ABSTRACT
Until George Rogers Taylor's "great turnabout", American capital had gone largely into foreign trade, and American dependence on foreign trade made notions of economic self-sufficiency more immediate. While discussions of economic independence predated the Revolution, they were immediately provoked again after war by British policies and by spokesmen for those policies, in particular, John Baker Holroyd, the Earl of Sheffield. Tench Coxe was the most vociferous and prominent early proponent of American manufacturing. The raw materials were indifferent at best. The best wool Wansey saw came from Georgia. The mechanization of carding by means of carding cloth applied to cylinders and applying inanimate power in the form of water or steam to those cylinders was critical to the acceleration of textile manufacture. In October 1789, George Washington paid a visit to a carding cloth manufacturer of Boston. The Embargo of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse act of 1809 presumably stopped the importation of woolen cloth to the United States from England.
