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.
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