These changes as they progressed made new demands upon the government. After the development of the steam engine, and after later inventions and contrivances had cheapened the production of cotton, woolen and other goods, household spinning-wheels and looms were silent, and the United States imported nearly every manufactured article needed by its people, sending out in return the products of its farms and plantations, its tobacco, cotton and grain. Year after year this draining process went on, the manufacturing towns of Europe growing great and prosperous, the United States widening and increasing in population, but adding little to its wealth. The mill-owners of Europe bought their cotton in South Carolina or Georgia, transported it across the Atlantic, made it into cloths, and returned them to New York or Charleston. The American purchaser paid the cost of both transportations, the cost and profit of manufacture abroad, all the profits of middle-men who handled the goods, and all the cost of exchanges. By this process America toiled, while England and the other manufacturing States of Europe reaped the harvest. Thoughtful people, knowing that capital employed in production feeds, clothes and lodges the industrious workman, adds to the wealth of the nation, adds to its strength, adds to its power of resistance, and lessens the individual burden of taxation, and comprehending the inevitable result of the drain in progress, asked, Is there no way of preventing this? They saw the raw material produced in bountiful profusion, saw the water power of the country running away to the sea unvexed by use, and naturally asked, Is it not possible to bring the miners and smelters, the founders, machinists and laborers, the mechanic and manufacturer of every description, here, to place them beside the raw material, to utilize this wasted power, and to save the losses and attrition that are impoverishing the country? When these thoughts took shape in the active brains of Americans, the change began. Mills and factories sprang up by the water-courses. Tall chimneys, clouds of smoke and glowing furnaces came after. Thus American manufacturing was born.