1943: Paychecks go on a sudden diet nationwide, as Federal income tax withholding is implemented for the first time. Originally proposed by Beardsley Ruml, an executive at Macy's department store who has encouraged shoppers to buy on the installment plan, withholding is cleverly called "pay as you go" and is coupled with an amnesty for the previous year's taxes. The public backs it eagerly, forever after giving the Federal government interest-free financing.

Peter Wyckoff, Wall Street and the Stock Markets (Chilton Book Co., Philadelphia, 1972), p. 90; The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1989, p. B2; http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/993/shlaes.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj14n3-1.html

1768: Samuel Slater is born in Belper, Derbyshire, England. He works as an apprentice to Jedediah Strutt, partner of textile-mill operator Richard Arkwright, then immigrates to the newly independent U.S. in 1789. In the 1780s, Slater conducts the world's greatest act of industrial espionage, laboring in the textile mills of Lancashire and memorizing the shapes and interactions of thousands of moving parts in the mechanical looms. (The export of textile machinery was then a felony under British law.) In Pawtucket, R.I., he establishes the nation's first successful cotton mill in 1793.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater