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spinsters had been able to provide; the invention of the СНАР. spinning-jenny and the water frame would have been useless if the old system of hand-carding had not been superseded by a more efficient and more rapid process. Just as Arkwright applied rotatory motion to spinning, so Lewis Paul introduced revolving cylinders for carding cotton. Paul's machine consisted of a horizontal cylinder, covered in its whole circumference with parallel rows of cards with intervening spaces, and turned by a handle. Under the cylinder was a concave frame, lined internally with cards exactly fitting the lower half of the cylinder, so that, when the handle was turned, the cards of the cyliuder and of the concave frame worked against each other and carded the wool.' The cardings were of course only of the length of the cylinder, but an ingenious apparatus was attached for making them into a perpetual carding. Each length was placed on a flat broad riband which was extended between two short cylinders and which wound upon one cylinder as it unwound from the other.' 1

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This extraordinary series of inventions placed an almost unlimited supply of yarn at the disposal of the weaver. But the machinery, which had thus been introduced, was still incapable of providing yarn fit for the finer qualities of cotton cloth. The water frame spun. twist for warps, but it could not be advantageously used for the finer qualities, as thread of great tenuity has not strength to bear the pull of the rollers when winding itself on the bobbin.' This defect, however, was removed by the ingenuity of Samuel Crompton, a young weaver residing near Bolton. Crompton succeeded in combining in one machine the various excellences of Arkwright's water frame and Hargreaves' jenny.' Like the former, his machine, which from its nature is happily called the mule, has a system of rollers to reduce the roving; and

1 Baines' Hist. of the Cotton Manufacture, p. 174, from which work the preceding quotations are also taken.

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CHAP. like the latter it has spindles without bobbins to give the twist, and the thread is stretched and spun at the same time by the spindles after the rollers have ceased to give out the rove. The distinguishing feature of the mule is that the spindles, instead of being stationary, as in both the other machines, are placed on a moveable carriage, which is wheeled out to the distance of fifty-four or fiftysix inches from the roller beam, in order to stretch and twist the thread, and wheeled in again to wind it on the spindles. In the jenny, the clasp, which held the rovings, was drawn back by the hand from the spindles; in the mule, on the contrary, the spindles recede from the clasp, or from the roller beam, which acts as a clasp. The rollers of the mule draw out the roving much less than those of the water frame, and they act like the clasp of the jenny by stopping and holding fast the rove, after a certain quantity has been given out, whilst the spindles continue to recede for a short distance further, so that the draught of the thread is in part made by the receding of the spindles. By this arrangement, comprising the advantages both of the roller and the spindles, the thread is stretched more gently and equably, and a much finer quality of yarn can therefore be produced.' 1

The effects of Crompton's great invention may be stated epigrammatically. Before Crompton's time it was thought impossible to spin eighty hanks to the pound. The mule has spun three hundred and fifty hanks to the pound! The natives of India could spin a pound of cotton into a thread 119 miles long. The English succeeded in spinning the same thread to a length of 160 miles.2 Yarn of the finest quality was at once at the disposal of the weaver, and an opportunity was afforded for the production of an indefinite quantity of cotton yarn. But the great inventions, which have been thus enu1 Baines' Hist. of the Cotton Manufacture, pp. 197, 198. Ibid. p. 200, and Colchester, vol. ii. p. 75.

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merated, would not of themselves have been sufficient to CHAP. establish the cotton manufacture on its present basis. The ingenuity of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton had been exercised to provide the weaver with yarn. Their inventions had provided him with more yarn than he could by any possibility use. The spinster had beaten the weaver, just as the weaver had previously beaten the spinster, and the manufacture of cotton seemed likely to stand still because the yarn could not be woven more rapidly than an expert workman with Kay's improved fly shuttle could weave it.

Such a result was actually contemplated by some of the leading manufacturers, and such a result might possibly have temporarily occurred if it had not been averted by the ingenuity of a Kentish clergyman. Edmund Cartwright, a clergyman residing in Kent, happened to be staying at Matlock in the summer of 1784, and to be thrown into the company of some Manchester gentlemen. The conversation turned on Arkwright's machinery, and ' one of the company observed that, as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected and so much cotton spun that hands would never be found to weave it.' Cartwright replied that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill.' The Manchester gentlemen, however, unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable. Cartwright controverted the impracticability by remarking that there had lately been exhibited an automaton figure which played at chess;' it could not be more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that complicated game. Within three years he had himself proved that the invention was practicable by producing the power-loom. Subsequent inventors improved the idea which Cartwright had originated, and within fifty years from the date of his memorable visit to Matlock there were not less

CHAP.

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than 100,000 power-looms at work in Great Britain alone.1

The inventions, which have been thus enumerated, are the most remarkable of the improvements which stimulated the development of the cotton industry. But other inventions, less generally remembered, were hardly less wonderful or less beneficial than these. Up to the middle of last century cotton could only be bleached by the cloth being steeped in alkaline leys for several days, washed clean, and spread on the grass for some weeks to dry. The process had to be repeated several times, and many months were consumed before the tedious operation was concluded. Scheele, the Swedish philosopher, discovered in 1774 the bleaching properties of chlorine, or oxymuriatic acid. Berthollet, the French chemist, conceived in 1785 the idea of applying the acid to bleaching cloth. Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, and Henry of Manchester, respectively introduced the new acid into the bleachfields of Macgregor of Glasgow and Ridgway of Bolton. The process of bleaching was at once reduced from months to days, or even hours.2

In the same year in which Watt and Henry were introducing the new acid to the bleacher, Bell, a Scotchman, was laying the foundations of a trade in printed calicoes.

The old method of printing was by blocks of sycamore, about 10 inches long by 5 broad, on the surface of which the pattern was cut in relief in the common method of wood engraving.' As the block had to be applied to the cloth by hand, no more of it could be printed at once than the block could cover, and a single piece of calico, 28 yards in length, required the application of the block 448 times.' This clumsy process was superseded by cylinder printing. A polished copper cylinder, several feet in length, and 3 or 4 inches in diameter, is engraved 1 Baines' Cotton, pp. 229, 235. 2 Ibid. pp. 247-249. Ibid. pp. 264, 265.

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with a pattern round its whole circumference and from CHAP. end to end. It is then placed horizontally in a press, and, as it revolves, the lower part of the circumference passes through the colouring matter, which is again removed from the whole surface of the cylinder, except the engraved pattern, by an elastic steel blade placed in contact with the cylinder, and reduced to so fine and straight an edge as to take off the colour without scratching the copper. The colour being thus left only in the engraved pattern, the piece of calico or muslin is drawn tightly over the cylinder, which revolves in the same direction, and prints the cloth.' The saving of labour 'effected by the machine' is 'immense: one of the cylinder machines, attended by a man and a boy, is actually capable of producing as much work as could be turned out by one hundred block printers, and as many tear boys.'1

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Such are the leading inventions, which made Great Britain in less than a century the wealthiest country in the world. When we undertook the cotton manufacture we had comparatively few facilities for its prosecution, and had to struggle with the greatest difficulties. The raw material was produced at an immense distance from our shores, and in Hindustan and in China the inhabitants had arrived at such perfection in the arts of spinning and weaving, that the lightness and delicacy of their finest cloths emulated the web of the gossamer, and seemed to set competition at defiance. Such, however, has been the influence of the stupendous discoveries and inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and others, that we have overcome all these difficulties—that neither the extreme cheapness of labour in Hindustan, nor the excellence to which the natives had attained, has enabled them to withstand the competition of those, who