period from 1780 to 1820; from 290 to 577 million in the next 40 years, from 1820 to 1860; and from 577 to 976 million in the 36 years from 1860 to 1896--a growth of 113 million pounds sterling in the first 40 years, of 287 million in the second 40 years, and of 400 million in the third period of 36 years. Germany showed a more rapid growth in the third period; the growth in the first 40-year period being from 50 million pounds sterling to 85 million; in the second 40-year period, from 85 to 310 million; and in the third period, of 36 years only, from 310 to 690 million. France has not made as rapid a gain as Germany, the figures showing her products in 1780, 147 million pounds sterling; in 1840, 220 million; in 1860, 380 million; and in 1896, 596 million.

The total of Mulhall’s table, including the somewhat over-estimated figures of the United States, and relating chiefly to the products of Europe and the United States, show total manufactures of all the countries named, in 1780, 480 million pounds sterling; in 1820, 865 million; in 1860, 2,404 million; and in 1896, 5,710 million, again indicating that the chief growth has occurred in the last third of the period under consideration, the period of transformation from the hand industries to those of machine production in conjunction with vast sums of capital and plentiful transportation facilities for collecting the raw material and distributing the finished product.

When we consider nations or groups of people and their use of modern 209 methods of manufacturing, we may properly say that the principal manufacturing sections of the world are western Europe and the United States, and that, as above indicated, the bulk of the world’s manufactures by the factory process are now produced in those two sections of the world. Manufacturing by machinery may perhaps be said to have originated in England, spreading thence to France, to Germany, and westward to the United States. More recently it has extended in a somewhat limited form into Canada in the west and India and Japan at the extreme east. India has utilized modern methods of manufacture, especially in cottons and certain other industries, for more than a score of years, while the one other country of the Orient which has as yet entered the field of machine manufacture, Japan, though somewhat later in adopting machine methods, has been more active and extended modern manufacturing to a much greater variety of industries than have the people of India.

While certain of the European countries were earlier in the manufacturing field than the United States, the larger population, the greater supply of natural materials, the larger supplies of fuel for cheap power, the ingenuity of the American workman, and the enormous domestic demand of an active and prosperous people, have brought the United States clearly to the head of the list of manufacturing nations. It may safely be said that the value of manufactures produced in the United States is approximately twice as great as that of any other manufacturing nation, and that the stated value of our manufactures is nearly as great as the estimated value of the manufactures of all Europe. The latest official figures on the value of the manufactures of the United States are those of the Census Bureau, which put the value of manufactures produced in the calendar year 1904, as recorded by the Census of 1905, at 16,867 million dollars, including in this an estimate of a little more than 2 210 billion dollars’ worth of manufactures classed as “mechanical and neighborhood industries,” which were included in all former census reports, but not recorded by the Census of 1905, which was by law merely a census of manufactures produced under “the factory system.”

No other country than the United States takes a periodic census of its manufactures. The United Kingdom is at the present time about taking for the first time a census of its manufactures, but no figures with reference thereto are as yet available. As a consequence all statements regarding the value of manufactures of European countries, or indeed of any country other than the United States, are estimates and estimates only. True, they are based upon certain known facts of quantities of raw materials consumed in manufacturing, values of manufactures exported, and the estimated proportion which these form of the total manufactures; but in no other country than the United States are there available official statements of the total value of manufactures produced in the country in question. Therefore the estimates of the value of the manufactures produced by European countries which are quoted from time to time and which are presented elsewhere in this text, must be accepted as merely estimates. A comparatively recent estimate, and one which has been given wide publicity, and appears to have been generally accepted, is that of William J. Clark, published in The Engineering Magazine in 1904, which put the value of the manufactures of the United Kingdom at 5 billion dollars, Germany 4,600 million, France 3,450 million, Austria-Hungary 2 billion, Russia 1,980 million, Italy 1,700 million, Belgium 750 million. These estimates, if accepted, would bring the value of the manufactures of the countries enumerated to a figure slightly in excess of that officially reported by the Census Office as the value of the product of all manufacturing establishments of the United States in 1904. The figures above quoted for certain European countries 211 present however no estimate of the value of the product of Switzerland, Spain, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, so that it probably might be said with greater accuracy that the stated value of the manufactures of the United States is about equal to the estimated value of continental Europe, and about three times as great as the estimated value of the manufactures of the United Kingdom.

It is proper, however, before leaving this question of the relative value of the manufactures of the various countries, to again call attention to the fact that the official figures of the value of manufactures produced in the United States include certain articles not classed in certain other countries as manufactures, and in addition to this contain many duplications due to the fact that the products of one manufacturer frequently become the raw material of another, and thus the grand totals which merely combine the stated value of the product of each manufacturer necessarily include a second and in some cases a third valuation of the products thus utilized. The manufacturer of yarn, for example, reports to the Census Office the full value of the product of his factory. The manufacturer of cloth, who utilized that yarn, also reports the full value of the product of his factory, and thus includes in that valuation the value of the yarn purchased by him but already reported by the manufacturer of yarn. The manufacturer of clothing, in stating the value of the product of his factory, includes the sums which he paid for the cloth already reported by the manufacturer of clothing and included in his statement. Thus many duplications occur in our census statement of the gross value of the products of the manufacturing industries of the United States. “This gross value,” says the Census Report of 1900, page cxxxix, “does not represent the final value of the manufactured products of the country. It does fairly represent the total value of 212 commercial transactions involved in manufacturing enterprises…. As the finished products of one branch of manufacture are constantly used as materials in other branches, in the ascending scale of modern industry, it follows that they are counted over and over again, swelling in this manner the gross total value of products. Thus in cotton manufacture, the product of the yarn mill, manufacturing yarn for sale as the material of the cloth mill, and the product of the cloth mill as the material for the manufacturer, so that by the time the aggregate is made the value of the yarn has been counted three times and the value of the cloth twice…. Duplications and re-duplications of this sort run all through the total value of products as reported by this (the Census) office. * * * The net or true value of the products is found by subtracting from the gross value the cost of all materials purchased in a partially manufactured form. In 1900 the cost of these manufactures was $4,633,804,967 and” (subtracting this sum from the gross value, $13,004,400,143), “the net value of products was therefore $8,370,595,176.”

When it is further considered that the Census of Manufactures in the United States includes in its list of manufactures all products of slaughtering and meat-packing establishments wholesale, valued in 1905 at 112 million dollars, the product of printing and publishing newspapers and periodicals only, valued at 309 million, and the product of canning and preserving fish, oysters and vegetables, valued at over 100 million--it will be seen that an effort to determine even approximately the share of the world’s manufactures produced by the United States or by the various manufacturing nations of the world is a difficult--an impossible--task.

It may safely be asserted, however, that the United States is the world’s greatest manufacturing nation, and that the value of our manufactures exceeds those of any other country. This is due, as already indicated, to the fact that our supply of raw materials is 213 greater than that of any other country, our supply of materials for producing power also greater than that of any other country, our use of machinery for manufacturing far in advance of that of any other nation, the activity of our inventors and the skill of our workmen quite equal to those of any other part of the world, and the demands of our home population upon our own manufacturers far in excess of those of any other country, both by reason of the large population and high purchasing power of a people prosperous and active in all lines of industry--agriculture, transportation, manufacture. The country which produces three-fourths of the world’s cotton, twice as much iron and steel as any other single nation, as much copper as all of the remainder of the world combined, more of wood suitable for use in manufacturing than any other country, more wool than any other of the manufacturing nations, and a population much larger than that of any other country actively engaged in the manufacturing industries, has quite naturally and almost necessarily become the leading manufacturer of the world.

The growth of the manufacturing industry in the United States has been phenomenal. Stated in the methods of valuation followed by the census above referred to--the gross valuation--the value of manufactures produced in the United States has been, speaking in round terms, in 1850, 1 billion dollars, in 1860, a little less than 2 billion, in 1870, 4¼ billion, in 1880, 5⅓ billion, in 1890, 9⅓ billion, in 1900, 13 billion, and in 1905, a little less than 17 billion, though the figures usually quoted for 1905 are 14.8 billion, owing to the fact that the Census of 1905 only included factory products, and added parenthetically an estimate of 2 billion as the probable value of the “mechanical and neighborhood industries,” thus bringing up to nearly 17 billion the total properly comparable with the totals of 214 earlier periods, which in all cases included the mechanical and neighborhood industries.

That this rapid growth in the value of manufactures has been far in excess of the consuming capacity of the home population is evidenced by the growth in exportation of manufactures, which aggregated in 1880, 122 million dollars, in 1890, 179 million, in 1900, 484 million, and in 1908, 750 million. Manufactures formed in 1880 but 15 per cent of the total exports, in 1890, 23 per cent, in 1900, 35 per cent, and in 1908, 41 per cent of the total merchandise exported from the United States.

IV. CAPITAL IN MANUFACTURING.