THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE RELATIONS OF THE WOOLLEN 
 MANUFACTURE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE FAIR OF THE AMERICAN 
 INSTITUTE, NEW-YORK CITY, 
 
 October 13 , 1870 . 
 
 By JOHN L. HAYES, 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WOOL MANUFACTURERS. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1870. 
 
' ' ~ n<xvnmondl 
 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE RELATIONS OF THE WOOLLEN 
 MANUFACTURE. 
 
 An Address delivered at the Fair of the American Institute, New York City, 
 
 Oct. 13, 1870. By John L. Hayes. 
 
 In presence of these magnificent products of a diversified 
 native industry, at the same time evidences of national progress 
 and inspirations for higher achievements, it would be a waste of 
 words to dwell upon the importance of sustaining upon our soil 
 the general industry which has placed before our eyes these bril- 
 liant results. The duty of developing a national industry is not 
 a question for argument ; it is a sentiment like patriotism or 
 filial love, and here, at least, we could find few who will not agree 
 with the greatest of living geologists, Elie de Beaumont, that 
 ” of all the tendencies which occupy different civilized nations, 
 the most marked is that of fixing upon their own territory all 
 those branches of industrial activity which suit its soil, climate, 
 and commercial position; and that government will most preserve 
 the respect of neighboring nations, and show itself worthy of the 
 respect of its people, which shall use all its means of action to 
 favor with discernment this tendency.” And few would refuse 
 to partake of the " noble emulation of producing every thing,” 
 which the venerable Thiers says is possessed by all intelligent 
 and free nations. 
 
 " What, then,” says he, " are the nations which have sought 
 to develop among themselves a national labor ? ” 
 
 " They are the nations which are intelligent and free. When 
 the foreigner brings them a product, after they have found it ser- 
 viceable, they desire to undertake it. The nations which do not 
 have this desire are the indolent nations of the East ; intelligent 
 
4 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 and free nations seek to appropriate for themselves the products 
 brought to them by foreign nations.” 
 
 While the proposition of the importance of a diversified native 
 industry, in the abstract, is generally accepted, the favors which 
 special industries demand from national legislation are frequently 
 the subject of condemnation. We have seen quite recently the 
 copper, the iron, the steel, the woollen, the salt industries, each 
 reproached for the special consideration which they have invoked 
 in legislation. Appearing before you as the representative of a 
 special industry, I offer the apology for my position, and find 
 the guiding thread for my remarks, in the subject to which I now 
 beg your attention, — The Solidarity of the Industries , as Illus- 
 trated by the Relations of the Woollen Manufacture . An emi- 
 nent liberal statesman, who now occupies a place in the new 
 government of France, Jules Simon, closes a recent free-trade 
 speech in the Legislative Assembly by the transcendental remark, 
 " All the liberties are sisters : if we have liberty of trade, we shall 
 have all the others.” This remark is only sentimental nonsense, 
 for there is no necessary relation, except in words, between free 
 trade and free government ; but, slightly changed, it expresses 
 what I mean by the solidarity of industries. All the industries 
 are sisters: if we have one , we shall have all the others. 
 
 Let me at the outset exclude the inference that the woollen 
 manufacture is not of itself, and independently of its relations 
 to other interests, of the highest national importance. A manu- 
 facture whose direct annual product in the United States is, by 
 the most careful estimates, of the value of one hundred and 
 seventy-five million dollars, making necessary an importation of 
 only sixty-five millions, thus supplying nearly three-quarters of 
 the whole consumption of woollen and worsted goods in the 
 country ; which employs directly at least one hundred and 
 twenty thousand operatives, and supports twice as many more ; 
 which consumes the fleeces of thirty-five million sheep ; which 
 supplies with cheap and sound clothing the great mass of the 
 people, furnishing nearly all the cassimeres, tricots, and cheviots, 
 for business suits ; the beavers, moscows, and cloakings, for 
 outer garments ; the knit goods for under-clothing, and the flan- 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 5 
 
 nels and blankets for bed-coverings ; which furnishes all the 
 ingrain carpets consumed here, produced from twice the number 
 of looms that are in England, making the American working- 
 man’s parlor and bedroom the most cheerful and attractive that 
 labor ever found for repose ; a manufacture which supplies all 
 our delaines, the most largely consumed of the cheaper fabrics 
 for woman’s wear ; which is daily producing new fabrics for 
 female attire, such as worsted poplins, serges, cloakings, printed 
 cashmeres, alpaca and mohair lustres ; a manufacture which fur- 
 nishes lastings for our shoes, enough for thirty thousand a week 
 in a single establishment, reducing the price of the foreign arti- 
 cle in two years from $1.10 to 66 cents a yard; which supplies 
 for our furniture all-wool and union damasks, silk cotelines and 
 reps of tasteful designs and beautiful colors ; an industry which 
 has torn down the British bunting, which has so long disgraced 
 our national ships, and has run up a real American flag made of 
 our own wools and in our own mills, — a flag which means not 
 merely political, but industrial independence ; a manufacture 
 which in the last five years has made more progress than in any 
 twenty years before, and more than any other branch of textile 
 industry has done, and which by its own grand exhibition in this 
 hall last year won the reluctant admiration of your shrewd im- 
 porters, and the generous admiration of a diplomatic representa- 
 tive of Great Britain, — an industry like this, I say, has claims 
 of itself alone for grateful appreciation by the American people, 
 and for vigorous defence by American legislators. 
 
 But I must hasten to a consideration of the indirect and less 
 obvious influences of the woollen industry. And I must be 
 permitted to go beyond our own country and the present time 
 for my illustrations. Let me first show the relations of the 
 wool manufacture to agriculture. 
 
 The woollen manufacture works up a fibre which was in prim- 
 itive times, and is again becoming in quite recent times, the 
 material of the first necessity for the clothing of man. This 
 fibre outranks all others, — first, because it is made more per- 
 fect than any other, through the chemical elaborations of an 
 animal of high organization, thus surpassing silk, which is de- 
 
6 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 rived from an animal of a lower organic structure. Again, its 
 specific gravity being the least of all fibrous substances, its 
 tissues are the lightest, warmest, and most healthful. And, 
 finally, this material, provided in some varieties with a struct- 
 ure which enables the fibres to be laced and intermingled, by the 
 process of fulling, into fabrics distinguished for their warmth 
 and softness, in other varieties has a lustre which assimilates its 
 tissues to those of silk ; and, like silk, and unlike cotton and 
 flax, it receives and permanently retains every tincture and every 
 tone and hue which the art of the dyer can produce. The 
 industrial application in primitive times of this marvellous mate- 
 rial to clothing for man, in lieu of the skins of wild beasts, 
 demanded the substitution of the pastoral system for that of the 
 chase, and marked the first step of mankind in agriculture, and 
 consequently in the way of civilization. The whole direct 
 benefit to agriculture from the consumption of wool in manu- 
 factured products is measured by the annual value of the wool 
 of the world, which is estimated by M. Moll, chairman of the 
 jury on wools at the Paris Exposition, at three thousand mil- 
 lion francs, or $600,000,000. The estimates of Mr. Lynch, 
 approved by Mr. Bond, both high authorities, place the total 
 wool clip of the United States, in 1868, at one hundred and 
 seventy-seven million pounds. At forty cents per pound, the 
 direct value of the American wool manufacture to American 
 agriculture is nearly $71,000,000. 
 
 The direct is very far from the only or even chief benefit 
 accruing to agriculture from the woollen industry. The Sheep, 
 cultivated in primitive times, and at present in merely pastoral 
 countries for only one of its aptitudes, that of producing wool, 
 is found to have a more important aptitude, that of converting, 
 in the shortest possible time, vegetable matter into the most 
 healthful and nutritious flesh : and in countries most advanced 
 in agriculture it has become the most important source of animal 
 food. Again, wool, unlike tobacco, the cereals, the oleaginous 
 seeds, and the vegetable textiles, including cotton, can, so far 
 as is known, be produced and exported indefinitely without 
 creating exhaustion of the soil ; and even more than that, sheep, 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 7 
 
 through the peculiar nutritiousness of their manure, and the 
 facility with which it is distributed, are found to be the most 
 economical and certain means of solving the highest problem in 
 agriculture, — that of constantly renewing the productiveness of 
 the land. Their manure is more valuable than that of cattle, 
 because they digest better ; they cut their food finer and chew 
 it better. They void less vegetable fibre, and their excrements 
 are more converted into soluble matter. " One thousand sheep, 
 folded on an acre of ground one day, would manure it sufficiently 
 to feed one thousand and one sheep. So that by this process, land 
 which, the first year, can feed only one thousand sheep, may, the 
 next year, as a result of their own droppings, feed thirteen hun- 
 dred and sixty-five.” 
 
 So said Anderson, more than forty years ago ; and Sprengel 
 allows that the manure of fourteen hundred sheep, for one day, 
 is equal to manuring highly one acre of land, which is about 
 four sheep per year. Mr. Mechi, a still more recent authority, 
 estimates that fifteen hundred sheep folded on an acre of land 
 for twenty-four hours, or one hundred sheep for fifteen days, 
 would manure the land sufficiently to carry it through four 
 years’ rotation. 
 
 Permit me now to present in more detail some illustrations 
 of the relations of the woollen industry to agriculture. I need 
 not say that these relations are reciprocal. Action and reaction 
 are equal in the moral as well as in the physical world. I have 
 elsewhere shown the dependence of the manufacturers of each 
 nation upon the wool-growers of their own country, and that 
 the characteristic features of the manufactures of different na- 
 tions have been impressed by the peculiar condition of their 
 agriculture. I present the same picture, only with the point of 
 view reversed. Manufactures instead of agriculture now occupy 
 the foreground ; and the latter, being in distant perspective, are 
 made to appear subordinate to the latter. 
 
 The country where the woollen industry has had the longest 
 standing, and the most complete development, naturally presents 
 the most complete example of the interdependence upon which I 
 insist. England, from a very early period, has produced sheep 
 
8 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 of two distinctly marked classes. The one class, thriving upon 
 the dry uplands, produced a short, comparatively fine wool, 
 adapted solely for making fulled cloths. Of this class the 
 original Southdown was a type. This wool supplied the cloth 
 manufactory established at Winchester in the time of the Ro- 
 mans. The other class of sheep, of greater size, flourishing 
 upon the rich, moist plains, produced wool characterized by 
 greater length, strength, and lustre, and its moderate felting 
 properties. This wool, fitted for making serges and other stuff 
 fabrics, adapted especially for female wear, was called combing 
 wool, from the instrument used to make the fibres straight and 
 parallel, preparatory to spinning. Until about the time of Eliz- 
 abeth, England herself, worked up, the greater portion of her 
 short wools into cloths ; but exported nearly all her combing 
 wools, far the most valuable of her agricultural products, which 
 were made up into says and serges, by the workmen of the Low 
 Countries. In the time of Elizabeth, the persecutions of the 
 Duke of Alva drove the say weavers, skilled in working up the 
 combing wools, from the Netherlands into England. The 
 worsted manufacture, or that of the combing wools, was thus 
 engrafted upon the industry of England, and prepared the way 
 for the consumption of all her wools upon her own soil. The 
 domestic consumption of all her wools was made a national 
 necessity by stringent laws prohibiting the exportation of wool, 
 which were in force from 1660 to 1825. The prohibition of 
 exportation was especially efficacious in developing the worsted 
 industry, as it compelled the manufacture at home of the comb- 
 ing wools formerly exported. The number of sheep during this 
 period was nearly trebled, and the production of wool in each 
 animal was doubled. As the worsted industry became devel- 
 oped, and agriculture became more prosperous, from the home 
 markets opened for its products, the woollen industry and agri- 
 culture continued to react upon each other ; the wool manufac- 
 ture making increased demands for combing wool, or that 
 produced by the heaviest sheep, and agriculture taking a direc- 
 tion to supply this demand. 
 
 In the mean time, the artificial or turnip husbandry was intro- 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 9 
 
 duced by William of Orange, and the means were provided for 
 trebling the number of sheep which an acre of land could sup- 
 port. The results at the present time to the English woollen 
 manufacture are, that the worsted manufacture far surpasses 
 the clothing- wool manufacture, the two together supporting a 
 population of over a million ; and the towns which have been 
 the centres of the worsted manufacture have made a more rapid 
 progress than any in Great* Britain, Bradford having increased 
 her population 90,000 in fifty years. The result of this recip- 
 rocal action to the agriculture of England is a genuine trans- 
 formation, of external character at least, in the English races 
 of sheep. The production of combing wool, the kind in greatest 
 demand, was secured by breeding sheep which would attain the 
 utmost possible weight of mutton, which could be fed to their 
 utmost capacity, and would produce the utmost amount of 
 manure. The merino sheep, although introduced into England 
 at about the same time as into Germany and France, which 
 they have so greatly enriched ; and although their culture was 
 encouraged by the King and the first noblemen of the realm, 
 were finally wholly discarded. The mutton sheep is at this 
 moment not only the chief animal product of England, but it is 
 what it was declared to be long ago, " the sheet-anchor of Eng- 
 lish agriculture.” It is the chief animal product of Great 
 Britain. The statistics of domestic animals, published by the 
 Boyal Agricultural Society, show that Great Britain had, in 
 1868, 30,711,396 sheep, 5,423,981 cattle, and 2,308,539 pigs. 
 The sheep is literally the basis of English husbandry. The 
 agriculture of England, as a whole, is very simple. Four 
 crops, in regular rotation and mainly in the same order, consti- 
 tute her great staples. Turnips, barley, grass, and wheat, are 
 said to be the four magical words at which the earth unlocks 
 her treasures to the British farmer. The four field, or four shift 
 system, which pervades the greater part of the kingdom, consists 
 of this succession. The profit is in the barley and wheat alone ; 
 the turnips and grass serve mainly to feed the sheep, which 
 furnish mutton and wool to support them in their most impor- 
 tant function, that of manuring the turnip field upon which they 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 are folded, for the four years’ rotation. It is this function which 
 I wish to bring into special prominence. Recent agricultural 
 writers in England affirm this to be the main object of English 
 sheep husbandry. Professor Coleman, of the Agricultural Col- 
 lege of Cirencester, in a paper recently read before the Royal 
 Agricultural Society, on the breeding and feeding of sheep, 
 says : " It is not difficult to show that sheep alone, apart from 
 their influence on the corn crops, will not pay a living profit, after 
 all the expenses of growing the crops are considered.” Other 
 practical writers for the same journal declare that there is no 
 profit in growing sheep in England simply for their mutton and 
 wool, but that the culture of sheep is still an indispensable ne- 
 cessity, as there is no other means of keeping up the land. 
 
 Passing away from England, I observe that the highest author- 
 ities in France inculcate the same lesson. The most eminent 
 of French practical statesmen, M. Thiers, in his great discourse 
 on the protective question, delivered in the Legislative Assembly 
 in January last, demands protective duties upon the wool of 
 France ; as it is threatened that the fine sheep, unprotected 
 through duties on wool, must disappear from the soil of France, 
 in consequence of competition from the southern hemisphere. 
 He says : " Upon four-fifths of the territory, where the soil is 
 stony, and only fine grasses abound, the fine sheep alone can 
 convert this grass into flesh and manure.” After giving the 
 facts as to the decline of the ovine population of France, and 
 its enormous increase in Australia and La Plata, he continues : 
 " In this situation, how can the French resist the foreign com- 
 petition ? The agi'icultural industry of France cannot dispense 
 with sheep. The facts which I have given you ought to inspire 
 you with the most serious concern.” The same lesson is taught 
 by the best practical agriculturists of the United States. Mr. 
 Stilson, president of the Wisconsin Wool-Growers’ Associa- 
 tion, has shown that his flock of fifteen hundred sheep has 
 enabled him to produce eight or ten more bushels of wheat to 
 the acre than is grown on the average lands of Wisconsin, 
 where sheep husbandry is not an auxiliary to wheat farming. 
 The president of the Ohio Wool-Growers’ Association, Mr. 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 11 
 
 Stevens, whom I had the pleasure of meeting this summer, at 
 the Indianapolis Exposition, assured me that he could see no 
 means of reclaiming the rapidly deteriorating lands of Ohio 
 except by the restorative influence of sheep husbandry. We 
 have seen lands in certain portions of the West producing wheat 
 so abundantly as to compel the opening of railroad lines for 
 the single purpose of transporting their teeming harvests ; and 
 have also seen, in our own time, these very lands so rapidly 
 exhausted, that the rails have been torn up for want of traffic. 
 Such facts apprise us that there is no security for continued 
 fruitfulness, even in our most fertile States, but in a more prov- 
 ident agriculture. What is taken from the land must be restored. 
 Science gives us but little encouragement in the promise of 
 cheap imported or artificial manures. The guano beds are 
 being rapidly exhausted. The experiments of Messrs. Lawes 
 and Gilbert, at Kothamsted, show that the application to 
 the land of sewage from the cities, from which so much was 
 expected, is a failure. The brilliant experiments of Vila, in 
 France, made to exhibit the applicability of artificial manures 
 in place of animal manures, in countries like France, where 
 the land is so much divided as not to permit the profitable cult- 
 ure of animals, lead to no practical results, because no econom- 
 ical sources of artificial nitrates, phosphates, or potash, have 
 been or are likely to be discovered. We see, but as through 
 grated windows, exhaustless but practically inaccessible stores 
 of potash in the granite rocks ; of phosphates in beds of apatite ; 
 and of nitrogen in the atmosphere, or in the far-off rainless 
 plains of Chili. Has not Providence locked up these treasures, 
 or removed them from our reach, to compel man, for his highest 
 physical good, to cultivate the animal which best supplies the 
 primal necessities, — food, clothing, and the continued enrich- 
 ment of the earth? The blessing, in the olden time, was given 
 to him who " brought of the firstlings of his flock,” for " the 
 Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” 
 
 There are other relations of the woollen industry to agriculture, 
 much less broad in their scope, but so interesting a^id illustrative 
 that I cannot pass them by. The first which I allude to, because 
 
12 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 connected with the topic which we have just considered, is the 
 achievement which chemical science has recently effected in sav- 
 ing the potash contained in the yolk of fleeces in such a form 
 that it may be returned to the soil or used in the arts. It is 
 well known that sheep draw from the land upon which they 
 graze a considerable quantity of potash, which, after circulating 
 in the blood, is excreted from the skin with the sweat, in combi- 
 nation with which it is deposited in the wool. The French 
 chemists MM. Maumonti and Rogelet have established quite re- 
 cently at the great seats of the woollen manufacture in France, 
 as at Rheims and Elbeuf, factories for putting the new industry 
 which they have created into practical operation. They induce 
 the woollen manufacturers to preserve and sell to them the solutions 
 of yolk obtained by the washing of the raw fleeces in cold water, 
 and pay such a price as encourages the manufacturers to wash 
 their wool methodically, so as to enrich the same water with the 
 yolk of a number of fleeces. These scourings the chemists carry 
 to their factory, and then boil them down to a dry, carbonaceous 
 residuum. The alkaline salts remain in the charred residuum, 
 and are extracted by lixiviation with water. The most impor- 
 tant of the alkalies obtained is potash, which is recovered in a 
 state of great purity. It is computed that if the fleeces of all the 
 sheep of France, estimated at forty-seven millions, were subjected 
 to the new treatment, France would derive from this source 
 alone all the potash she requires in the arts, enough to make 
 about twelve thousand tons of commercial carbonate of potash, 
 convertible into seventeen thousand five hundred tons of salt- 
 petre, which would charge eighteen hundred and seventy million 
 cartridges. So that the inoffensive sheep, the emblem of peace, 
 can be made to supply the chief muniment of war. The obvious 
 lesson from these facts, to the sheep farmer, is to wash his fleeces 
 at home, in such a manner that the wash water, so rich in pot- 
 ash, may be distributed upon the land as liquid manure. 
 
 I have already adverted to the influence of the wool manufact - 
 ure of England in developing the breeds of long-woolled sheep in 
 that country.^ Facts illustrative of the influence of manufacture 
 upon sheep husbandry are furnished by all manufacturing nations. 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 13 
 
 In the indolent nations of the East, manufacturers adapt them- 
 selves to the raw material which has been furnished for ages. 
 The beautiful Turkish carpets of Asia Minor are produced now, 
 as they doubtless were in the time of the Crusades, from coarse 
 wool grown upon the Barbarous broad-tailed sheep, which is 
 still precisely the same as those which formed the flocks watched 
 by the shepherds of the Bible, and to which belonged the Paschal 
 lamb. Nations of higher civilization are constantly varying 
 their fabric and their sheep husbandry. 
 
 The Spanish merino, which I conceive to be a relic of Greek 
 and Roman civilization preserved in the mountains of Andalusia 
 from the barbarians who swept over most of the Roman posses- 
 sions, was introduced about a century ago into all the manufact- 
 uring nations of Europe. When introduced into France, at 
 the sheep-folds of Rambouillet, it produced a short clothing wool. 
 Let me, before describing the important change which subse- 
 quently took place, advert for a moment to a zoological prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 A beautiful law of nature has been brought into view by the 
 studies of modern zoology, that, while the primary and specific 
 characters, determined by the forms of the skeleton, are abso- 
 lutely fixed, and transmit themselves infallibly by generation, the 
 secondary or accessory forms of animals, such as the fleshy cov- 
 ering, hair, and fleece, the only characters which man has in view 
 in cultivating the domestic animals, can be modified indefinitely by 
 culture. For example, the sheep in a state of nature is provided 
 with two kinds of covering. The outer or principal covering is 
 a coarse hair. Beneath this hair, and concealed by it, is a short, 
 fine down. It is this down, which, by the culture of sheep in a 
 state of domestication, has become the woolly fleece, and which 
 is again susceptible of being modified by the climate in which 
 it is developed, or the care of which it is the object. This 
 modification of the secondary characters of animals is sometimes 
 the result of high agricultural skill, or, to use the more accurate 
 modern term, zootechnic skill, directed to a specific object, as in 
 the labors of Bakewell and Elman, in England, and of Ham- 
 mond, in Vermont. But the modification generally takes place 
 insensibly. 
 
14 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 One of the most important of these insensible influences is 
 that which the vrool manufacture exerts in its demand for the 
 material for its fabrics. The merino, as I have observed, when 
 introduced into France was a small, short- woolled sheep. The 
 higher feeding naturally given to the precious animals necessarily 
 tended to increase the size, and at the same time to lengthen the 
 fibre, it being the fixed law that woolly fibre is increased in 
 length but not in diameter by increased nourishment. French 
 industry, with that creative genius which is its highest attribute, 
 saw in the newly acquired fibre a means for creating new, soft 
 fabrics for female wear, in place of the coarse and stiff serges 
 which were the characteristic stuffs of the former country. Here 
 was a fresh raw material for the novelties in dress which the 
 world of fashion is perpetually calling upon France to supply. 
 Remember that before the present century no female stuffs were 
 made of fine wool. In 1801, Dauphinot Pallotan invented the 
 most beautiful of all woollen tissues, the French merino , at pres- 
 ent, or recently, the chief product of Rheims and its fifty thou- 
 sand workmen, and the sole product of a single establishment at 
 Cateau, with ten thousand workmen. In 1826, M. Jourdain in- 
 vented all-wool mousselines de laines for printing, the material 
 being long merino fleece. In 1838, he created challis , a fabric 
 with a warp of silk organzine and a weft of merino wool. Since 
 then the dress fabrics of which merino wool forms the chief com- 
 ponent material have been infinitely varied to meet the insatiable 
 demands of fashion for change. The Exposition of 1867 demon- 
 strated that of all the fabrics which the art of man has produced, 
 there are none which bear comparison in tastefulness, variety, 
 and perfection of workmanship, with the French dress tissues of 
 merino wool. 
 
 The demands of the wool industry of France gradually and 
 insensibly converted the fibre of her merinos into a combing wool. 
 The wool could not be made to acquire the length required for 
 combing without increasing the size of the animal. The merinos 
 of France are the largest animals of their race in the world. 
 They are said to be, as compared with the American merino, 
 bred for a different purpose, w what the great, pampered short- 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 15 
 
 horn of England is to the little, hardy, black cattle of the Scotch 
 Highlands.” The influence of French manufacturers has ex- 
 tended even to the sheep husbandry of the southern hemisphere. 
 As the fine combing- wool industry of France was extended, her 
 own wools became insufficient to supply her looms. Regenera- 
 tors of the Rambouillet stock were largely introduced into Aus- 
 tralia, originally producing only clothing wools. The wools of 
 Australia have becomelengthened in their fibre, and the exports 
 of Australia, according to M. Moll, are now principally destined 
 for the combing-wool industry. 
 
 The peculiar necessities of the French woollen industry have 
 led to one of the most remarkable zootechnic achievements — 
 and one which could not have been effected without the auspices 
 of the manufacturer, — the creation of a new race of sheep and 
 of an absolutely new fibre. The enormous prices of Cashmere 
 shawls stimulated the French manufacturers in the early part of 
 this century to emulate the Indian tissues. They succeeded per- 
 fectly in the fabrication. They induced, also, the importation 
 of a large number of Cashmere goats, the animals furnishing 
 down from which the Indian shawls are fabricated. It was 
 found, however, that the goats could not be cultivated with 
 profit, as each animal produced only three or four ounces of 
 down. In 1828, there was accidentally produced at the farm of 
 Mauchamp, cultivated by M. Graux, a ram of the merino race, 
 which besides other peculiarities or monstrosities was provided 
 with a wool remarkable for its softness, and above all for its 
 lustre, which resembled that of silk. By a system of careful 
 breeding, M. Graux succeeded in obtaining a small flock of ani- 
 mals from this stock whose wool was perfectly silky. He at 
 first met with but little encouragement. The ordinary manu- 
 facturers, to whom he offered his wool, complained that it was so 
 pliant and slippery that nothing could be done with it. Fortu- 
 nately the silky wool attracted the attention of M. Davin, a wool 
 manufacturer familiar with the fabrication of the Cashmere fibre, 
 and distinguished for his zeal and skill in introducing new mate- 
 rial into the textile arts. Taking the silky wool in hand, he 
 succeeded in making magnificent stuffs which won the admiration 
 
16 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 of connoisseurs. Merinos, mousselines, satins of China, and 
 shawls, made of this material, equalled, if they did not surpass, 
 analogous products made of the finest Cashmere yarns. " The 
 silky wool,” says a report of the Imperial Society of Acclima- 
 tion, "is destined to replace completely in our industry the 
 Cashmere wool which comes from Thibet. It is fully as brilliant 
 as Cashmere and as soft, while it costs less as a raw material, and 
 requires less manipulation to be transformed to yarn.” 
 
 The Mauchamp or silk-woolled race of sheep is now definitely 
 established. I need not say that this beautiful creation could 
 not have been effected in a country where the arts were not 
 already developed to apply it. 
 
 The merino sheep, introduced into Germany about the same 
 time as into France, received an improvement in an opposite 
 direction. This direction was mainly given by the demands of 
 the German wool manufacture, though partially due to a dry 
 climate and unfruitful soil. Germany was already provided 
 with sheep producing coarse clothing wool. They continued to 
 suffice for the clothing of the great mass of the people, who were 
 not elevated and wealthy as they have since become through the 
 influence of the protective Zollverein, nor educated, as they have 
 since been in Prussia, through the wise counsels of the immortal 
 Humboldt. The early woollen manufacture of Germany was 
 directed to the supply of cloths for the more wealthy classes. 
 The combing-wool industry had been scarcely attempted. The 
 first demand of the manufacture, therefore, was for fine clothing 
 wools. The German flock-masters, being generally wealthy 
 landholders, possessed the ability and intelligence to respond to 
 this demand. The ideal in sheep husbandry became the pro- 
 duction of the finest possible fibre. The ideal has been com- 
 pletely attained. The characteristic wools of Germany, those 
 of the Electoral race, are much finer than those produced from 
 the original Spanish stock ; and the animals are much, smaller in 
 size, while the fleeces are correspondingly small. The extremely 
 fine fibre, designated in Germany as noble wool , is marked by 
 the distinctness and great number of its curves or wrinkles. 
 The wools are distinguished not only for their fineness, but the 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 IT 
 
 extreme shortness of their staple, which give the felting qualities 
 essential for the fine broadcloths and doeskins, for which German 
 manufactures are so celebrated. These wools bear the highest 
 price of any known, although the profitableness of their culture 
 exclusively is questioned even in Germany. Still they form a 
 leading source of German wealth. Eighteen per cent, of all 
 the exports of wealthy Prussia consists of woollen manufactures, 
 and those principally fine cloths. Thus we have a manufactur- 
 ing industry acting directly upon agriculture; this reacting in 
 its turn upon manufactures, until a distinct physiognomy is im- 
 pressed upon the German national fabric, and the chief agricul- 
 tural distinction of Germany has become that of possessing the 
 most perfect fine-wool husbandry of the world. 
 
 Results quite different, but no less distinctive, have been 
 effected by the influence of the woollen manufacture in the 
 United States. Sheep husbandry in this country has been 
 hitherto pursued exclusively with a view to the production of 
 wool, mutton being a mere incident, and manure hardly a 
 matter of consideration. The character of our sheep husbandry 
 has, therefore, been wholly determined by the demand of manu- 
 facture. The American manufacturers have found it more 
 profitable to run their mills upon the classes of goods in demand 
 by the mass of our people. The masses of American consumers, 
 although not demanding superfine cloths, require goods of a 
 better and finer class than would content the masses of European 
 population. Sound and sightly cloths, but of medium fine- 
 ness, are in the greatest demand. Medium wools, produced by 
 merino grades, of considerable length of fibre, are well suited 
 to the production of flannels and fancy cassimeres, our principal 
 products in the clothing-wool manufacture. It is true that the 
 fine broadcloth manufacture was attempted under the fostering 
 influence of the protective tariffs of 1824 and 1828, and was fur- 
 ther extended under the tariff of 1842 ; and the culture of Saxony 
 or superfine woolled sheep was pursued with enthusiasm. The 
 horizontal tariff of 1846 destroyed the broadcloth manufacture, 
 and at the same time swept away our Saxony sheep or merged 
 them into coarser flocks. The demand for broadcloth wools 
 
18 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 having ceased, the American breeders of merinos, adapting 
 themselves to the wants of manufactures, sought to produce a 
 coarser and longer staple than had been in request at an earlier 
 period. They have produced, through these influences, a race of 
 sheep designated as the American merino and now recognized 
 as a distinctive variety, like the Saxon merino or French merino. 
 The most complete account of the American merino is the elabo- 
 rate paper furnished to the report " On Wool and Manufactures 
 of Wool,” at the Paris Exposition, by Dr. Randall, the highest 
 American authority on sheep husbandry, and no less favorably 
 known as author of the Life of Jefferson. The remarkable 
 improvement in productions of wool, effected by American hus- 
 bandry upon the original Spanish stock, is the most interesting 
 fact brought out in this excellent paper. From facts and ex- 
 periments in scouring which he details, Dr. Randall says : " It 
 appears, first, that prime American merinos produced more 
 washed wool, in 1844-46, than was produced of unwashed wool 
 by the original stock in Spain, at their palmiest period ; second, 
 that prime American merinos produce about as much scoured 
 wool now as they did of washed wool in 1844-46, and nearly 
 twice as much as the picked merino flock of the King of Great 
 Britain from 1798 to 1802. They undoubtedly produce twice 
 as much scoured wool as the average of the prime Spanish flocks 
 of that period.” By breeding to produce heavy fleeces, the wool 
 of the American merino has become elongated so as to make it 
 a true combing wool. No use of this quality has been made 
 until very recently, except in delaines, a comparatively low 
 fabric. The American Commissioner at the Paris Exposition, in 
 the department of woollens, who, though largely interested in 
 manufactures, had at that time but little practical experience in 
 fabricating, was fascinated by the magnificent French merino 
 fabrics at the Exposition. Upon his return to this country his 
 attention was drawn to a fleece of American merino wool, which 
 had been sent from Ohio to the office of the Association which I 
 servfe, to illustrate the combing qualities of the American staple. 
 He instantly resolved to emulate in the mill of which he had the 
 direction, with our merino combing wools, the French fabrics 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES, 
 
 19 
 
 which he had admired abroad. Within less than two years the 
 resolution has been crowned with complete success ; his establish- 
 ment has achieved several entirely new dress fabrics, made wholly 
 of native fibre, such as had never been attempted in England, 
 and at least three thousand pounds of American merino clothing 
 wool are consumed per week in this new fabrication. This 
 achievement I regard as the event in this year’s history of the 
 woollen industry of the United States. Perhaps I may be excused 
 for recalling in this connection an intimation which I made in a 
 published address five years ago : " The true value of the fleece 
 of the American merino is for combing purposes, for which it 
 has a remarkable analogy with that of France. This country will 
 never know the inestimable treasure which it has in its fleeces 
 until American manufacturers appropriate them to fabricate the 
 soft tissues of merinos, thibets, and cashmeres, to which France 
 owes the splendor of the industries of combing wool at Paris, 
 Rheims, and Roubaix.” 
 
 The relations of our industry with agriculture are so fascinating 
 that they have too long detained me from the most important 
 branch of my subject, — the relations of the wool manufacture to 
 the higher arts and the other mechanical industries. As the 
 oldest of textile arts, the w'oollen industry has filled the pages 
 of history with illustrations of its civilizing influences. Passing by 
 the voyage of the Argonauts for the golden fleece, and the fruits 
 of that expedition, the birth of the arts of navigation and the 
 origin of Phoenician letters, — a fable, indeed, but one teaching 
 the same lesson which I would inculcate ; passing by Tyre, en- 
 riched by the commerce of its murex-dyed tissues and fleeces ; 
 the Italian States, Florence, Yenice, Pisa, and Genoa, which 
 were the first in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to appropriate 
 the arts which the Crusaders brought back from Asia, and who 
 found in the w T oollen manufacture the source of the wealth whose 
 fruits survive in the "stones of Yenice,” and the wonders of 
 Florentine art, for Michel Angelo’s great statue of David was 
 paid for by the wool- weavers’ guild ; passing by Flanders, 
 where the growth of the wool manufacture and of Flemish art 
 were contemporaneous, and which subsequently became the cen- 
 
20 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 tre from which the art of fabricating woollens spread into Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany, — turning aside from these brilliant 
 examples, I would point you to a homely and familiar illustration 
 at our own doors of the indirect influence of the woollen indus- 
 try upon the sister arts. 
 
 Mr. Benton has pointed out with singular felicity the succes- 
 sive events which mark out the routes of the great railroad lines 
 across the continent; first the path of the buffalo, then the In- 
 dian’s, then the trapper’s trail, then the emigrant’s wagon and 
 dawning civilization, and finally the railroad train, and civiliza- 
 tion accomplished. Manufacturing industry has been established 
 by a similar succession. 
 
 Settlements are made in the beginning upon our water courses. 
 Water power is first applied to the saw-mill; then comes the 
 grist-mill ; then follows the woollen-mill : in old times it was 
 the fulling-mill. The fulling-mill was, and the woollen-mill now 
 is, to a matured industry, what the emigrant’s wagon is to the 
 great interior, the dawn of manufacturing enterprise, as that is 
 of permanent settlement. The cotton, the machinery, the iron, 
 the silk, the paper manufactures follow and build up our Lowells, 
 Patersons, and Manchesters. This is no fancy sketch. I remem- 
 ber the time when the Salmon Falls River, watering a district 
 which was occupied by one of the earliest and most impor- 
 tant settlements in New England, dating back to 1632, had no 
 other manufacturing establishments than a saw-mill, a grist-mill, 
 and a fulling-mill. The latter disappeared, and was succeeded 
 in 1828 by a well-appointed woollen factory. Afterwards came 
 the cotton-mills of Great Falls ; and the Salmon Falls River 
 moves now one hundred and thirty-two thousand cotton spindles 
 and fourteen sets of woollen machinery. This is but a type of 
 the march of manufactures everywhere in this country. The 
 first textile manufacturing establishment in Massachusetts was a 
 fulling-mill, built at Rowley, near Ipswich, in 1643. This was 
 the pioneer of a textile industry in Massachusetts, which, ac- 
 cording to the Commonwealth returns in 1865, amounted to 
 $144,730,679. The woollen-mills in the North-west, California, 
 and Oregon, are in their turn the pioneers of a diversified in- 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OP THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 21 
 
 dustry in the newly settled States. The erection of a woollen 
 mill of two or four sets seems to us at the East but a trifling 
 affair, but to the new States it is an epoch, the dawn of manu- 
 factures, which all experience tells us will expand into a largely 
 diversified industry and its attendant results, a superior civiliza- 
 tion. The historian, Thiers, chronicles a more insignificant 
 event than the building of a four-set mill, as an epoch in history. 
 The introduction of a little manufacture of cloths, at Abbeville 
 in France, by Colbert, is recorded as a more important conquest 
 than that of his master, Louis XIV., who struck down the 
 Spanish power. I have mentioned the fulling-mill as really the 
 pioneer of the textile industry in this country. Few have a 
 conception of the very brief period within which the woollen 
 industry has attained its present development. A hundred 
 years ago in England, and fifty years ago in this country, the 
 woollen manufacture, as it now is, had hardly an existence. The 
 spinning and weaving of wool was simply a domestic industry, 
 power being used only in the fulling-mills. Dyer, despised by 
 Dr. Johnson as poet, because his subject, the Fleece, partook 
 of "the meanness naturally adhering to trade and manufac- 
 tures,” but now regarded as a better poet than the great critic, 
 and also as the best annalist of the industry of his time, de- 
 scribes the manner in which the products of the woollen industry 
 were collected, a century or more ago, for British commerce : — 
 
 “ Prom little tenements by wood or croft, 
 
 Through many a slender path, how sedulous, 
 
 As rills to river broad, they speed their way 
 To public roads. 
 
 And thence explore, 
 
 Through every navigable wave, the sea, 
 
 That leaps the green earth ’round.” 
 
 Some of our leading living wool manufacturers were apprenticed 
 in their youth to clothiers, or the workers of the old fulling-mill ; 
 and one so apprenticed, from whom I recently sought reminis- 
 cences of the early manufacture,, well remembers the farmers of 
 Connecticut trudging miles through the woods with rolls of cloth 
 
22 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 upon their shoulders, to be felted and dressed in the fulling-mill. 
 We sometimes regret the Arcadian days, when 
 
 “ Maids at the wheel, the weaver at the loom, 
 
 Sat blithe and happy.” 
 
 But considering the matter more practically, how vast an im- 
 provement upon this toilful and unproductive industry is that of 
 the present time, when a single establishment, such as the Wash- 
 ington Mills, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, wdthits hundred sets, 
 was capable, according to the statement of its late lamented 
 treasurer, Mr. Stetson, by working day and night, to produce 
 all the woollen clothing for an army of a million men. 
 
 Let me give the relations of the woollen manufacture to partic- 
 ular textile arts, and first to the cotton manufacture. The cotton 
 manufacture of Great Britain, the most stupendous phenomenon 
 of modern industry, was the natural offshoot of the woollen 
 manufacture. Through the woollen trade, mainly, England had 
 become a nation of spinners and weavers, or of artisans sub- 
 sidiary to them. A national taste and skill had been developed 
 in the textile arts by the manipulation of wool, which was 
 readily applicable to a kindred fibre. Many of the inventions 
 upon which the cotton manufacture is dependent, such as the in- 
 vention of the fly-shuttle, which doubled the power of the weaver 
 and made necessary the subsequent inventions which increased 
 the spinning power, were contributed directly from the seats of 
 the woollen manufacture. What was scarcely less important, the 
 commercial connections established by the woollen trade gave 
 to the cotton manufacture, when completely inaugurated by the 
 inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Compton, a command 
 of foreign markets for unlimited exports of the new British tex- 
 tile. The British cotton manufacture is as truly the offspring 
 of the woollen industry as New England is of Old England. 
 This may be called the most important incident of the woollen 
 industry; for in giving birth to that of cotton, it secured to 
 England, from the fabrication . of that textile, a profit in fifty 
 years of one thousand million pounds sterling . Pursue these 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 23 
 
 consequences still further, and we have the cotton gin in Amer- 
 ica, the growth of the slave power, its aggressions, the war of 
 the rebellion, and emancipation ! 
 
 The cotton manufacture, reaching maturity, discharged its 
 filial debt by giving an unexpected and singular development 
 to the woollen industry. 
 
 Between 1830 and 1840, cotton became an important auxiliary 
 to wool, through its use in warps for woollen or worsted filling 
 in the fabrication of tissues for female wear. Many varieties 
 of these union fabrics are classed under the generic name of 
 cotton delaines. This fabric was first introduced into France in 
 1833, and into England in 1834. It i§ practically the same as 
 a woollen fabric, the warps being so covered with wool that the 
 presence of cotton can be observed only by the closest inspection. 
 Its cheapness, durability, and sightliness, when printed, make 
 its introduction an invaluable boon to women of moderate means. 
 Not less than sixty thousand yards are annually manufactured in 
 this country, and the cheapness and excellence of the American 
 fabric practically excludes its foreign rivals. The cotton warps 
 are now used as vehicles to extend the surface of wool and 
 worsted mohair and alpaca in a countless variety of dress fabrics. 
 The wool of a single sheep may be extended by the cotton warp 
 so as to fabricate 672 yards of so-called alpaca fabrics, enough 
 for fifty-six dresses. All the cheaper fabrics are made by this 
 wholly modern alliance of wool and cotton, and the great manu- 
 facturing cities of Bradford, in England, and Roubaix, in France, 
 are chiefly occupied in the fabrication of these cheap tissues, 
 whose undoubted fragility is rendered less objectionable by the 
 fickleness of female fashion. 
 
 An establishment producing fabrics of this class will give us 
 the best illustration of the manifold and important relations of 
 the woollen industry of the present period. I select the estab- 
 lishment known as the Pacific Mills, located at Lawrence, Mas- 
 sachusetts, because it is the oldest and largest of its class. This 
 establishment turns out an annual product of printed delaines 
 and calicoes, principally the former, valued at not less than 
 $7,500,000. In the production of its union fabrics the mill works 
 
24 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 up each year thirty-five hundred thousand pounds of fleece wool 
 or the fleeces of ten thousand sheep each week. For washing 
 this wool it makes and consumes annually two hundred and fifty 
 thousand pounds of soap, composed by the domestic products, 
 lard and caustic soda. It combines with this wool, in the form 
 of cotton warps, thirty-five hundred thousand pounds of cotton. 
 In the processes of spinning and weaving it expends twelve thou- 
 sand gallons of lubricating oils and ten thousand gallons of olive 
 oil. The raw materials for dyeing and printing, such as soda 
 ash, sulphur, prussiates of potash, the various preparations of 
 tin, the dye woods, indigo, cochineal, yellow berries, and aniline 
 colors, &c., require an ‘annual expenditure of $400,000. The 
 consumption of potato starch is five hundred tons a year, or the 
 product of one hundred and twenty-five thousand bushels of 
 potatoes. $30,000 a year is expended in lumber and nails for 
 packing boxes, an expenditure which, in twenty years, would 
 build up a considerable town. As much more is expended an- 
 nually in iron, steel, lumber, and paints for repairs ; fourteen 
 thousand tons of coal are consumed yearly, although the motive 
 power of the mill is water. To this may be added the food and 
 clothing of thirty-six hundred operatives aud of their dependants, 
 at least twice as many more, and the items of transporta- 
 tion of raw material and manufactured products. Consider- 
 ing these multiform relations, how vast is the wave of pro- 
 duction set in motion by the wheels of a single mill, and how 
 broadly extended are its ever-enlarging circles ; for the mate- 
 rials of consumption above enumerated show that the pro- 
 ductive stimulus of this industrial centre moves labor, not only 
 in fields of the South and the pastures of the West, but in the 
 plains of India, the forests of Brazil, and the islands of the 
 equator. 
 
 The wool manufacture makes itself auxiliary to. other textile 
 arts, as to those of linen and silk. The flax or linen manu- 
 facture is particularly allied to that of wool in the produc- 
 tion of Brussels and tapestry carpets. A single Brussels carpet 
 factory, producing five hundred and fifty thousand yards of car- 
 peting, consumes annually a quantity of linen warps of the value 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 25 
 
 of $150,000. Another establishment, making principally tapes- 
 try, Brussels, and velvet carpets, to the extent of eight hundred 
 and eighteen thousand yards, besides thirty thousand yards of 
 Brussels, consumed for the filling and backs 793,866 pounds of 
 linen yarn and jute, costing $167,000, besides two hundred and 
 two thousand pounds of cotton yarn for warps, costing $90,000. 
 
 The silk manufacture is an important contributor to the wool- 
 len industry. One form of the alliance of silk and wool is the 
 silk poplin, the warp being of long combing wool and the weft 
 of silk. This tasteful, though useful fabric, is now largely pro- 
 duced in Connecticut and New Jersey, and the American produc- 
 tion compares favorably with the celebrated poplins of Ireland. 
 Another form of this alliance is the silk-warped flannel, now 
 produced in our mills in connection with the manufacture of the 
 beautiful opera flannels, formerly brought exclusively from 
 France. 
 
 The most important form is the silk-mixed Cassimere, the 
 alliance of silk with merino wool, through the infinite combina- 
 tions made by our Crompton mule-producing fabrics, distin- 
 guished for their subdued lustre, and the softness of their 
 neutral tints. A single manufacturing house of your city, 
 whose silk and wool mixtures are admitted to vie with those of 
 Elboeuf, and which, as I shrewdly suspect, the dealers, not the 
 manufacturers, usually sell as such, consumes annually $150,000 
 worth of American silk organzine. The whole amount of silk 
 consumed by our mills is estimated by good authority at not less 
 in value than a million dollars. 
 
 I can barely refer to two other very important industries, one 
 of which is directly in one department, and the other mainly 
 founded upon our wool manufacture, — the manufacture of hats 
 and that of ready-made clothing. The former, in one of its 
 branches,- — that of wool hats, and in the first part of its processes, 
 the preparation of raw material, — is really a branch of the wool 
 manufacture. It is too important a branch not to be referred to, 
 as the annual production of wool hats in the United States ex- 
 ceeds in value ten million dollars. The industry of ready-made 
 clothing, dating back no further than 1824, and now the most 
 
 1 
 
26 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 important single one of our city industries, obtains its supply 
 of material substantially from the American wool manu- 
 facture. The official statistics of Massachusetts for 1865 show 
 that this industry in the city of Boston alone yielded a produc- 
 tion of $15,186,833, and employed fourteen hundred and sev- 
 enty-nine males and nineteen thousand, two hundred and five 
 females. If the production in the other cities is in the same pro- 
 portion, the part which the offspring plays in supporting Ameri- 
 can labor is scarcely less important than that of the parent 
 industry. 
 
 I have not time to trace the relations of the woollen manufacture 
 to the chemical arts, nor to follow in any detail the progress of 
 discovery from the period of the great impulse given by Colbert, 
 who, in introducing the woollen manufacture into France, made 
 improvement in the art of dyeing the object of special care, 
 considering, as he happily says, " dyeing as the soul of tissues, 
 without which the body could hardly exist.” The discovery of 
 Prussian blue in 1704, of chromium in the latter part of the 
 century, the fixing of color by means of steam in 1810, the ap- 
 plication to union fabrics in 1857, the discovery of alizarine in 
 1826, of murexide, the reproduction of the Tyrian dye in 1856, 
 of aniline dyes from coal tar in the same year, and finally the most 
 brilliant chemical discovery of the last two years, that of pro- 
 ducing from coal tar the coloring principle* of madder, alizarine, 
 — a discovery of such practical value that the product of the 
 coal fields is already replacing the product of the madder fields 
 among the Scotch dyers. Most of these discoveries have had 
 their impulse, as the great industries which supply the materials 
 for dyeing have their support, in the textile arts, and principally 
 in the woollen industry, which makes the largest application of 
 color. 
 
 I must hasten to my final illustration ; the relations of the 
 woollen manufacture to the industries producing machinery. In 
 this view I do not regard of chief importance the many spe- 
 cial industries directly and exclusively employed in constructing 
 machinery and supplies for our mills, although the capital and 
 labor which they employ make them worthy of more than a pass- 
 ing notice. A few establishments construct all the classes of 
 
THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 27 
 
 machinery made use of in our mills. But generally the work is 
 divided. Some build only pickers, others carding machines, 
 others jacks, others looms, others shears. Others make supplies 
 for both woollen and cotton mills, as card clothing, reeds, har- 
 nesses, shuttles, bobbins, spools, and belting. The bare enumera- 
 tion shows how important is this direct relation of the woollen 
 manufacture. But I desire in closing to call your attention to a 
 broader view, and therefore will not separate the woollen manu- 
 facture from the other textile arts of which it was the pioneer. 
 
 The textile industries of the wool and cotton made, in England 
 during the last century, the first extended application of the new 
 motor power, steam, which, for some time after its appearance, 
 had been condemned to a sort of obscurity by being applied only 
 to the drainage of mines. The power of steam was first made 
 conspicuous by the woollen and cotton mills. The factory system 
 and the movement of textile machinery by power demanded the 
 construction of great numbers of pieces of machinery of the same 
 dimensions, and also the construction of works of nice mechan- 
 ism, which the mere hand-craftsmen, the whitesmiths of a former 
 age, could not supply in sufficient number, nor with the requisite 
 precision of construction. Machine shops were, therefore, 
 erected upon a large scale, to be moved by power. It is well 
 known that the great machine shops of this country arose con- 
 temporaneously with the factories in Providence, Lowell, and 
 Philadelphia. The necessities of the textile manufactures, then, 
 and for the first time, called into existence the automatic mechani- 
 cal contrivances called machine tools and engines ; the planers and 
 lathes and steam hammers which substitute the firm, iron arm 
 for the weak and uncertain human hand, — contrivances which 
 have caused the disappearance, in the manufacturing world at 
 least, of the file, the plane, the chisel, the auger, the drill, in 
 the hand of man, except for the most trivial and unimportant 
 purposes. The power and accuracy of constructive art were 
 thus marvellously extended. Masses of iron of thirty or forty 
 tons’ weight are wrought and transformed with more facility and 
 in less time than a bar of a few hundreds’ weight could have 
 been fifty years ago. The precision of construction attained is 
 so perfect, according to President Barnard, the chief ornament 
 
28 
 
 THE SOLIDARITY OF THE INDUSTRIES. 
 
 of the science of your city, who has suggested much which I have 
 just said, that the dimensions of a required piece of work may be 
 gauged to the one-millionth part of an inch. The machine tools, 
 created by and for the textile manufactures, were now ready for 
 new applications. River and lake steamboats, locomotives, 
 ocean steamers, monitors, appeared in succession, the methods 
 of interior transportation are revolutionized, and the entire 
 naval marine, and almost entire commercial marine of the world 
 are completely transformed. In all the manufacturing nations, 
 and particularly in our own, a passion for invention has been 
 developed with the new facilities for putting in practice the con- 
 ceptions of inventive power. The arts succeed each other by a 
 true generation. Idea begets idea, and the invention of to-day 
 gives birth to the invention of to-morrow. In the genial atmos- 
 phere of invention new industries take root in the old, like 
 epiphytes in the humid forests of the tropics. Watchmaking 
 by machinery was established at Waltham, the cradle of the cotton 
 manufacture in Massachusetts ; and a still more luxurious art, 
 the working of silver plate by machinery, was founded at Provi- 
 dence, the birthplace of the cotton manufacture of Rhode Island. 
 
 For a long time the mechanical arts reacted chiefly upon each 
 other. The inventive and constructive power invoked by manu- 
 factures reached tardily, but at length, the fields of husbandry. 
 The labor-saving machinery of the farm, the harvesters, reapers, 
 mowers, and planters of the last two decades, came into exist- 
 ence. Agriculture, now doubled in its productive capacity, not 
 by improvements properly its own, but through the auxiliary 
 forces of the mechanical arts, presents the final and triumphant 
 demonstration of the solidarity of the industries. This is the 
 idea which called into existence your noble Institute, which in- 
 spires the grand expositions that distinguish the present age, and 
 which you have made so obvious to our senses by placing the 
 dahlia, the grape cluster, and the wheat sheaf by the side of the 
 organ, the engine, and the loom, and by gathering all these fair 
 products of labor under the self-supporting carpentry of this 
 vast dome, which is thus an emblem of the unity of national 
 industry.