The Press., 1889-06-20
A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL GROWTH.

and changed to forms divine Center into the joy of their Lord.''
 A CENTURY OF INDUSTRIAL GROWTH. The industrial parade, made as part of
 the Washington centennial, marvellous as
 it has seemed to the men of this genera
 tion, needs for full appreciation different point of view. How would 1t have ap-
 peared to George Washington and his rev.
 olutionary associates? What incompre-
 hensible and increditable marvels would they have seen in it's machines and inven- tions, it's arts and tools, it's princely ex-
 penditure by voluntary societies of work | ing men, It's mighty array of well-clad,
 were possible to contrast the industries of 1789, when the world had lived and learn-
 ed at least ffty-eight centuries, with those of 1889, when only one century more has been added, what startling contrast It is not possible. A new world has
 been created. The methods, tools, pro-
 ducts, and artisans of century ago in
 many departments have vanished as com pletely as if they belonged to another plan ct. What has become of the spinning
 wheel or the wooden clock? The suit of
 woolen cloth worn by President Washing
 ton at his address to congress in 1799 was
 presented by woolen factory only estab-
 lished in the preceding year, and cloth
 then cost $5 8 yard the people were
 clothed in the homespun made in every
 family. The power loom for knit goods
 was not invented until 1880. In 1789 two
 citizens of Norwich asked exemption from
 poll-tax for themselves and their appren-
 tices because they had set up eight stock
 ing frames, which required two men for
 each. A century ago wool-carding had
 been done by hand, but Whittemore in
 vented machinery to make cards. The
 first carpet factory in the country was es-
 abolished little later. A century ago the
 cotton-gin had not been invented, the
 spinning jenny was yet an experiment, and
 the first shipment of cotton to England,
 only eight bags, was made in 1784. Now
 the country has raised more than 7,0O0,0o0
 bales of cotton in year, and worked up
 more than 1000, ,OOO,OOO pounds of cotton,
 and 400, ,00U, ,000 pounds of wool.
 | A century ago only charcoal iron was
 produced, and not as much of that, proba- ply, as 30,000 tons yearly for twenty years later the product was but 53, GOO
 tons. Even Great Britain in 1788 pro- duced only 6S,300 tons-not as much as
 either one of several furnaces in this coun- try now turns out yearly. The manufac-
 ture of steel was just beginning here twenty years later only 917 tons were pro-
 duced in the country. The coarsest pig
 iron then cost about as much as steel rails do now. A single railroad now buys year
 ly more iron than both Great Britain and this country then made, but there were neither railroads then, nor iron bridges, nor buildings no petroleum pipes, no gas pipes, for there was no gas lighting
 even in Europe until later. Washington
 lived in an age of darkness '; instead of the electric light, the millions had candles
 costing about two cents apiece. In all the departments and applications of chemistry the century, has simply created new world. American pressed glass, which has
 completely revolutionized the supply of table and house ware, is an invention of
 the last sixty years. The silk manufac- ture has not existed in this country half Q 5 century /; the paper made a hundred years ago would hardly be thought fit for use since modern methods have been invent !, ed; the only use discovered for India rub Der then was to erase pencil marks and = while the town of Lynn made 100, ,000 pairs , of boots and shoes in 1789, they were not ! the shoes of to-day, and the manufacture by machinery is wholly due to inventions since 1900. Sewing machines for any pur- , pose were unknown, and salt was made by ! boiling seawater, though in 17S7 it was first made from the springs near Syracuse at the rate of about ten bushels per day, : and the cost soon fell to fifty cents per bushel.
 Farming in Washington's day knew nothing of machinery; even the first iron ! plow patented in 1797, was failure, for New Jersey farmers thought it poisoned 2 the soil. Mowers, reapers, and harvesters n began to be invented about the same time, . and even the ordinary implements were
 such as it would not now be thought pos n sible to use. The steamboat was practi- e cally unknown, and the railroad entirely j. forty years later, and the cost of transpor- # tation by wagon confined the area of pos n sible production with profit, as to most e crops, to the margin of navigable waters. l. The whole nation could not produce in h Washington's day as much wheat as sin d gle territories not yet states now export
 each year, and when the accounts of a e century ago tell of "vast quantities" ex d ported, they really mean less in year e than the country has since moved in a sin r. gle week. ...
 ). Volumes could be filled, and yet but a l. small part of the change in industry with e in the century could be mentioned. But e the revolution in the condition of the Ia. ,- boring population has been the crowning it results of this progress. Of wages 1t is l, enough to say that masons a century ago r. earned sixty seven cents per day in Massa- y chusetts, carpenters fifty-two cents, black IT smiths seventy cents, and ordinary labor d thirty cents Food near the farms was l, cheap, but pork was quoted in Massa. e chusetts at sixteen cents per pound, flour a at $S.16 per barrel, corn at seventy-six e cents per bushel, and ham at twenty cents e per pound. Calico cost fifty eight cents loJ~ L.. A ty-two cents, cotton cloth eighty eight 9t cents, and tow cloth thirty cents; hose l. cost $1.35 per pair, and sscorded silken ). brooches" $5.50; buttons from one to five r. shillings dozen. Shoes of lasting eighty. h four cents per pair, and sugar from fifteen t, to twenty-two cents per pound. One does > not need to study such figures as these l. very long to discover that the world and r. the living of to-day were simply impossible n for the working people of a century ago. = e Nea0 York Tribune.