Knitting formed one of the earliest means of earning for women, the demand for hose of every description being beyond the power of the family to supply. Knitting-machines of various orders were in use on the Continent, and had been brought into England; but any attempt to employ them here was for a long time unsuccessful. Yarn was spun especially for this purpose, usually with a double thread, and in the year 1698 Martha's Vineyard exported 9,000 pairs. The German and English settlers of Pennsylvania brought many handknitting machines with them, and were rivals of New England; but Virginia led, and the census of 1810 credits her with over half of the hand-knit pairs exported, Connecticut coming next. In Pennsylvania the women earned half a crown a pair for the long hose, and this in the opening of the eighteenth century; and the State still retains it as a household industry. The percentage for the United States of women engaged in it by the last census is 61,100. The early stages of the industry employed very few women, the processes involving too heavy labor; and out of 159 workers in the first mills, only eight were women, these being employed in carding and fulling. According to our last census, 10,743 are employed in New England mills alone; but the proportion remains far below that of the cotton-mills, and at many points in the South and remote territories it is still a household industry in which all share. Until well on in the nineteenth century the factory and the domestic system were still interwoven, nor had there been intelligent definition of the actual meaning of this system until Ure formulated one:-- "The factory system in technology is simply the combined operation of many orders of work-people in tending with assiduous skill a series of productive machines, continuously impelled by a central power."[15] A central power controlling an army of workers had been the dream of all mechanicians; and Ure formulated this also:-- "It is the idea of a vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a common object,--all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving force." This was the result brought about by the gradual extension of the factory system. The objections made from the beginning, and still made, with such answers as experience has suggested, find place later on. FOOTNOTES: [4] By Thorold Rogers. [5] Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England, vol. i. p. 304. [6] Caulkins, p. 273. [7] Rider's Book Notes, vol. ii. p. 7. [8] Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25, 1773. [9] Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25, 1773. [10] Barry's Massachusetts, vol. xi. p. 193. [11] Weeden's Social and Economic History of New England, vol. ii. p. 790. [12] Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1798-1835, p. 353. [13] Atlantic Monthly, December, 1883, p. 773.