48
��GROWTH OF MANUFACTURING.
��a tone which expressed all the surprise she felt.
"I did, and now that I assure you I have been twice repaid I hope you will have no further trouble in regard to it. 7 am satisfied, and you should be."
��Which assertion was not quite true; as Aunt Jane said he never would be satis- fied until Elsie Dunlap was his wife, and Regis was studying law ; and Aunt Jane knew whereof she affirmed.
��GROWTH OF COTTON AND WOOLEN MANUFACTURING IN
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
��In 1812, a statistical work compiled by Teach Coxe, and published by Congress, credited New Hampshire with having 12 cotton mills, as follows : Two in Rock- ingham County, 1 in Strafford, 8 in Hills- borough, and 1 in Cheshire. These twelve mills contained 5,956 spindles, — but no looms, — only yarn being produced. There were 20,975 looms in the State, which wove this yarn into various grades of cloth. These looms were owned in private families, and the yarn taken from the factories and woven by the wives and daughters. Sometimes they purchased the yarn at the factories for their own private use, and at others they wove it into cloth for so much per yard, the price varying from two to twenty-five cents as to quality of cloth.
The amount of cotton goods woven in the year 1810 was put down at 515,985 yards ; mixed goods. 930,978 yards ; flax goods, 1,090,320 yards; blended and un- blended cloths (towels, table cloths, &c.) 112,540 yards; tow-cloth, 720,989 yards; woolen goods, 900,373 yards, making in the aggregate 4,271,185 yards, valued at $1,700,417. The number of fulling-mills in the State at that date was 135, and 497,500 yards of cloth was fulled, dressed, &c, for the year 1810. There was not enough clothing goods manufac- tured in the State for the consumption of the inhabitants in their frugal state of living, by many hundred thousand dol- lars' worth. There were 214.000 inhabi- tants in New Hampshire in 1810, and the
��amount of cloth manufactured that year for all purposes, would give to each per- son less than twenty yards, valued at about $8,20.
An old veteran, writing from one of the towns in this State, says : " From my earliest recollection my mother's occu- pation, in addition to ordinary house- work, consisted in carding wool into rolls, spinning them into yarn, and weaving it into "wale" cloth and blan- keting—cutting the cloth into garments and making them. She also carded her flax and spun it into either linen thread or yarn for cloth. Nearly all the cloth consumed in our family of seven persons was manufactured by my mother." Cal- ico dresses for the common people in 1810 were considered good enough to wear on any occasion, and at many a bridal festival, when as warm hearts beat with love and happiness as beat to-day, the calico dress adorned the females of the party. Calico in those days was worth from thirty to fifty cents per yard, cotton flannel forty-five, and cotton cloth 3-4 of a yard wide, from twenty to thirty cents.
But what a vast change in this respect has taken place in less than 70 years. At the present time, with the depressed condition of business, New Hampshire is manufacturing at the rate of not less than 17,000,000 yards of woolen cloth of all varieties annually, valued at not less than $8,000,000, and 240,000,000 yards of cotton goods valued at about $22,000,000.
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