_HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. As is the case with most other great industrial movements, it would be difficult to assign to the origin of the factory system an exact place or date. The system orig inated in England in textile manufacture, dur ing the latter half of the eighteenth century, hut its germ already existed in the carding and full ing mills which had been common for many years previous. During the eighteenth century, how ever, a remarkable series of inventions was made, by which automatic machinery was intro duced as a substitute for, or at least a supple ment to, hand labor in the manufacture of cot ton and woolen cloth. The history of these inventions, among the most important of whieb are those of A rk wright, Ilargravos, Cartwright, and is given elsewhere in the biograph ical sketches of their inventors and in the gen eral articles on SPINNING and NVEAVINO. The importance of these inventions, not only itubss trinity, but economically, can scarcely be over estimated, for by them not only was the cost of clothing wonderfully cheapened and physical comfort thereby increased, but a now system of industrial activity was developed which was des tined to supplant the old system of master and apprentice, not only in the textile manufactures, but in nearly all branches of labor, from the making of a watch to the slaughter of live stock. This ehangc was a necessary accompaniment to the use of the new inventions, for machinery of itself is too expensive, and its use involves too hirge an outlay for raw material and for dis posing of the finished product to make it avail able to the independent artisan.
The introduction of automatic textile ma chinery was accompanied by the opposition, and by the persecution of its promoters, which have characterized most of the great movements for the world's betterment. At first. too, the new system met with failure from another source, the lack of sufficient capital and of a sufficiently large group of laborers to render profitable or even possible the installation of the more expen sive power-driven machinery. Only water-power was available to drive the machinery, hence the operator must locate his factory, not at some important industrial centre, lint at a spot where sufficient supply of water-power was available, and this might he an isolated place where labor was scarce. It is interesting to note that some of England's earliest factory legislation, as the Robert Peel act of SO2,1 was directed toward correcting the abuses in the employment of pauper and more especially child labor by these early operators, who could not procure in the neighborhood of their factories sufficient adult labor to run their machines. lf, then, the first step in the introduction of the factory system was the invention of automatic machinery—in distinction from tools—the second step was the application of steam as a motive force to drive this machinery. The use of steam at once freed the operator from geographical restrictions and made it possible for him to locate his factory where both labor and the demand for its fruits were most abundant.
But with the slow, cumbrous, and expensive methods of transportation that were in vogue until the close of the eighteenth century the factory system could not have attained its pres ent proportions. The output must have been regulated largely by the local demand. Hence the third step in the development of the modern factory system was made possible by the intro duction of the steamship and the railway, by means of which the products of any locality could be sent quickly and cheaply to all parts of the world. But previous to the appearance of steam navigation, from 1767 on, the canal system was widely extended throughout England. and. by enabling the cheap distribution of coal and iron, proved of great importance to manufacturing in large factories.
A fourth factor in the development of the factory system was the evolution of the patent system. Automatic machinery presupposes the work of men of inventive genius, upon whose labors it is absolutely dependent. When the 'fate of such men was almost certain persecution and poverty an inventor must he a hero as well as a genius, and under such conditions inventions .were few and far between. As Byrne points out in his Progress of Invention in the Yineteenth Century. until the close of the eighteenth century superstition had so strong a hold upon the I an mind that inventions were almost synonymous with the black arts. A labor-saving machine was upon as the enemy of the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow-men. lint (luring the nineteenth century the patent system, which had long been in exist ence. was so fostered and developed by govern ment that it became possible for a man not only to benefit his fellows. but to earn a comfortable and honorable livelihood by the exercise of his inventive faculties. l'udi-r this stimulating in fluence appeared a series of important inventions which resulted in the extension of automatic machinery, and hence of the factory system, which was at first limited to textiles, to all branches of industry. Chief among the multi tude of important inventions which stimulated the development of the factory system were the planing-machine (1802), the circular wood-saw (introduced into the United States in 1814), galvanized iron (1837), vulcanizing of rubber ( 1839 ) , Howe's sewing-machine ( 1846), watch making by machinery (1850), Bessemer process of making steel (1855), paper from wood-pulp (1864). McKay shoe-sewing machine (1861). the Siemens-Martin open-hearth steel process (1866), and the roller-mill and middlings puri fier for making flour (1875).