ingenuity and reach of mind;* or in adding such improvements to his machinery from time to time as his experience and observation suggested. And thus it was, that from a poor barber he raised himself, not merely to rank and great affluence, but to be the founder of a new branch of national industry, destined in a wonderfully short space of time to assume the very first place among the manufactures of his country. A very short review of what the cotton trade has since become, as compared with its previous state, will show what it owes to Sir Richard Arkwright. England may be said to have been a manufacturing country for five hundred years, from the time, namely, when the clothiers of Flanders came over in great numbers, and settled themselves in different parts of the kingdom, on the marriage of our Edward III. to Philippa of Hainault. The manufacture of cotton cloth, however, as we have already noticed, was not introduced among us till about the middle of the seventeenth century, and made no extraordinary progress for a hundred years afterwards. As an evidence of the comparatively slight degree of interest which it excited, and of the little ingenuity which was consequently exerted in its improvement, it may be stated that the valuable invention of the fly-shuttle, which was introduced into the woollen manufacture about the year 1738, was not employed in the weaving of cottons till more than twenty years afterwards; up to which period, whenever the web was more than three feet wide, two men were constantly stationed at the loom in which it was wrought, the one to throw the shuttle from right to left, and the other to throw it back from left to right. It was not till the year 1769 that an attempt was made upon any considerable scale to spin cotton thread by machinery; for, whatever may have been done before this time by individuals of mechanical ingenuity in inventing contrivances for that purpose, it is certain that the invaluable improvement in question was really introduced into the manufacture by Arkwright when he took out his patent and built his first mill. The consequence has been a revolution in the entire system, not only of our manufactures but of our commerce, such as never had taken place in so short a space of time in any country. About the beginning of the last century, the quantity of cotton wool annually imported into Great Britain did not amount to 1,200,000 lbs.; and by the year 1720 it had not increased to much beyond 2,000,000 lbs. There are no returns from 1720 to 1771, but the importation had probably gone on increasing "The originality and comprehension of Sir Richard Arkwright's mind," says the writer of the article on the Cotton Manufacture, in the Supplement to the "Encyclopædia Britannica," "were perhaps marked by nothing more strongly than the judgment with which, although new to business, he conducted the great concerns his discoveries gave rise to, and the systematic order and arrange ment which he introduced into every department of his extensive works. His plans of management, which must have been entirely his own, since no establishment of a similar nature then existed, were universally adopted by others; and after long experience they have not yet in any material point been altered or improved." during that interval, although at a slow rate. Nor did it make a very rapid progress even for several years after spinning by machinery was introduced, having from 1771 to 1775 averaged only 4,764,589 lbs., and for the next five years only 6,706,013 lbs. In 1784, the year immediately preceding the final repeal of Arkwright's patent, it amounted to 11,482,083 lbs. That event gave a great impulse to the manufacture, the average importation for the next five years having grown to 25,443,270 lbs. annually. In 1799 it had risen to 43,379,278 lbs., and in 1800 to 56,010,732 lbs. In 1817 it was 124,912,968 lbs., and in 1843 it actually amounted to the immense quantity of 673,193,116 lbs. The average importation of cotton wool into Great Britain may now (1858) be stated as amounting to about 600 millions of pounds per annum, or fully three hundred times what it was a century ago, and to more than a hundred and fifty times what it was when Arkwright began to spin. The whole of this raw material, with the exception of about a fifth or sixth part, is spun into thread, and mostly wrought into cloth, in this country. The Reverend Dr. Cartwright invented his power-loom in 1784; but it is only since the commencement of the present century that weaving by machinery has become general. Steam was first applied as the moving power for the spinning machinery in 1785; in which year Messrs. Boulton and Watt erected one of their rotative engines for a factory belonging to the Messrs. Robinson, at Paplewick, in Nottinghamshire. In the present day the cotton is carded, spun, and woven into cloth in the same manufactory; these different operations being performed by machinery the several parts of which are all set in motion by a single steam-engine. In 1787 the number of spinning factories in the county of Lancaster amounted only to 42, of comparatively inconsiderable magnitude; in August 1825, there were, according to Mr. Baines,* no fewer than 104 such factories in Manchester alone, which were worked by 110 steamengines, of the aggregate power of 3,598 horses. The total number of steam-looms at work in the kingdom in 1835 was 109,626.† In 1824, it has been stated, the number of spindles constantly in motion was about six millions, and the power by which they were moved equal to that of 10,572 horses. In another statement, however, drawn up by Mr. Kennedy,§ it is calculated that in 1817 (when the importation of cotton wool was not nearly so great as in 1824) the number of spindles was 6,645,833, and the moving power equal to that of 20,768 horses. It must be four or five times as great now as it was then. Some idea may be formed of the growth of this manufacture since the year 1769, by contrasting the astonishing number of threads, which it would thus * "History of Lancashire," vol. ii. p. 134. Returns by Inspectors of Factories, as quoted in Porter's "Progress of the Nation," iii. 163. Supplement to "Encyclopædia Britannica," art. Cotton Manufacture. §"Manchester Memoirs," Second Series. vol. iii. appear are now spun every day, with the 50,000 which were all that were then produced. 99 66 The produce of all this machinery is, as may be supposed, immense. "In the present improved state of this (the weaving) process," says the writer of the article already referred to in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," one person, generally a girl, attends to two looms, the weekly produce of which is from seven to nine pieces of cloth, of seven-eighths wide, and twenty-eight yards long." "A single factory in Manchester," says Mr. Guest, writing in 1828, “and that not of first-rate magnitude, receives the raw cotton, and turns out a web of cloth, varying in width from three quarters of a yard to a yard and a quarter, of forty miles in length every week." In 1750, it has been calculated, the whole amount of the cotton manufacture of the kingdom did not exceed the annual value of 200,0007,: it now probably amounts, even after an immense reduction of prices, to between thirty and forty millions of pounds sterling per annum. Sir Richard Arkwright states in his "Case " published in 1781, that the capital then invested in buildings and machinery by those engaged in this trade amounted to 200,000l.; even in 1827 it was calculated to amount, in Lancashire alone, which possesses about fourfifths of the trade, to 8,000,000%.* In the year ending on the 1st of May 1818, 105 millions of yards of cotton cloth of all sorts were manufactured in Glasgow and the neighbourhood, of which the value was about 5,200,000l.† Of this about one-half was exported. The declared, or real, value of the cotton cloths, twist, and yarn, exported from Great Britain in 1843 exceeded 23,000,000l. The export trade in cotton is now more than three times that in woollens, the manufacture of which used to be the great staple of the kingdom. The extraordinary perfection to which every part of the cotton manufacture has now been carried is another result for which we are entirely indebted to the introduction of machinery. Especially since the invention of the mule, a compound of the jenny and the water-frame, about the year 1790, the muslins manufactured in England have been every year attaining a greater fineness of fabric, and are now rapidly approaching to a rivalry even in this respect with the most exquisite productions of the East. As an illustration of the state of advancement to which the spinning process has been brought, it may be mentioned, that "Mr. John Pollard, of Manchester, spun, in 1792, on the mule, no fewer than 278 hanks of yarn, forming a thread of 233,520 yards, or upwards of 132 miles in length, from a single pound of raw cotton." The diminution in the price of the manufactured article which has been produced by the successive improvements in the cotton machinery is equally extraordinary. Yarn of what is called No. 100, which even in 1786, * Baines's "Lancashire," vol. ii. p. 134, vol. iii. p. 404. +"Encyclopædia Britannica," Supplement. "Edinburgh Review," No. 91, p. 15. after its price had been greatly reduced by the cancelling of Arkwright's patent, sold for thirty-eight shillings, was in 1832 to be had for less than three shillings. The raw material is now indeed brought from India, and manufactured into cloths in England, which, after being re-exported to that country, are actually sold there cheaper than the produce of the native looms. There can hardly be a more striking proof than this of the triumph of machinery. Finally, it appears that, while the number of persons employed in the cotton manufacture in 1767 did not probably amount to 30,000, the number of those now engaged in its different departments can hardly be less than half a million. Even many years ago, indeed, it was calculated by some authorities to be twice as great.* Yet, "in some branches of the business," it has been stated, "the spinning in particular, such is the economy of labour introduced by the use of machinery, that one man and four children will spin as much yarn as was spun by six hundred women and girls fifty years ago."+ CHAPTER XXXIX. INVENTION OF THE POWER-LOOM:-DR. CARTWRIGHT; W. EDWARDS; MACHINERY, in addition to being used in the spinning, is also, as we have stated, extensively applied to the weaving of cotton; and we shall now † Baines's "Lancashire," vol. i. p. 119 * "Edinburgh Review," No. 91. give a short account of the Reverend Dr. CARTWRIGHT, to whose ingenuity our great national manufacture is indebted for the introduction of this crowning improvement. The story, besides its connection with what has gone immediately before, and its own interest, will be found not to be wanting in appropriateness with reference to our general subject; and we have been supplied with the materials of our sketch from a quarter which enables us to add some original and authentic particulars to what has been elsewhere published. Edmund Cartwright was born in the year 1743, and was the fourth son of William Cartwright, Esq., of Marnham, in Nottinghamshire. One of his elder brothers was the late Major John Cartwright, so well known for his steady devotion through a long life to what he believed to be the cause of truth and patriotism, and for many public and private virtues which commanded the respect even of those who differed most widely from him in politics. Being intended for the Church, Edmund at the usual age was entered of University College, Oxford, from whence he was subsequently elected a Fellow of Magdalen College. He early distinguished himself by his literary attainments, an evidence of which he gave to the world while yet a young man, by the publication of a small volume of Poems, which was very favourably received. About the year 1774, also, he became a contributor to the "Monthly Review;" and he continued to be a frequent writer in that publication during the following ten years. For the first forty years of his life he had never given any attention to the subject of mechanics; although, as was recollected long afterwards, his genius for invention in that department had once displayed itself, while at his father's house during one of his college vacations, in some improvements which he made on an agricultural machine which happened to attract his notice. But this exercise of his ingenuity, being out of the line of his pursuits at that time, led to no other attempts of the kind, nor to any further application of his thoughts to such matters. The circumstances which many years after this led him to the invention of his weaving-machine, or power-loom, as it is commonly called, cannot be better described than they have been by himself in the following statement, first printed (in 1815) in the Supplement to the "Encyclopædia Britannica :”—“Happening," he says, " to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright's spinning machinery. 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. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. This brought on a conversation upon the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and in defence of |