From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being. Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240; in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger. This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before 1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitution, no State can violate, still further humored and aided the corporation system. [Illustration: Train schedule.] From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.) In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however, did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools. Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in 1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812. [Illustration: Two rail cars that look like ordinary wagons with iron wheels. One is pulled by a horse, the other by a primitive steam engine.] Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in America."