THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 449 § 534] furnish that. And, even sooner, Watt's engines began to provide a better power than water to drive the new machinery. Steam was first used to drive spinning machinery in 1785. Fifteen years later, England was using more steam engines than water wheels. By 1800 the age of steam and of machinery had fairly begun in that country. 532. The English inventions were soon known in America (§ 435), but they did not come into common use here for another generation. In 1800 this country had only four steam engines, and only four cotton mills run by water. The Industrial Revolution came here sooner than in any other country after England; but it did not begin for us until the War of 1812 made it necessary for us, for a time, to manufacture all our own cloth. 533. With machinery and steam power, one laborer was soon able to produce more wealth than hundreds had produced by the old hand processes. This ought to have been pure gain for all the world, and especially it should have meant more comfort and more leisure for the workers. It is not the fault of Hargreaves and Crompton and Cartwright and Watt that most of the new wealth went to a new class of capitalists: the fault lay with the imperfect organization of human society. Part of the increased wealth did go, indirectly, to the common gain, in lower prices. Every one could soon buy cloth and hardware cheaper than before the Industrial Revolution. But, even yet, the workers have failed to get their fair share of the world's gain; and for many of them the Industrial Revolution has meant, not higher life, but lower life. Especially was this true when that Revolution was young. 534. The new machinery was costly. Workmen could not own it as they had owned their old looms and spinning wheels. Nor did they know how to combine so as to own it in groups. It all passed into the hands of wealthy men ("capitalists"). The capitalist manufacturer was a new figure in human society. He was not himself a workman, like the small employers in the old Domestic system. He used his money to build huge brick factories story on story; to fill them with costly machinery; to buy the "raw material" (cotton, wool, iron, as the case might be); and to pay wages to hired workers; or "operatives." The "Domestic" system of industry gave way to a new Capitalist system, or Wage system, or Factory system. 535. Under the old Domestic system, even in manufacturing districts like Pennsylvania, the workmen lived in their own homes, owned their own tools, and varied their toil (or used idle time) by tilling plots of ground about their cottages. Their condition was more like that of the farmer of to-day than like that of the modern factory worker. As the Factory system came in, the worker was compelled to change his whole manner of life. He must reach the factory within a few minutes of the first bell, about sunrise, and stay until it' grew too dark for work. (There were then no artificial lights suitable to illuminate factories.) So the capitalist built long blocks of ugly tenements near his factory, for rent; and his "hands" moved from their rural homes, with garden spots and fresh air and varied industry, into these crowded and squalid tenement districts, to live amid destitution and disease and vice. The factory system built up towns swiftly; but these new towns had no fit water supply, no sewerage system, no garbage collection. Science had not learned how to care for these needs, and law had not begun to wrestle with them. 536. Thus the new manufacturing society was made up of two hostile classes. Under the Domestic system, apprentices and journeymen had expected to rise, sooner or later, to be "masters"; and at all times they lived in constant intercourse with their employers, who worked side by side with them, shared their hard conditions, and had a sort of fatherly guardianship over them. Under the new system, a particularly enterprising and fortunate workman might now and then rise into the capitalist class; but, on the whole a distinct and permanent line divided the two classes. The capitalist, too, had no personal contact with his workmen. He employed, not two or three, living in his own family, § 537] THE NEW CAPITALISTS 451 but hundreds or thousands, whom he never saw outside the factory and whose names even he did not know except on the payroll. There was little chance for understanding between him and his "hands." 537. The men who owned and managed factories and banks and canal systems, together with a growing body of speculators and small money-masters, made up the capitalist class. They With permission, from Dodd's Expansion and Conflict ("Riverside History of the United States "), published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. Dr. Dodd states that the map was prepared by Miss Maud Hulse from data in Congressional Documents. were keen, forceful, driving men, with few interests outside "business." Absorbed in a mad race with one another for wealth and power, they had little sympathy or time for the needs of the two million 1" operatives" whose lives they ordered almost as absolutely as Southern planters ordered the lives of their two million Blacks. Like the planters of the black belt, too, they dwelt mainly in a small area a narrow, curving band of manufacturing 1 This is McMaster's estimate for the whole number of operatives in all lines in 1825. territory; but through many subtle influences, they held the faithful allegiance of the whole North Atlantic section from the Chesapeake to the Kennebec. They furnished the stocks and controlled the credit of the storekeepers in the small towns; they endowed the colleges and built the churches; they gave the best-paying employment to lawyers. The farmers- lately followers of Jefferson - felt their prosperity bound up with that of the great industrial towns that made their markets; and even the operatives long voted unquestioningly for the system which, they were assured, filled their meager dinner pails. Nor were any of these tributary classes consciously servile. To most people in this period a "captain of industry" typified American success. He was the natural leader, honestly admired as a model for youth. This capitalist class early developed a keen scent for special privilege, to be secured through courts and legislatures. Especially did it take advantage of the generous Americanism of South and West just after the war of 1812 to intensify the "protection" for its pet industries in the tariffs of the period. From this it reaped a rich harvest. Between 1820 and 1830 the output of American factories rose sixfold. In 1830 its value was a half greater than that of all the produce of Southern plantations- though the planters had an investment five times that of the factory owners. Since the factory workers got only a bare living, this huge factory output meant immense profits for the capitalist. 538. Between 1800 and 1825 the mass of hired labor in America shifted from the farm to the factory. The factory "operative," like the capitalist, was a new figure. And, unlike the capitalist, he was a helpless one. He furnished nothing but his hands. Numbers of men wanted work; and much factory work could be done by women and children, especially in cloth manufactures, where it consisted largely in turning levers or tying broken threads or cleaning rollers. Until the operatives learned to combine, so as to bargain collectively, the capitalist fixed wages and hours and conditions as he liked. § 539] THE DAWN-TO-DARK DAY 453 539. Carpenters and masons commonly worked from sunrise to sunset-just as farm laborers did. Those long hours were terribly hard; but they were endurable because they were spent in fresh air, amid outdoor scenes, in interesting and varied activity. But this long labor day of thirteen or fifteen hours (for much of the year) was now carried into the factory. There it was unendurable and ruinous, because of foul air, poor light, incessant, nerve-racking noise of machinery, and because there it crushed women and children. Hope Factory (Rhode Island), in 1831, rang its first bell ten minutes before sunrise. Five minutes after sunrise the gates were locked against tardy comers, not to open again until eight at night. (And a committee of laborers claimed that the employer stretched this horrible "day" by twenty or twentyfive minutes more, by always keeping the factory clock slow.) The only respites from toil during the fifteen or sixteen hours. were twenty-five minutes for breakfast and a like period for dinner, both meals being cold lunches brought by the operatives. And more than half the operatives were children. This was not an exceptional instance: it was typical. At Paterson, New Jersey, women and children were at their work in the mills by 4:30 in the morning. The Eagle Mill (at Griswold, Connecticut) called on its employees, in 1832, for fifteen hours and ten minutes of actual toil. Lowell was a notable exception. No child under twelve was employed there; the day was "short"; and all conditions were unusually favorable. At 4:30 A.M. the bell summoned the workers from their beds. At five they must be within the mills, and the gates were closed. With a half hour,' later, for breakfast, and forty-five minutes for "dinner," the labor continued till 7 P. M. The manufacturing company provided plain lodgings and arrangements for cheap board at $1.50 per week. Skillful workers (paid by the piece) might possibly earn twice that amount. The employees were almost all farmers' daughters. After their fourteen hours a day in the factory, these vigorous young women, for one generation, had energy for liter |