y to learn his machines, and then left him to set up for
themselves. The knowledge he had brought soon became widespread. Mills
were built not only in New England but in other States. In 1809
there were sixty-two spinning mills in operation in the country, with
thirty-one thousand spindles; twenty-five more mills were building or
projected, and the industry was firmly established in the United States.
The yarn was sold to housewives for domestic use or else to professional
weavers who made cloth for sale. This practice was continued for years,
not only in New England, but also in those other parts of the country
where spinning machinery had been introduced.

By 1810, however, commerce and the fisheries had produced considerable
fluid capital in New England which was seeking profitable employment,
especially as the Napoleonic Wars interfered with American shipping; and
since Whitney's gins in the South were now piling up mountains of raw
cotton, and Slater's machines in New England were making this cotton
into yarn, it was inevitable that the next step should be the power
loom, to convert the yarn into cloth. So Francis Cabot Lowell, scion of
the New England family of that name, an importing merchant of Boston,
conceived the idea of establishing weaving mills in Massachusetts. On a
visit to Great Britain in 1811, Lowell met at Edinburgh Nathan Appleton,
a fellow merchant of Boston, to whom he disclosed his plans and
announced his intention of going to Manchester to gain all possible
information concerning the new industry. Two years afterwards, according
to Appleton's account, Lowell and his brother-in-law, Patrick T.
Jackson, conferred with Appleton at the Stock Exchange in Boston.
They had decided, they said, to set up a cotton factory at Waltham and
invited Appleton to join them in the adventure, to which he readily
consented. Lowell had not been able to obtain either drawings or model
in Great Britain, but he had nevertheless designed a loom and had
completed a model which seemed to work.

The partners took in with them Paul Moody of Amesbury, an expert
machinist, and by the autumn of 1814 looms were built and set up at
Waltham. Carding, drawing, and roving machines were also built and
installed in the mill, these machines gaining greatly, at Moody's expert
hands, over their American rivals. This was the first mill in the United
States, and one of the first in the world, to combine under one roof all
the operations