Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/386

354 State encouragement of manufactures. [1807-15 men of Richmond determined to set up a cotton-mill. At Petersburg a Manufacturing Society was organised ; and the cavalry troop of that town voted to appear on the Fourth of July clad in white cloth of Virginia make. The Culpepper Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufactures offered prizes for the best pieces of home-made linen, cotton cloth, and woollen cloth. In the great cities the people formed associations, and pledged themselves to wear no garments of which the raw materials were not grown and the fabrics were not made in the United States. From the people the enthusiasm spread to the legislatures of the States. In 1808 the Pennsylvania House of Representatives asked its members to wear none but American-made cloths. In Kentucky a like resolution passed the legislature. In Virginia the legislature fixed December 1, 1809, as the date on which its members should appear dressed in American-made clothes ; and the example of these States was followed in Ohio, North Carolina, and Vermont. New Hampshire took off all taxes on cotton and woollen mills if their capital was between $4000 and $20,000. Pennsylvania laid a tax on dogs, and ordered the money to be used for the purchase of merino rams. Thus stimulated, mills, factories, workshops, foundries, rope-walks, sprang up with surprising rapidity. From 1809 to 1812 the statute- books of the States exhibit unmistakeable signs of the progress of the industrial revolution. In New York 32 charters were granted to manufacturing companies in 1810 and 1812. The policy of protecting these rising industries by duties on imports was brought before Congress in 1809 by Kentucky, which had then become the great hemp-growing and hemp-manufacturing State in the Union. To ensure a basis of knowledge for intelligent action, Congress ordered that in the Census of 1810 the enumerators should gather statistics of manufactures. From the information thus collected it appeared that goods valued at $198,000,000 were manufactured annually in the United States. The Non-Importation Act, the Non-Intercourse Act, and the war afforded protection of the strongest kind, diverted capital from ships and commerce to manufactures, and had brought them to a prosperous condition when peace opened the ports to foreign trade and competition, and threatened them with ruin. The manufacturers of Great Britain, well knowing the needs of the American markets, made haste to send over their goods, which, in the early summer of 1815, began to arrive in fleets of merchant vessels, in such quantities as had never before been known. Coming over consigned to nobody, the goods were hurried by the super-cargoes and captains in charge of them to the auction block, where, to the surprise of the owners, high prices were obtained by the sharp competition of eager buyers. A cargo of earthenware costing 1100 sold in Philadelphia for $12,000 an advance of about 120 per cent. A cargo of salt and earthenware from Liverpool fetched $16