and thereby, instead of those emigrations which are ruinous to the State, increase the number of manufacturers, who by consuming the productions of the soil will add to the value of it . . ." Provided the corporation should within seven years manufacture "a quantity of cotton and cotton and linen piece-goods, of a quality usually imported into this Commonwealth, not less than fifty thousands of yards," duly recorded, or pay £500 in gold or silver within eight years, Maine lands to the value of £500 specie were granted the proprietors as tenants in common in a proportion which was probably that of their shares in the factory.1 In August, 1788, before incorporation, the associates had procured a suitable plot of land. There they soon erected a three-story brick building sixty feet by twenty-five, and a small woollen dye-house, at a cost of $3000. As early as 1788 the foremen were excused from paying poll tax, by vote of the town, and by January, 1789, the newspapers spoke of it as a promising factory.2 In October, 1789, the factory was one of the sights in which President Washington was especially interested on his visit to this region. He found it "carrying on with spirit," using "the new Invented Carding and Spinning machines," fifteen or sixteen spring shuttle looms, turning out "Cotton stuffs. . . excellent of their kind." At this time the product was mostly coarse fabrics, chiefly strong and durable corduroys, being manufactured at the rate of about ten thousand yards. From December, 1789, these were well advertised, and in 1790 Beverly corduroys were widely known. In September, 1791, George Cabot reported to Hamilton a working force of forty, an output of eight to ten hundred yards per annum, considerable improvement in technique, a solid basis of manufacturing reached, and an increase in scale of operations desirable and possible.5 3 1 The best account of the founding and early years of the company is Robert S. Rantoul's address, The First Cotton Mill in America (Salem, 1897). The appendix to this address contains most of the relevant legislative documents, correspondence, etc. For quotations just made see pp. 29-30. 2 Rantoul, 15-16, 40. Ibid., 33; Columbian Centinel, November 7. Rantoul, 39-42. It appears that the Cabots were the chief stockholders. Judging from the grant of lands there were forty shares, divided Thus the several Cabots held eighteen shares. All but Henry Higginson, who hailed from Boston, were Beverly citizens. Moses Brown was a namesake and correspondent of another of the same name in Providence who patronized Samuel Slater shortly after. Fisher and John Cabot, the principal stockholders, were the managers. Pre The enterprise encountered numerous difficulties. Thanks to the lack of skill of the artisans, the early machinery was "bad and dear," the early products were ill wrought and costly, and "extraordinary loss of materials" was suffered. But with such awkward workers the best materials were essential. tenders to knowledge, chiefly Irish, misled them. The scale of manufacture was too small to be economical. Workers, men and women, had to be instructed in detail, and when they had been taught at considerable cost in the making and use of the machinery, they were attracted away by "bribery" or higher wages to other establishments-in Worcester, Mass., Providence and Greenwich, R. I., Lebanon, Conn., and elsewhere. As a result the proprietors estimated the net loss to June, 1790, at £2000, and to September, 1791, at about $5000, exclusive of interest and depreciation.1 Further appeals for public aid were made. In March, 1790, the local member of Congress was appealed to to use his influence to get Congress to grant a lottery for the amount of the extra expense they were undergoing by reason of the prompt diffusion of the knowledge they gained and imprated. This appeal, however, was in vain. In June, 1790, the proprietors 1 Cabot to Goodhue, March 16, April 6, 1790; petition of June, 1790; and Cabot to Hamilton, Sept. 6, 1791, in Rantoul, 23-25, 37-42. petitioned the state legislature for some kind of aid in lieu of the land grant, which had "not in any degree answered the purpose of it." House and Senate concurred in favoring encouragement, and the House passed a bill to grant lottery privileges for raising £1300 to be "applied in prosecuting and perfecting such manufacture by obtaining and using therein, all the requisite art and machinery, so far as the said proceeds shall extend." The Senate, however, failed to concur. In March, 1791, however, the proprietors were granted four hundred tickets in the state lottery then in progress and three hundred in the next. This with the land grant George Cabot estimated in September might amount to $4000.1 It was not long, however, before the enterprise was recognized a failure. Governor Hancock, in his message of January, 1793, sadly admitted this was the prospect.2 Henry Wansey, the Wiltshire clothier who visited so many cotton factories with keen interest, did not think it necessary to go out to Beverly in the summer of 1794 and accepted hearsay evidence that even in the manufacture of coarse goods the factory did "not answer." 3 Yet in his diary Nov. 24, 1794, William Bentley of Salem wrote of taking the famous Mr. Priestley to see the local sights: "We visited the Beverly Manufacture, which from the fruitless attempt to manufacture cotton velvet, & unfashionable goods, is now converted to the profitable business of Bedticks, & the demand is much beyond the ability of Mr Burnham to supply. 60 hands are now employed . . ."4 Despite this turn for the better, within a few years the corporation sold out the property to the two principal stockholders, probably perforce, and virtually passed out of existence. The factory passed through several hands and was for some years the seat of manufacturing operations, but prior to 1813 business had entirely ceased and part of the machinery had been taken away.5 1 Rantoul, 23-28, 38-41; Columbian Centinel, Feb. 19, 1791. 2 Mass. Resolves, January 31, p. 40; and cf. Moses Brown to John Dexter, July 22, 1791, in Hamilton Papers. Journal of an Excursion, 84. ▲ Diary, ii, 113. • Bagnall, Textile Industries, 97-98; Cutler, Manasseh Cutler, ii, 113-115. Here The New-York Manufacturing Society was formed early in 1789 as a joint stock association on the Philadelphia model, "for the purpose of establishing useful manufactures in the city of New-York, and furnishing employment for the honest industrious poor." Two hundred and forty-six subscribers (including Hamilton, Duer, Pintard, Cruger, Matlack, Jay, Steuben, Seton, Clarkson, Varick, Bancker, Craigie, Watson, and Melancthon Smith) were soon found to take three hundred and eighty shares of £10 each, New York currency. Operations were early begun. A large brick building was constructed in Vesey Street and stocked with "reels, looms, carding machines, spinning jennies, with every other machinery necessary and compleat for carrying on the cotton and linen manufacture," and a dwelling house was procured for the manager. Samuel Slater found employment for the first two months after his arrival in America late in 1789, leaving for more promising if less pretentious quarters with Almy & Brown in Providence. As early as January, 1790, fourteen weavers and more than one hundred and thirty spinners were reported here at work. A charter was secured March 16, 1790, authorizing a stock of £60,000, and a twenty-five year franchise; and following the example of Pennsylvania the state at once subscribed one hundred shares. In the summer of 1790, "tickets," or paper currency in denominations of id. to 6d., were issued, ostensibly "in order to accommodate the operations of their Factory," but more probably to secure driblets of additional funds. The operations, however, were a disappointment to the proprietors, and the entire property was advertised for sale at auction, first in April, 1793, then in October, and finally in January, 1794.1 Sufficient details regarding the New Jersey Society for establishing useful Manufactures have been given in the preceding essay. Its origin was due to the belief that manufacturing of textiles, in particular, was thoroughly practicable, pro 1 Subscription list in Wilson, John Pintard, 19-20; constitution in Amer. Museum v, 325-326 (April, 1789); charter in Session Laws, 1790, pp. 24-25; and see White, Samuel Slater, 41; Mass. Centinel, Jan. 27, 1790; N. Y. Journal, Aug. 10, 13, 1790, Jan. 11, 1794; Daily Advertiser, April 4, 1792, Oct. 7, 1793; Diary (New York), April 17, 1793; and Bagnall, Textile Industries, 122-127. vided it could be established on a scale sufficiently large and with a satisfactory management. Experience with the small companies, like those at Philadelphia, Beverly, Hartford, and New York, revealed difficulties which needed to be offset or overcome. Hence the seeking of a liberal charter, the care in securing a site, the serious endeavor to insure efficient management, and the actual procuring of a large capital, which marked the New Jersey enterprise. Floated in the summer of 1791, chartered and organized late in the same year, it was seriously embarrassed first by the distraction into speculative activities of the attention of its leading and most responsible directors, and then by the financial collapse in the spring of 1792, which carried down its chief pillars and involved the Society directly in loss of funds and well nigh destroyed public confidence in it. It had the advantage, both in its planning and in a good deal of the execution of its plans, of the highly intelligent aid of the Secretary of the Treasury. It finally had the advantage of a capable superintendent, Peter Colt, of Hartford, who had been interested in the Hartford Woollen Manufactory. Its plans, however, proved to be on too magnificent a scale. Too much was invested in fixed capital, and the technical knowledge of the day in America was too small to insure serviceable construction. It suffered severely from carelessness or extravagance on the part of the chief engineer in charge of construction, Major L'Enfant, and from the division of responsibility among several men in a critical year before Peter Colt was appointed. Many of its subscriptions proved to be those of mere speculators, and of the subscribed capital of over $600,000 hardly more than a third was ever received in specie or an equivalent. In the construction of machinery and in the conduct of its manufacturing operations the Society suffered, like so many other contemporaries, from the inefficiency, carelessness, dishonesty, or wilful antagonism of the artisans whom it employed. The result was a troublesome period of construction of plant and utter disappointment in carrying on manufacturing operations. The works were closed down in 1796, after a considerable loss of capital and without any return whatever to the investors. |