In 1914 there were 97 establishments in the United States producing carpets and rugs of other than rags, keeping 33,100 persons en gaged; the wage-earners numbered 31,309 and were paid $14,715,615. Capital employed was $85,153,828. Jute carpets and rugs were made to the added value of $1,172,257. Rag carpets produced had a value of $2,786,439. The growth of the industry is shown by the fol lowing figures: ment in the textile line has been in the carpet manufacture. Beyond question the United States is the greatest carpet-manufacturing na tion in the world; if we leave out of account the hand-loom productions of the Eastern countries we excel all others not only in the quantity of our production, but in the variety of our carpets, in the excellence of design and uorkmanship, and in general adaptability to popular needs. The production includes two ply and three-ply ingrains, Brussels, moquettes, tapestries, velvets, Smyrnas and the highest grades of Axminsters and Aubussons. The annual consumption of this product by the American people begins to approach 100,000,000 square yards. The popular reason assigned for this unique development is the general pros perity of our people, the high wages earned permitting families of all grades of life to indulge in the luxury of floor coverings to an extent elsewhere unknown. Stimulated by the lucrative market thus offered, American manu factures have made larger and more important contributions to the mechanism of the carpet manufacture than those of atl. other nations combined. The real development of the ma chine industry dates from the successful ap plication of power to the weaving of ingrain carpets by the late Erastus B. Bigelow in 1844. 41tbsequently he invented Jacquard looms for 1.ireaving Brussels and Wiltons, which produced carpets pronounced by the jury at the London Exposition of 1851 to be "better and more per Lectly woven than any hand-loom carpets that Wave ever come under the notice of the jury.2 A still later invention of .Bigelow's was for weaving tapestry carpets. .His inventions are at Hosiery and Knit Goods.— In one other branch of the textile industry progress in the United States has outstripped the world—the hosiery and knit-goods manufacture. More machine-made knitted goods are turned out an nually here than in all other• countries com bined. The explanation is somewhat the same as in the case of carpets. Our people wear more underwear than other people; they are not only obliged to wear more for climatic reasons, but they can afford to wear more; and the gen eral desire for personal comfort in wearing ap parel results in an enormous distribution of the products of these mills. The beginnings of the industry are well within the lifetime of many manufacturers still living. Until 1832 the knit ting of socks and stockings remained mostly a household industry—the only form of textile work which the machine had not wrested from the housewife. In that year Egbert Egberts successfully applied the principle of knitting by power, at Cohoes, N. Y. His machine was sim ply the square stocking-frame of William Lee adapted to power. From that adaptation dates a revolution in underwear, which had previ ously consisted wholly of flannel, fashioned and sewed at home, according to the individual needs. The revolution gathered momentum gradually, as invention after invention —almost all of American origin—perfected the knitting machine; but once the new industry was fairly and firmly established, it spread with amazing rapidity. The great variety of goods made fa cilitates the tendency, peculiar to this industry, toward the building of comparatively small mills, requiring but moderate capital; and it happens in- consequence. that these mills spring up all over the country and can now be found in nearly every State. Many of them employ only cotton as a raw material; others use chiefly wool; and still others manufacture what are known as merino knit goods or mixed goods cotton mixed with wool in proportions varying from 50 to 75 and 90 per cent of cotton, ac cording to the particular market sought.' The ever since, as the statistics show. One draw back has been the difficulty of getting the American agriculturist to grow a flax crop, in spite of placing a high tariff on the raw stuff to tempt the grower. Matters have, how ever changed considerably already, the industry has obtained a firm foothold and the statistics tendency to the larger use of cotton in these goods is perceptible, not necessarily because of greater cheapness or a desire to adulterate, but because the liability of wool to shrink, and its excessive warmth, lead many to prefer under garments in which cotton is an equal or pre dominating material. In 1858 E. E. Kilbourne
invented a machine for automatically knitting full-fashioned underwear; and this machine has gradually wrought a second revolution in the industry. The amount of hand labor now done is reduced to the minimum — to the mere sew ing on of buttons, so to speak.
Statistics.— The value of all textile products in the United States for 1850 was $128,769,971 and this had increased to $931,494,566 in 1900. The census report for 1900 shows the fol lowing: The number of cotton spindles in operation in 1900 was 19,008,352, as compared with 14, 188,103 in 1890, and 10,653,435 in 1880. This striking increase is due in a large measure to the wonderful growth of the industry in the South since 1880, as before that date the cotton manufacturing industry existed there only on a most restricted scale. In fact, the growth of Linens.— The line of textiles which has found the greatest obstruction in the United States to advance has been linens. The finan cial condition of this branch was unremuner ative and its output, till 1890, when the manu facture of the flax product took on new energy, was nominal. But it has maintained headway the industry in the South may be regarded as the one great fact in its history during the past decade. It has been fairly continuous and re markably steady.
The totals of manufactures in the United States products, etc., in the textile industries follow: Trade Schools.— In the centres where the textile industry has grown to be the predomi nating commercial factor the necessity of hav The extraordinary growth of the exports of textiles from the United States of America is shown in the following table: The wonderful strides given in these fig ures for 1916-18, of course, reflect the conse quences of the war cutting off Europe from her exports and the consequent enormous increase of our products in demand from South Amer ica and other foreign states.
Future Needs.—The American textile facturers have left little to he desired in the direction of cheapening textile products out deteriorating quality. They have built and equipped mills which rank with any in the world. They have planted on this continent machinery enough to supply all the textile wants of our people, except in a comparatively few lines of very fine fabrics. They have aged these mills with rare business sagacity, and as a rule with notable financial success. They have taken one specialty after another which had never been attempted here, and transported its manufacture from across the water, literally inventing anew the necessary machinery, as in the case of braids and plush goods, when they could not obtain it otherwise. They have taken these several textile tries which have been localized and specialized in Europe for generations, and in less than a century have made them one of the chief corner-stones of our national wealth. They have contributed far more than their share to the mechanical development which makes the labor of a single operative stand fol. that of a regiment of hand-workers in the 18th century. They have fallen short only in contributing to the artistic side of textile industry. They have been imitators instead of originators, although there are among them many striking and fying exceptions to this nile. But made goods do not bear, generally speaking, any distinctive artistic characteristics which tinguish them as American-made; and, ally speaking, they are inferior in this respect to the hest products of foreign looms. All this is natural — natural to a new country in which utility everywhere predominates over the mental. The next great forward step in our textile manufactures must he in the artistic rather than the mechanical direction, for there we recognize its weakest point. In the ing of patterns, in the use and application of dyes, in all that goes to impart to fabrics the artistic element, to lift the manufacture into an art, our textile mills are still far from the top of the ladder. This deficiency is not in any sense peculiar to the textile industries. It is an educational deficiency in which our people as a whole may he said to share. It is dental to a crude country of limited facilities in art directions. What needs to be done is to • supply more facilities.