US Textile Industry in First Industrial Revolution

In his latest book, "The Dawn of Innovation", Charles Morris, an American lawyer and writer, tells about America's first industrial revolution. The textile industry was also touched upon in this book.

Morris says that, first, Britain had a well-developed industry: cotton and textiles. But in Britain, cotton spinning and weaving were entirely separate. In America, Francis Lowell introduced a single flow between the looms and the spinning machines. Previously, you had to load each individual thread on to the loom to weave the cotton, but Lowell invented a machine that did that without human intervention. Even though Americans had stolen most of the British technology, they had more of a mass-production, flow-through concept. This was then applied to everything else.

Republished with changes from this article.