ull
dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted
in parts of the country till 1850 or later.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840

[1840]

During the War of 1812 we had in England an industrial spy, whose
campaign there has perhaps accomplished more for the country than all
our armies did. It was Francis C. Lowell, of Boston. Great Britain was
just introducing the power loom. The secret of structure was guarded
with all vigilance, yet Lowell, passing from cotton factory to cotton
factory with Yankee eyes, ears, and wit, came home in 1814, believing,
with good reason, as it proved, that he could set up one of the machines
on American soil. Broad Street in Boston was the scene of his initial
experiments, but the factory to the building of which they led was at
Waltham. It was owned by a company, one of whose members was Nathan
Appleton. Water furnished the motive power. By the autumn of 1814 Lowell
had perfected his looms and placed them in the factory. Spinning
machinery was also built, mounting seventeen hundred spindles. English
cotton-workers did not as yet spin and weave under the same roof, so
that the Lowell Mill at Waltham may, with great probability, be
pronounced the first in the world to carry cloth manufacture
harmoniously through all its several successive steps from the raw stuff
to the finished ware.

From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the
cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke,
Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being.
Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240;
in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of
factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger.
This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order
of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before
1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little
evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special
legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this
unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on
complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar
provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of
the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of
incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitut