small manufacturers in that city. The small amount of capital required to equip a little weave-shed permits enterprising superintend ents and operatives to start in business for themselves. The comparative cheapness of pro duction under such conditions enables them to hold their own against the big establishments with unlimited capital at their back.
American Woolen Specialties.— The bulk of the small wool manufacturing establish ments in the United States are woolen mills proper, as distinguished from worsted mills. It is noticeable that the number and product of these woolen mills decrease from census to census as the worsted manufacture gets more firmly established here, and the more popular worsted fabric comes into wider use. But there are certain lines of woolen goods in the manufacture df which American mills have earned a world-wide pre-eminence. Prominent among them are flannels and blankets of every grade and variety. The American wools are peculiarly suited for these goods, and for many years past our American mills have practically supplied the home market. Other mills make a specialty of woolen dress goods for ladies' wear with equal success. The bulk of our woolen mills are, however, engaged upon the Worsteds.— The worsted manufacture was late in getting lodgment in the United States and has been slow in assuming proportions com mensurate with its importance abroad. Eariy in the forties there were two or three large worsted mills erected in New England for the production of worsted fabrics or stuff goods for women's wear; but the manufacturer made little headway until after the close of the Civil War, and it was not until about 1870 that we began making men's wear worsted goods. Since then the development of the manufacture along both lines has been phenomenal. In the manufacture of fine men's wear goods, both in woolens and worsted, a few American mills have been equally successful; their products sell side by side with the best makes of foreign goods. Another obstacle is the high cost of labor, which counts more strongly in fine wool goods than in the cheaper grades or in cottons and silks, because of the much greater care and skill and labor that must be bestowed upon their finishing. Woolen goods are from carded
wool, worsted from combed wool. The popu larity shown to worsteds has resulted in a great growth in that class of goods, checking the advance of the manufacture of woolen goods as is shown by the following tables: manufacture of cloths for the million — cassi meres, beavers, satinets, cheviots, etc., the cheaper grades which enter into the consump tion of the wholesale clothing houses, goods in which, under the weight duties of recent tariffs, our American manufacturers have controlled Felted Wool.— The manufacture of felted wool is comparatively small here and elsewhere and the importations are comparatively insig nificant in volume. Felted wool was the earliest form into which this fibre was manufactured, the primitive races discovering, before they had learned to spin and weave, that peculiar char acteristic of wool which causes it to mat to gether, by the application of heat, moisture and pressure, into a firm and smooth texture, sus ceptible of a great variety cf uses. NIodern rnachinery has utilized this peculiarity for many purposes which, while limited, are economically important. Tablecloths and floor coverings, and hats for men's and women's wear, are the most ordinary; but they are also used for shoe linings, sheathing materials, polishing pur poses, etc. The hat manufacture, formerly confined to wool for its raw- material, has found that fur is better suited for this use; and the processes of manufacture are so differ ent from those employed in spinning and weaving mills that the hat-manufacturing es tablishments, in which the United States has always been Pre-eminent, are not ordinarily classed among the textile mills.
Carpets.—Perhaps our most notable achieve the base of all the power-loom carpet-weaving now done in Europe. Subsequent inventors have greatly improved them and have added new inventions, such as those for weaving Axminsters and Smyrna rugs. By their skill and enterprise the American carpet manufac turers have not only retained the control of their own market, except in the matter of the Eastern hand-made rugs, but they have in some instances successfully forced their products upon the European markets.