We have, however, confined our attention to a single industry as it developed in a particular nation,—we have taken the cotton factory as typical of all factories and its growth in England as typical of its growth throughout the Western world. But the factory has developed differently in each industry and its social influence has never been quite alike in any two nations. When, for instance, Samuel Slater introduced cotton manufacturing into America, he set up in Rhode Island an exact counterpart of the English factory. When, later, other factories were built in New England there took place the same transition of a vast laboring population from the rural districts to the manufacturing towns;—but this population was very unlike the manufacturing population of England. The American factories were operated by the sons and daughters of Yankee farmers, reared in the atmosphere of democracy and springing from a race unaffected by the traditions of feudalism; for them political equality had been already won, yet even in America the factory became an instrument for social progress. In the rapidly growing manufacturing towns these country folk found a new life of opportunity for social advancement; they did not remain operatives long, but advanced to higher callings; and to take the places which they left, thousands of workers came from Lancashire here to enjoy that civic freedom for which their brothers in the Old World were still contending. To-day in our Southern States we see a similar process at work,—another race of men advancing in the social scale by means of the factory; from the mountains of the Carolinas thousands of young men and women, reared in a civilization almost unbelievably primitive, are flocking to the manufacturing towns, there to enjoy the advantages of modern life. But however varied have been the phases of the development of the factory in different parts of the world there has always been this common phenomenon—the concentration of the laboring population in manufacturing cities and the development of social discontent leading to social progress.