on the jennies, but we are destitute of a person acquainted with the frames. We shall be glad to be informed what quantity of yarn your mills spin in a day on one spindle. What number of spindles a lad can, or does attend, and at what age? How your roping is made, what fineness, whether twisted harder or softer than for jennies? Whether the cotton is soaped before carding, as that for the jenny, or not at all? What the wooden rollers in the mills are covered with? Ours have been done with calf-skin. How the taking up is regulated. Ours is by leather strings? On what the spools play and run, on irons ? The following document will show the extent to which the firm of Almy & Brown had carried their operations about this period: An Account of the Cotton Goods manufactured by Almy & Brown, of Providence, state of Rhode Island, since the commencement of the business, say about the 11th of 6th month, 1789, to the 1st of 1st month, 1791. Corduroy, 1090yds. sold from 3s. 6d. to 4s. per yd. 45 pieces, Royal Ribs, Denims, &c. 25 30 pieces, From the 1st day of the 1st month, 1791, to the present date. Velverets, Andrew Dexter was an English goods merchant in Boston, and removed to Providence in 1785. His store was near where the Arcade now stands. He was the brother of Samuel Dexter, of Boston, who was secretary of the treasury and of the war department, and a senator of the United States. This gentleman assisted in the commencement of making machines for manufacturing cotton. His debtor account with the business commenced Sept. 8th, 1788, in which I find a machine for calendering cotton goods; the first charge is dated March 8th, 1790; this calender was put up in Moses Brown's barn, and worked by a horse. The extracts here furnished from his leger show the connection existing between Dexter, and Almy and Brown, and the operatives employed by them; and very fairly elucidate the very limited nature of the manufacturing business in general. The extracts are all certified as true copies, by George H. Peck. Moses Brown to Andrew Dexter, Dr. 1789. May 18. To my obligation of this day, To Nathaniel Gilmer's bill, forging 60 spindles, £3 1 9 £. s. d. 45 00 00 June 27. By one and half chest tea, received of Brown and 383 188 Nov. 5. By 13291b. beef received of Judge Aldridge, -571lb. at 1s. 8d. 47 11 8 11 1 6 By one calf-skin. Jan. 25. By 1284lb. sole leather at 14d. 1790. By half the hide and tallow, 300lb.; the whole being 2 10 1 £69 4 10 1790. Dr. Jenny, Carding and Spinning Frame, completed at the joint and equal expense of Lewis Peck and Andrew Dexter. To Lewis Peck's bill, 61 11 5 To Andrew Dexter, do. 78 3 7 £139 15 Extract of Almy & Brown's account in Andrew Dexter's Leger. The above is a true copy from the late Andrew Dexter Esqr's. Leger. Providence, Nov. 24th, 1835. GEORGE H. PECK. From the above documents, there is undeniable proof that Hargreaves' jennies were in use, in various places in the United States, previous to 1790, and that mixed goods of linen and cotton were wove principally by Scotish and Irish weavers. I have not been able to ascertain, beyond a doubt, who first introduced the jenny, or by whom they were first used for spinning in America. But Moses Brown says-" We had, in 1789, got several jennies and some weavers at work on linen warps, and found the undertaking much more arduous than I expected, both as to the attention necessary and the expense, being necessitated to employ workmen of the most transient kind, and on whom little dependence could be placed."* "During this time, 1790, linen warps were wove, and the jenny spinning was performed in different cellars of dwelling houses." There have been made by Almy & Brown, (Moses Brown found money, they being poor) since the 1st of January, 1790, to November following, velverets, velverteens, corduroys, thicksets, a variety of fancy cut goods, jeans, denims, velures, stockinets, pillows of fustian, &c., 326 pieces, containing 7823 yards, there *The difficulties under which these incipient measures towards the establishment of the business were pursued, can hardly be conceived at the present day, even by a practical and experienced machinist or manufacturer. The basin of the Narragansett Bay, and the small but invaluable streams that fall into it on every side, did not form then, as they now form, a continuous hive of mechanical industry, enterprise, and skill, where every sort of material, and every, even the most minute, subdivision of handicraft ingenuity, could be procured at will. There were no magazines or workmen. With the exception of scythes, anchors, horse shoes, ploughs, nails, cannon shot, and a few other articles of iron, there was no staple manufacture for exportation from Rhode Island. The mechanism then applied in these manufactures was almost as simple as the first impulse of water or The compounds of gyration now obtained, in almost endless variety, by the application of the ellipsis, was then almost or wholly unknown in this country. No sheetings, shirtings, checks, or ginghams, were made previous to 1790. steam. are also several other persons who manufactured cotton and linen by the carding machines and jennies." We hear nothing of the use of jennies after this period, and they produced but little advantage to the community; as Moses Brown observes :-" Our commencing the business at a period, when from the great extent of it in England and Ireland, and other causes, many became bankrupts, their goods were sold at auction, and shipped to America in large quantities, the two or three last years, lower than ever before. Add to this, which is much the greatest difficulty, British agents have been out in Providence, and, I presume, some other manufacturing towns, with large quantities of cotton goods for sale, and strongly soliciting correspondence of people in the mercantile line to receive their goods at a very long credit, say eighteen months, which is six or nine more than has been usual heretofore; for the discouragement of their manufactory here. This bait has been too eagerly taken by our merchants, who, from their activity in business, mostly trade equal to or beyond their capital, and so are induced by the long credit to receive the goods, in expectation of turning them to advantage before the time of payment. But the great quantities some have on hand, we have reason to expect, will disappoint them; but others, being induced by the same motive, are supplied, and thus the quantities of British goods of these kinds on hand, exceeding the market, obstruct the sale of our own manufactures, without the merchant trading in them getting his usual profits by them. This English trade, therefore, in time, would be reduced for want of profits; but when the actual sales of British goods fail, of the cotton manufacture, they are sent and left here on commission. This, I am informed, by good authority, was the policy of the English manufacturers, formed into societies for that purpose." The abilities of the manufacturing interest of Great Britain to intercept the sale of our own goods, at a price as low as theirs has been heretofore sold by our importing merchants, the actual combination of them to discourage other countries, forms a very great discouragement to men of abilities to lay out their property in extending manufactories; the preparation for which, even before they can be perfected, must be left, if they cannot be continued. Such was the incipient state of the attempt at jenny spinning, in 1790; and nothing but the introduction of the "water-frame spinning," which had superseded the jennies in England, could have laid a foundation for the cotton manufacture in the United States. But that had happily commenced, by an individual who was personally and practically acquainted with all its branches, and who had uncommon determination and perseverance to accomplish his purpose. The following description of jenny spinning, is from the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, under the article "Cotton Spinning." "The jenny, in its manner of action, resembles the ancient spinning with the distaff and spindle, but is so contrived, that one person works a number of spindles at once. It was the earliest improvement on spinning, after the one-thread wheel, and was the invention of Richard Hargreaves, weaver in Lancashire, in the year 1767. The jenny is now entirely superseded by the mule. For jenny spinning, the elementary process was called batting; it was next soaped, in order to make it more easily stretched in the roving and spinning; the soaping was performed by immersing the cotton in a solution of soap in water; it was next put into a screw press, and afterwards dried in a stove. "Hand cards first, and stock cards afterwards, were employed before the invention of the cylinder cards. "The roving was performed, on similar principles to the spinning jenny, on a machine called a billy, which was driven by means of bands from a cylinder, which receives its motion from a vertical fly-wheel, driven by hand at one end of the machine. "The jenny is a machine, similar in its operation to the roving billy, but differs from it in construction in this respect, that the clasp is attached to the carriage, while the spindles are disposed in the rails of the frame which remain at rest. The drawing out of the clasp stretches the roves so as to reduce them into the size proper for the yarn, at the same time the spindles twine it. During the return of the carriage, the yarn is built on the spindles by levers and wires, and formed like the rovings into cops. It is wrought with the hand by one grown-up person, assisted by a boy or girl, called a piecer, in order to mend such threads as break. The yarn, when taken off the spindles, is sometimes reeled, but more frequently given to the weaver in cops, who has it wound on the bobbins preparatory to being placed in the shuttle." James Hargreaves, a weaver of Stand Hill, near Blackburn, was the inventor of the jenny. Such a machine, it is proble, would not be at once perfected; its construction would probably occupy the author, who was a poor man, and had to work for his daily bread, some years; and as Hargreaves went to Nottingham in 1790, before which time his machine had not only been perfected, but its extraordinary powers so clearly proved, notwithstanding his efforts to keep it secret, as to expose him to persecution and the attacks of a mob, it is reasonable to think |