The manufacture of cotton had its origin in the East, where the cotton plant is indigenous, and where the climate renders a light and absorbent fabric a suitable clothing for the people. It has in consequence been long established over every part of Asia, although it was only in India that the fabric was manufactured extensively, with a view to foreign exchange.

Arrian mentions cotton cloth among the commodities which the Romans brought from India; but the quantity imported by them was inconsiderable, arising from the preference which they gave to woollen clothing. Dr Robertson remarks, that the difference between the cargoes imported from India in ancient and in modern times appears to have arisen, not from any diversity in the nature of the goods prepared for sale in that country, but from variety in the tastes or in the wants of the nations with which they have successively traded.

The implements used by the Indians in the different processes of the cotton manufacture, from the cleaning of the wool to its conversion into the finest muslin, may be purchased for the value of a few shillings, and are of so rude and simple a construction as to be evidently the invention of a very early period. With the exception of the loom, none of them deserves the name of a machine, or displays the slightest mechanical ingenuity. They spin the yarn upon the distaff; and yet, with all the advantages which we in this country derive from machinery, we have only recently been able to equal, either in fineness or quality, the yarn which is produced by means of this primitive instrument.

The well managed use of the finger and thumb of the Indian spinner, patiently and carefully applied in the formation of the thread, and the moisture at the same time communicated to it, are found to have the effect of incorporating the fibres of the cotton more perfectly than can be accomplished by our most improved machines.

The loom is composed of a few sticks or reeds, which the Indian carries about with him, and puts up in the fields under the shade of a tree, or at the side of his cottage. He digs a hole large enough to contain his legs and the lower part of the "geer," and fastens the balances to some convenient branch over head. Two loops underneath the geer, in which he inserts his great toes, serve as treadles; and he employs the shuttle, formed like a large netting needle, but of a length somewhat exceeding the breadth of the cloth, as "battoon," using it alternately to draw through the weft and strike it up. The reed is the only part of the weaving apparatus which approaches, in the perfection of its construction, to the instruments we use. The loom has no beam, and the warp is laid out upon the ground the whole length of the piece of cloth. The weavers live entirely in villages, as they could not, if shut up in towns, work in this manner. Upon this rude machine, worked in the way we have mentioned, the Indians produce those muslins which have long been such objects of curiosity, from the exquisite beauty and fineness of their texture.

It is probable that the whole of the implements which we have just described existed as we now find them before the people of India were divided into castes. The transmission of the same employment from father to son (which, although not specially enjoined by the Hindu code, is the invariable practice in India), while it has the effect of conveying unimpaired the knowledge acquired in any art, tends to check its farther advancement. It is the opinion of Mr Rickards, who so ably advocated the interests of the natives of India in the discussion in parliament on the renewal of the Company's charter (1814), that latterly this form of society, with all its dependencies, habits, and restraints, has been held together chiefly by the oppression of the fiscal exactions, the want of a free trade, and the consequent universal poverty of the people. In support of this opinion, he refers to what the Hindu population of Calcutta and Bombay have achieved in the pursuits of commerce. We trust, however, that we may now look forward to the speedy abolition of this system, so much opposed to all development of talent, and which, by reducing man to the condition of a machine, has paralyzed the exertions and arrested the improvement of the people of India.

Such was the commercial and social condition of the Abolition British territories in the East Indies till 1834, when the of the East Company's charter was renewed only as a governing power; India trading monopoly previously possessed being then totally abolished. In that year a new era began for the East Indies. Thence may be dated a charter emancipating the industry of that vast dependency, thereby securing individual exertion, and laying the foundation of social, as well as national progress. Free intercourse with the intelligent classes of the Western World has begun to enlighten the minds of the old Hindu population; superstition is decreasing; European arts and civilization are appreciated; the great agents of national advancement, canals, roads, and railways, are desired; a knowledge of the English language is increasing; and the constant discovery of new wants continually incites to new exertions. Many wealthy natives of India now visit Europe, and return to their homes with diminished prejudices and increased stores of useful and practical knowledge. The pure administration of justice, as conducted in the courts of Great Britain, is warmly admired and longed for; and all the indications of this enlarged intercourse point to the tendencies which are inherent in intelligent man to adopt customs, manners, laws, and institutions which promote his welfare and happiness. India possesses undeveloped resources of immeasurable magnitude. Immense tracts of uncultivated ground, rich in jungle and wild produce, wait for approaches or roads, and for human labour to convert useless vegetation into products of home consumption or of export. Materials for dyeing may be grown to the extent of any reasonable demand. Sugar, tea, and coffee, may become never-failing sources of profit. Cotton, so much required in Europe, may be so greatly improved in quality and enlarged in quantity, that, as an agent of exchange for the manufactures of Great Britain, it may increasingly minister to the comfort and convenience of the cultivator and consumer. That the production of cotton is slowly increasing there can be no doubt, and that its quality seems to be improving is a gratifying fact. But to render the East Indies a beneficially producing and consuming country, public works are indispensable. Rivers must be made safely navigable, and bridges built over them. The formation of roads in every direction must be commenced. Canals for communication, and tanks, or great reservoirs for water, to irrigate the land under cultivation, must be constructed; and railways must be made, intersecting and traversing the country, wherever industry shall require them. Probably the solid advancement of the East Indies during the last twenty years, with an open trade, exceeds the progress made in the previous century. During the commercial monopoly of the East India Company, the exports from Great Britain never attained an average of three millions sterling per annum, but in 1853 they exceeded eight millions; still, with one hundred and fifty millions of British subjects in India, even this value of exports can only be regarded as insignificant.

To the same cause, however, which thus prevented improvement in India, is to be attributed that dexterity in his particular employment which the Indian artisan possesses. From the earliest age he learns to spin and weave under the direction of his father; and having no hope or desire of advancement in any other line, he gains, through constant practice, that wonderful skill, which may thus be considered almost as a family inheritance. To be able to manage his ill-constructed loom, even in the production of ordinary fabrics, he is obliged to acquire such a sleight of hand, that it is not surprising if, out of the multitude trained in this manner, a few should be found capable of producing those muslins which are said, when spread upon the grass, to appear like the gossamer web. From the superiority of these goods, and from their retaining the beauty of their appearance longer than European muslins, it has been supposed that the cotton of which they are made is of better quality than any known to the European manufacturers. This, however, is a mistake; there is no cotton in India of a quality superior to the best sea islands. The excellence which these muslins possess is to be ascribed wholly to the skilful tact of the workman in the processes of spinning and weaving.

But how dearly is this excellence of art purchased by the sacrifice of the better faculties of man! How different is the effect produced by this branch of industry upon the people and circumstances of India, from that produced by it upon the people and circumstances of England! In the East the cotton manufacture has probably been carried on as extensively as at present for some thousand years; yet it has given birth to no inventions, to no increase of national riches, to no improvement in the condition of the labouring class. The scanty pittance which the poor artisan gains from his labour is spent by him in his sustenance almost as soon as it is received. In England, the same manufacture has existed little more than a century, yet in that short time it has given rise to some of the happiest efforts of ingenuity; it has been of incalculable use in promoting mechanical skill; and the demand for additional power created by the extension of its processes has led to the perfecting of the steam-engine, the most successful attempt which man has ever made to bend the properties of matter to his will. How many canals, bridges, and railroads have been formed for the circulation of its products; how many new cities, and what an increase of population, has it called into existence; how many new agricultural markets has it been the cause of establishing; and how mightily has it thus increased the comforts and the means of enjoyment of the community!

In India, this manufacture has not only failed to improve the condition of the people—it does not appear even to have afforded to those engaged in it the means of accumulating the capital necessary to carry it on; for both the price of the material and the wages of the workmen, in place of being supplied by the master manufacturer, are advanced by the purchaser of the goods.

Thus, the East India Company, which until lately was in the habit of making a great part of its remittances in manufactures, actually advanced, through its resident, the funds required to enable the workmen to produce the goods. To assist this officer, the Company placed under him a number of European servants, and an establishment of native clerks and of persons termed Peons, whose duty it was to watch and control the weavers. The resident, when he had to provide an investment, entered into a contract for the goods, either with the native merchants acting as brokers, or with the master manufacturer or headsman, and these parties made subsidiary agreements with the weavers. The resident then advanced money for carrying on the work to the chief contractors, who distributed it to the different classes of workmen, and were responsible for the delivery of the manufactured goods at the Company's warehouse, in the state stipulated in the contract. The commercial resident never interfered with the arrangements or operations of the contractors, except when complaints were made of delay or fraud, arising from the interference of other brokers, or contractors acting for other parties than the Company; and then a host of Peons were sent forth by him to intimidate, and, if necessary to coerce the weaver. The resident, when not engaged in providing goods for the Company's investment, was authorized to employ the weavers on his own account. This greatly increased his influence over those people, who having him constantly among them, as head of the little colony, and being unable at any time to move a step without his advances, felt themselves in a state of entire dependence upon him. Thus, although the brokers, who made contracts for the Portuguese and others, were generally willing to give higher prices than those which the resident arbitrarily fixed, the weavers, however they might be disposed to elude his orders, or to outwit him in his operations, never ventured openly to dispute his will. Various laws and regulations were enacted to protect the workmen in their transactions with the Company's agents; but where the sovereign was the chief trader, and a party in the cause, the impartial administration of justice was not to be looked for.

For some years past, the East India Company has ceased to remit so large a part of its revenue as formerly in manufactured produce. So far, however, as it still does so, the goods are provided in the manner we have pointed out; and the same mode is followed by private merchants, trading on their own account, for the purpose of obtaining goods for export; but now British manufactured cottons are largely imported into India.

Common muslins were made in every village throughout the peninsula. Orme says, "When not near the high road or a principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child, is not employed in making a piece of cloth."

The very fine muslins to which we have alluded, of such exquisite texture as to have been poetically designated "webs of woven wind," are made at Dacca. They were intended chiefly for the use of the potentates of the country, who kept agents to superintend the workmen employed in the manufacture; but since the assumption by the Company of the territories of these Indian princes, the demand has fallen off, and a considerable part of the population have betaken themselves to the cultivation of indigo. The cotton from which the muslins of Dacca are woven, grows in a district of not more than 40 miles in length by 3 in breadth, and in such limited quantity as never to have become an article of commerce. The long cloths and fine pullicats are made chiefly within the presidency of Madras, the coarse piece goods and pullicats in Surat, the finest calicoes at Masulipatam, and tablecloths of a superior quality at Patna. Each district varies from the others in the nature of its productions, as may be seen from the different denominations of cotton goods to be found in every consignment coming from India.

An apprehension has sometimes been expressed that the inhabitants of India, in possession of the raw material, may obtain a knowledge of our machinery, and, by combining with its peculiar advantages their cheaper labour and superior manual dexterity, may be enabled to undersell us to such a degree as to ruin and put an end to our manufacture; but in the state of the people of India there are circumstances which render this impossible, without a change being first produced upon their moral condition, their institutions, and their habits. The training which makes the Indian, with such imperfect tools, able to perform his work so well, disqualifies him from doing it in any other way, or with any other implements than those to which he has been familiarized from his infancy. The attempt to introduce our machinery into India is, however, now being made. A spinning mill has been built at Calcutta; and although the private company which commenced the undertaking has failed, the work continues to be carried on. There are at present nearly 700 persons employed in the mill, engaged at the rate of about seven shillings each per month; but these people, it is found, cannot continue to work beyond a few hours at a time, and a succession of hands to carry on the operations through the day is required. To train them, in such circumstances, to dexterity and skill, is impossible; and, accordingly, the yarn spun is not only of inferior quality, but, even with the low nominal wages, costs so much as to disqualify it for competition with the yarn of this country.

An attempt is now being made to establish a cotton-spinning mill at Bombay.

The extensive introduction of machinery into Great Britain has meanwhile, by reducing the price of our manufactures, enabled us to maintain a successful competition with the Indian goods at home, by sending cotton manufactures to a large amount to India itself. A complete revolution has in consequence taken place in the nature of the exports from that country to Europe, and indeed to all the markets on this side of the Cape of Good Hope. When we first got possession of India, our investments at home were principally (in point of value almost entirely) composed of manufactured produce. They are now in a great measure made up of the produce of the soil, indigo, cotton wool, raw silk, saltpetre, &c. &c.

It might have been expected that this change would have produced most distressing effects upon the crowded population of a country such as India, which in all ages has been a great manufacturing and exporting community; but no materially unfavourable consequences have resulted from it. In India every manufacturer is at the same time a husbandman. When not employed in making a web, he supports his family by agricultural labour. It thus happened, that in proportion as the demand for goods for export declined, the natives, without difficulty, and without that distress which generally attends a change of employment in other countries, were able to direct their attention more and more to agriculture; and the result has hitherto been rather an improvement in their condition than otherwise.

The following tables show the difference of the cost of cotton yarn produced in India and in Great Britain, and indicates the changeless nature of unaided human labour in the former, whilst by mechanical appliances in the latter, cheapness and plenty result.

**Comparative Statement of the Cost of English and Indian Cotton Yarn in the Years 1812 and 1830, furnished by Mr. Kennedy of Manchester to the Committee of Parliament on East India Affairs, and continued to 1854.**

| English Cotton Yarn | Indian Cotton Yarn | |---------------------|--------------------| | **Hanks per day per spindle.** | **Price of Cotton and Waste per lb.** | **Labour per lb.** | **Cost per lb.** | **Price of Cotton and Waste per lb.** | **Labour per lb.** | **Cost per lb.** | | 1812 | 1830 | 1854 | 1812 | 1830 | 1854 | 1812 | 1830 | 1854 | 1812 | 1830 | 1854 | | No. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | s. d. | | 40 | 2 | 275 | 275 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | | 60 | 175 | 25 | 25 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 7 | | 80 | 15 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 11 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 100 | 14 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 8 | | 120 | 125 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | 1 | 65 | | 150 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | 1 | 33 | | 200 | 75 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 16 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 14 | | 250 | 05 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 31 | 0 | 24 | 6 | 18 | 0 | 35 | 0 | 28 |

The cotton manufacture of China is of immense amount, and is carried on almost entirely for home consumption; but its origin is not of the same remote date as that of India. Indeed the lateness of its rise, and the slowness of its progress, in a situation so favourable, appear extraordinary. In the accounts of the revenues and of the arts of China during the period of the celebrated dynasty which commenced about 1100 years before the Christian era, and lasted for some centuries, no mention is made of the cotton plant; nor indeed is there any notice of cotton in these records until about 200 years before the Christian era; from which period to the sixth century, the cotton mustela manufacture, accompanied by a sample of the Dacca cotton wool, and some skeins of the yarn spun from it. The wool is equal in fineness to the very best sea islands, of still stronger staple, but so short as to preclude the possibility of its being spun by our machinery. The district in which the cotton is grown is stated to be periodically overflowed. The yarn is of different grits, the coarsest greatly finer than the highest number spun in this country (No. 250), while the finest has been rated by an experienced spinner to whom we have shown it, to be of a fineness not under 350. It is beyond our conception how this yarn can be spun by the distaff and spindle, or woven afterwards by any machinery. Machine spun cotton yarn has, however, more recently been produced in Manchester which very greatly exceeds in fineness any yarn ever known to have been produced by the hand labour of India. cloth, which was either paid in tribute, or offered in presents to the emperors, is always mentioned as a thing rare and precious.

The annals record as a singular circumstance that the Emperor Ou-ti, who ascended the throne in 502, had a robe of cotton. In the seventh century we find the cotton plant mentioned, but its cultivation appears to have been then confined to gardens; and the poems and romances of that period are occupied in celebrating the beauty of its flowers. From these circumstances we may venture to say that there could have been no manufacture of the article in the country at that time. It was in the eleventh century that the cotton plant was first removed from the gardens to the fields, and became an object of common culture; and it is not until this period that we can date the commencement of the manufacture. So slow and backward sometimes are nations, far advanced in other respects, in prosecuting objects afterwards considered by them as indispensable to their comforts. This is the more remarkable in the case of the Chinese, a people possessed of much ingenuity, and alive to everything connected with self-interest.

The cotton tree was introduced into China at the time of the conquest of that country by the Mogul Tartars, in the year 1280; after which period every encouragement was given by government to the culture and manufacture of cotton. But there were considerable difficulties to be encountered, in the prejudices of the people, and in the opposition of those engaged in the manufacture of woollen and linen; and it was not until the year 1368 that these obstacles were altogether surmounted. After that date the progress of the cotton manufacture was rapid, and now nine-tenths of the population are clothed in its fabrics.

Almost the only cotton goods exported from China are nankeens. Barrow states the production of all the fabrics of the Chinese manufacture at the time he visited the country (in 1792) to be stationary, attributing this to the want of proper encouragement from the government, and to the rigid adherence of the people to ancient usages.

To keep a manufacture in a progressive state there must be a progressive demand for its products; and the Chinese manufacturers having no means of disposing of any surplus quantity must accommodate the supply to the wants of their own consumption. It is said by travellers who have obtained access to that country, that the people show a great desire for articles of British manufacture. How valuable then to both countries must be the establishment of a free intercourse, and how conducive probably to the increase of the productions of both!

The Chinese, over and above the cotton wool which they raise at home, import largely from British India, and from the Burmese territories. This intercourse commenced towards the close of the eighteenth century. A famine, which happened in China about that period, induced the government to direct, by an imperial edict, that a greater proportion of the land should be thrown into the cultivation of grain. Since then, the importation of cotton from India has been considerable, although constituting but a small part of what is consumed in their manufacture. The amount of the importations is stated at 40,000 bales.

The manufacture of cotton goods in Europe is said to have been first attempted by the commercial states of Italy, before the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. These enterprising communities were the entrepôts through which the cotton fabrics of India passed to the different markets of the West; and being situated in the neighbourhood of countries where the cotton wool was grown, and familiar with manufacturing processes, it is supposed that they were led to attempt the imitation of articles so much valued, and bringing so high a price. Another account assigns the introduction of the cotton manufacture into Europe to a later date, and gives to the people of the Low Countries the honour of having been the first manufacturers of these articles, in imitation of the cotton fabrics which the Dutch, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, began to import from India. But this last account cannot be correct; for Guicciardini, in 1560, in a very full list which he gives of the different articles annually imported into and exported from Antwerp, the greatest commercial mart in Europe, specifies fustians and dimities of many fine sorts among the manufactured articles imported from Milan, and mentions cottons generally among those brought from Venice. But in the articles exported from Antwerp, although we find linens sent to almost every country, cotton cloth is not once mentioned. Italy, therefore, at that time had a cotton manufacture, which, it is probable, soon after made its way to the Netherlands; for we know it was brought from the latter country to Britain by Protestant refugees about the close of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century.

That this manufacture was carried on in England at a pretty early period of the seventeenth century, we know from good authority. Lewis Roberts, in his *Treasure of England*, published in the year 1641, says—“The town of Manchester buys linen yarn from the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, returns the same again in linen into Ireland to sell. Neither does her industry rest here; for they buy cotton wool in London that comes from Cyprus and Smyrna, and work the same into fustians, vermilion, and dimities, which they return to London, where they are sold, and from thence not seldom are sent into such foreign parts, where the first material may be more easily had for that manufacture.” These goods were woven chiefly about Bolton, and were purchased there at the weekly market by the Manchester dealers, who afterwards finished them, and either sent them to London for export, or sold them to their customers over the country.

At this period, and for a long time after, the weaver provided his own warp, which was of linen yarn, and the cotton of the wool for his weft, buying them wherever he could best supply himself. But as the trouble of looking about for these materials was found to be an unprofitable application of his time, the Manchester purchasers established agents in the different villages for the sale of those articles. In this way of conducting the business, each weaver’s cottage formed a separate and independent little factory. The yarn for his warp was bought by him in a prepared state, the wool for his weft was carded and spun by the female part of his family, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons.

This is the situation in which we generally find a manufacture before the introduction of machinery, and particularly before it has been carried to such an extent as to allow of a division of labour, and a separation of the different processes into distinct employments. At this stage, the workman has usually his residence in the country, where he can be accommodated with a little garden ground, and perhaps with grass for a cow; and there, in the bosom of his family, aided by the industry of its different members, he prosecutes his employment. How much more of the comforts of life and of the means of natural enjoyment belong to this state of the manufacture than to the more advanced one, in which combined systems of machinery, and a more perfect division of labour, collect the workmen into factories and towns!

It would be impossible to enumerate all the descriptions of cotton goods which, in succession, were brought forward from the commencement of the manufacture. tern cards of the principal houses in the trade, which were circulated from time to time through the kingdom and over the continents of Europe and America, exhibited specimens of nearly two thousand kinds, comprehending in the assortment every variety of taste and fancy.

For the introduction and after improvement of many of these articles, the country is indebted to the late Mr John Wilson of Ainsworth. This gentleman was originally a manufacturer of fustians at Manchester, but had early engaged in the manufacture of cotton velvets, which by persevering efforts he succeeded in bringing to the utmost degree of perfection. His improvement of the mode of dressing, of finishing, and particularly of dyeing these goods, acquired for them so high a character, that both in the home and foreign market his articles sold in preference to those of every other manufacturer. His plan for cleaning off the loose and uneven fibres was by the use of razors. He afterwards successively employed for this end, singeing by spirits of wine and the application of a hot iron resembling a weaver's drying iron, which last instrument had been introduced for the same purpose in the manufacture carried on in the Manchester house of correction by Mr Whitlow, governor of that institution. At a later period Mr Wilson effected his object by drawing the goods rapidly over a cylinder of cast-iron heated to redness, by which they were in a superior manner cleared of the down or pile which had been raised upon them in the various operations of weaving, washing, bleaching, or dyeing. These successive inventions of Mr Wilson, for performing this process, give us some idea of the manner in which improvements are introduced into our manufactures, when fortunately the efforts of self-interest are directed by intelligence and talent. Mr Wilson, having a turn for chemical inquiries, investigated the different known processes of dyeing; and, by the improvements he introduced in the application of them to his own manufacture, materially advanced that art. Having succeeded to his satisfaction in dyeing the other rich colours, he procured from the Greeks of Smyrna the secret of dyeing Turkey red. An account of this process was given by him in two essays, read to the Philosophical and Literary Society of Manchester, and which, on his retiring from business, he printed and distributed among his friends. The many valuable improvements introduced by Mr Wilson into the different processes connected with the cotton manufacture had the effect not only to establish it more firmly, but rapidly to enlarge its extent.

A considerable share of the calico printing business was transferred, about the year 1760, from London to Lancashire, in consequence of the cheaper accommodation for carrying on the work, and the lower wages of the workmen. A fall in prices therupon took place, and this cheapness produced an increased demand for calicoes. These goods were at that time made of linen warp and cotton weft, it having been found impracticable, before Sir Richard Arkwright's discovery, to spin cotton warp of sufficient strength.

At this period the dealers from Manchester, in place of buying fustians and calicoes from the weaver, as had been the practice before, began to furnish him with materials for the cloth, and to pay him a fixed price per piece for the work when executed. Along with a portion of linen warp, they gave him out a portion of cotton wool, which he was obliged to get spun into the weft he was to use. But so fast was the manufacture by this time outstripping the process of spinning, that it frequently happened that the sum which the master weaver was allowed by his employer was less than what he found himself obliged to pay to those whom he employed to spin it. He durst not, however, complain, much less abate the spinner's price, lest his looms should be unemployed. In this state of things, the further progress of the manufacture must have been stopped, if a more productive mode of spinning had not been discovered.

It has been said that the yarn produced at this time in England, by the one-thread wheel, the only spinning machine known, did not exceed in quantity what 50,000 spindles of our present machinery can yield. To have reared and trained hands sufficient to have doubled this quantity, had it been possible, must have been the work of a length of time, and the amount of the manufacture would still have been insignificant. A change in the system, therefore, had become indispensable; and we find that different ingenious individuals had already begun to employ themselves in contriving a better mode of spinning.

When we contrast the splendid inventions connected with the cotton manufacture, which from this period burst forth in rapid succession, with the passive acquiescence in the use of imperfect machinery during the long period which preceded, we are apt to ascribe these improvements to the circumstance alone of a number of men of genius having at that moment arisen, and to forget that the ultimate cause exists in the times which called their energies into action.

Already, about the year 1750, the fly-shuttle had been invented by Kaye of Bury—one of the most important steps in the progress of the art of weaving; and in the year 1760 improvements had begun to be made in the carding process.

James Hargreaves, a weaver at Stanhill, near Church, in Lancashire, an illiterate man, possessed of no great mechanical knowledge, had adapted the stock cards used in the woollen manufacture to the carding of cotton, and had besides greatly improved them. By his invention a person was able to do double the work, and with more ease than by hand-carding. In the stock cards, one of the cards is fixed, whilst the other, being suspended by a cord over a pulley, is worked by the carder; and in this way two or three cards can be applied to the same stock.

This contrivance was soon succeeded by the cylinder cards, or carding engine. It is not ascertained who was the inventor of this valuable machine, but it is known that the father of the late Sir Robert Peel was among the persons who first used it; and that, so early as 1762, he, with the assistance of Hargreaves, erected a carding engine with cylinders at Blackburn. This machine did not differ materially from that now in use, except that it had no contrivance for detaching the cotton from the cards, an operation which was performed by women with hand cards.

These successful advances show that the minds of the manufacturing class had been awakened to discovery, and must have encouraged and stimulated the efforts that were then making to effect corresponding improvements in spinning.

There had been several unsuccessful attempts to improve the mode of spinning before the year 1767, when James Hargreaves, whom we have already mentioned, invented the "Spinning Jenny." The idea of this machine is said to have been suggested to him by seeing a common spinning wheel which had been accidentally overturned, continue its motion while it lay on the ground. If such was the cause, it marks a mind of no common description which from so casual an occurrence could elicit an invention of so much importance.

After several unsuccessful attempts to carry into execution the conception he had formed, he succeeded in pro-

outside wear, strong cotton ribs and barrasgon, broad-raced linen thickset and tufts, with whitened diaper, striped dimities, and jeans. At some distance of time there were added to these, cotton thicksets, goods figured in the loom; and at a still later date, cotton velvets, velvetseens, and strong and fancy cords. (Atkien's History of Manchester.) ducing a rudely constructed jenny of eight spindles, turned by bands from a horizontal wheel. In it the eight rovings were passed between two pieces of wood laid horizontally the breadth of the machine; and these being grasped in the spinner's hand, and drawn out by him, formed the rovings into threads. The structure of this "jenny" was soon afterwards greatly improved, and it was at last brought to work as many as eighty spindles. This machine, although of limited powers when compared with the beautiful inventions which succeeded it, must be considered as the first and leading step in that progress of discovery which carried improvement into every branch of the manufacture—which, as it proceeded, changed the nature and character of the means of production, by substituting mechanical operations for human labour—which caused the manufactured article to become more and more a product of capital.

The progress of invention after this was rapid; for when it was seen that, with the aid of the few mechanical combinations we have mentioned, the spinner had been enabled to increase his power of production eighty-fold, the attention of those engaged in other branches of manufacture was awakened to the possibility of introducing changes equally beneficial into their peculiar employments.

Hargreaves' invention occasioned great alarm among those who earned their subsistence by the old mode of spinning, and even produced popular commotion. A mob broke into his house and destroyed his machine; and some time after, when a better knowledge of the advantage of his invention had begun to bring his "spinning jenny" into general use, the people rose a second time, and scouring the country, broke to pieces every carding and spinning machine they could find. Hargreaves himself had by this time removed to Nottingham, where he was engaged in erecting a small spinning work, about the same period that Mr Arkwright came to settle there, who had also been driven from Lancashire by the fear of similar violence.

The "jenny" in a short time put an end to the spinning of cotton by the common wheel; and the whole wefts used in the manufacture continued to be spun upon that machine, until the invention of the "mule jenny," by which it was in its turn superseded. Hargreaves died in great poverty a few years after his removal to Nottingham.

While Hargreaves was producing the common jenny, Mr Arkwright (afterwards Sir Richard Arkwright) was employed in contriving that wonderful piece of mechanism, the spinning frame, called first the water-frame, and afterwards the throttle, which, when put into motion, performs of itself the whole process of spinning, leaving to the workman only the office of supplying the roving or prepared material, and of joining or piecing the thread when it happens to break.

The extraordinary person to whom we owe this invention was born in the year 1732, at Preston, in Lancashire, of parents in poor circumstances, and was the youngest of thirteen children. He was brought up to the humble occupation of a barber; and up to the time when he made his discovery he continued to derive his subsistence from the exercise of this employment. Living in a manufacturing district, it is probable that his attention was drawn to the mechanical contrivances around him; and that hearing from every one complaints of the deficient supply of cotton yarn, he was stimulated to contrive a plan for increasing the production, by changing the mode of spinning. Even after he had matured the conception of what he proposed to execute, he had great difficulty in giving his ideas a practical form, from his total want of mechanical skill and experience; and his discovery was likely to have been lost to the world, from his not being able to find any person willing to embark the capital that was necessary to give the undertaking a fair trial. None but a person of his ardour and perseverance could have overcome such obstacles.

It has already been mentioned that Mr Arkwright had removed to Nottingham. Here he prevailed upon the Messrs Wrights, bankers, to advance him the sum of money necessary to enable him to go on with his experiments; it being understood that, if his plan succeeded, they were to share in the profits. These gentlemen, however, finding the amount of their advances swell to a larger sum than they had expected, while there seemed to them little prospect of the discovery being brought into practical operation, informed Mr Arkwright that the transaction being out of the ordinary course of their business, they would be glad if he could get some one else to take their place, and repay them their money; and they mentioned Mr Need of Nottingham as a person likely to do this, from his being already engaged in other patent discoveries, and acquainted with such undertakings. Mr Arkwright in consequence applied to Mr Need, who told him he had no objection to join in the scheme, if he could be satisfied that the discovery was such as he represented it, and desired him to carry the model of his machine to Mr Strutt of Derby, his partner in the stocking patent, by whose report he would be guided. Mr Strutt, a man of great mechanical knowledge, seeing at a glance the merit of the invention, and how little was required to render it complete, told Mr Need that he might with great safety close with Mr Arkwright; the only thing wanting to his model being an adaptation of some of the wheels to each other, which, from want of science, the inventor, with all his powers of contrivance, had not been able to accomplish.

In the year 1769, Mr Arkwright obtained his patent for spinning with rollers, and Mr Need and Mr Strutt became his partners in the concern to be carried on under it. He erected a mill at Nottingham, which he worked by horse power. But this mode of giving motion to the machinery being expensive, he, in the year 1771, built another mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, to which motion was given by water.

In 1772 his patent was contested, on the ground that he was not the original inventor of the process for which it was obtained; but a verdict was given in his favour, and his right to the exclusive use of the discovery remained afterwards undisturbed.

Mr Arkwright, soon after his removal to Cromford, followed up his first great discovery with other inventions and combinations of machinery for preparing the cotton for spinning, by which perfection was gradually given to the process through all its successive operations. For these additional improvements he took out another patent in the year 1775. But in 1781, his right to this second patent was disputed, on the plea that he was not the inventor of some of the mechanical contrivances comprehended under it; and after different trials of the question before the courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, judgment was finally given against him in November 1785, and the patent cancelled.

The originality of Mr Arkwright's mind, as well as the merit of his invention of the spinning frame, appear most striking when we consider the little resemblance between this machine and the common spinning wheel. His discovery did not consist in improving an instrument which already existed, but in the invention of an entirely new means for performing the same process in a better manner. When this is kept in view, it seems extraordinary that such a contrivance should have been the production of a person in his circumstances. His subsequent inventions for preparing the cotton, which are sometimes spoken of as the most wonderful parts of the process of cotton spinning, do not appear to us so striking as this first effort of his genius. Besides the advance in mechanical knowledge which he must have made before the time when they were produced, these inventions, although only to have been conceived by an ori- ginal and fertile mind, are still but improved arrangements of a machine previously in use, or applications of his own spinning machine altered and adapted to the accomplishment of this object. But the power of his mind was perhaps marked by nothing more strongly than the judgment with which, although new to business, he conducted the great concerns to which his discovery gave rise, and the systematic order and arrangement which he introduced into every department of his extensive works. His plans of management, which must have been entirely his own, as 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.

In 1786, Mr Arkwright, on presenting an address from the county of Derby, of which he was then high sheriff, had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him.

We shall now proceed to give an account of the different machines used in cotton spinning, invented by Sir Richard Arkwright, and of those afterwards invented by others, describing them in the order in which they are employed. In this manner we shall be able to exhibit a view of the present state of the art. The instruments used in the preparation and spinning of cotton wool are the following:

The Opener; the Scutcher, and Spreading Machine; the Carding Engine; the Lap Machine; the Drawing Frame; the Slabbing Fly Frame; the Intermediate Fly Frame; the Finishing Fly Frame; the Throstle Frame for coarse warps; the Self-acting Jenny for numbers below 50; and the Hand-mule Jenny for higher numbers. The first three of these instruments are employed in the rude process of cleansing the raw cotton, and separating its matted flocks. In the Carding Machine it is carded and further purified; in the Lap Machine it is fashioned into flat folds; and in the Drawing Frame it is formed into a loose rope, the fibres of which have a parallel arrangement. In the Slabbing Frame it is slightly twisted; and in the intermediate and Finishing Frames it is still farther twisted, particularly in the higher numbers; but it is not yet yarn. The Throstle Frame is chiefly used for coarse warps; whilst upon the Self-acting and Hand Mule Jennies, both coarse and fine yarns are spun.

In the Opener the raw cotton is spread uniformly on a feeding table, from which it is raised by a pair of rollers, and by them subjected to the action of a Beater. This beater consists of four pairs of arms issuing from a strong axle, each alternate blade being furnished with stout pins or teeth. It is 18 inches in diameter over the blades, by about 48 in width; and when in motion, makes 1300 revolutions in a minute. By an ingenious contrivance a strong draught of air is made to play through the newly-opened cotton, thus carrying away the dust and other foreign particles which adhere to it. This machine is capable of opening up about 20,000 lbs. of cotton in 72 hours.

The Scutcher resembles the Opener in many respects, and the idea of the latter was obviously taken from it. It consists of two pairs of fluted rollers; a beater with three blunt ribs or blades, 10 inches or more in diameter, moving at the rate of 1300 revolutions in the minute; and of two pairs of calender rollers between which the cotton passes, and is formed into bundles or laps.

The Spreading Machine is generally attached to the Scutcher, and consists of an iron frame, a feed table, two pairs of feed rollers, a beater, a grating, a perforated air cylinder made of cast iron, through which the loose cotton passes; a funnel below the cylinder for drawing off the dust, a pair of fluted rollers, and two pairs of calender rollers, which form the cotton into laps, as in the Scutcher.

The cotton wool, after it has been carefully picked, either by the hand or by a machine, is carried to the carding engine. This machine consists of two or more large cylinders covered with cards, with teeth like those of hand cards, which revolve in opposite directions, and nearly in contact with each other. These cylinders are either accommodated by other small ones covered in like manner with cards, by which the cotton is drawn in opposite directions to those of the larger cylinders, and with different velocities, the cotton is carded, and put on the last or finishing cylinder; or, as is now more generally practised, the first cylinder, that is, the one nearest the feeder, is surrounded by a fixed concave framing lined with cards, which, coming nearly in contact with the cylinder cards, produce the same effect in the process as the top cylinders, and in a more simple manner. (See Plate CXC. figs. 1, 2, 3, 4.)

This description of the carding machine is still (1854) applicable for numbers of yarn above 100, which are made from sea island cotton. For numbers above 50, a system of twice carding is still employed. The engines are generally 36 inches wide. The cotton is partially carded in the breaker or first card; it is then re-formed into a lap; and is lastly passed through the finisher or second card; for the finest yarns, however, combing is substituted.

We have noticed, in speaking of the carding engine, which Mr Peel erected in 1762, that at that time the cotton was taken off the finishing cylinder by means of hand cards. But by the time Mr Arkwright began his spinning, this operation was performed by the application of a roller with tin plates upon it like the floats of a water wheel, which, revolving with a quick motion, scraped off the cotton from the card. This was a rude contrivance, and in its operation injured both the cotton and the cards. Mr Arkwright substituted for it a plate of metal, toothed at the edge like a comb, which, in place of being made to revolve like the other, was moved rapidly in a perpendicular direction by a crank, and, with slight but reiterated strokes on the teeth of the cards, detached the cotton from them in a uniform fleece. He employed narrow fillet cards, wound round the doffing cylinder in a spiral form, by which contrivance a continuity of fleece was produced, which, as it left the card, was gradually contracted in its size by being passed through a kind of funnel, and then flattened or compressed between two rollers; after which it was received into a tin can in the state of a uniform continued carding.

The taking off the cotton from the cards in this manner is one of the most beautiful and curious operations in the process of cotton spinning; and although the crank, which forms a part of the apparatus, had perhaps been used in some way or other prior to the date of Mr Arkwright's second patent (as was urged in the action for having it set aside), the comb for taking off the fleece, and the spiral card which produces its continuity, were inventions indisputably his own.

The Lap Machine is only occasionally used, and that in the case of double carding, where the object is to re-form the cotton into a lap after it has passed through the breaker or first card. It consists of a frame, two pairs of calender rollers 4 inches in diameter, and a lap-drawer 18 inches in diameter. It is supplied with cotton from cans placed behind the machine; and what passes through the first pair of rollers is consolidated into a uniform sheet, which is afterwards rolled up into a lap or bundle. What is called a Doubleen is merely a pair of short rollers attached to one side of the machine, through which two ends (or slivers, as they are technically called) are made to pass rapidly from two cans behind to one in front. This arrangement is useful when there is not room at the back of the machine for a sufficient number of cans with single ends. From this short description it will be seen that the lap machine is subservient to the carding machines.

Now the preparation of cotton to spin fine yarns there has been recently introduced into the leading fine spinning concerns of Manchester, a combing machine, the patented invention of Hellman, formerly of Gwebwiller in France. This curious and beautiful machine has the property of removing all the particles of dirt and short fibres from fine long-stapled cottons, thereby leaving only the cleanest and most perfect wool to be attenuated into the finest as well as the most perfect cotton yarn which can be produced. So beautifully clean, even, and perfect is the yarn made by the aid of the combmer, that fine muslin and laces can be manufactured of qualities so excellent that an increased consumption of these products of elegant luxury may be reasonably anticipated.

The next step in the process after the carding or combing is Drawing what is called drawing the cotton. The machine employed for this purpose, called the drawing frame, depends simply on the principle of elongation by rollers. To achieve this purpose, formed by the finger and thumb in hand spinning, two pairs of rollers are employed; the first pair, slowly revolving in contact with each other, are placed at a little distance from the second pair, which revolve with greater velocity. The lower roller of each pair is furrowed or fluted longitudinally, and the upper one

Cotton Manufacture.

is neatly covered with leather, to give the two a proper hold on the cotton. If we suppose a carding to be passed between the first pair of rollers, it will be seen from what they move, but without any change in its form and texture further than a slight compression received from the incumbent roller. But if from the first pair it be passed through the second, moving with twice or thrice the velocity of the first, it will be drawn twice or thrice smaller than it was when it entered the first rollers. In the succeeding operation, two, three, or more of these drawings are passed together through the rollers in the same manner, coalescing as they pass, and forming a single new drawing. This doubling and drawing is several times repeated, and has the effect of arranging all the fibres of the cotton longitudinally in a uniform and parallel direction, and does away with all inequalities of thickness. In these operations the cotton receives no twist. (See Plate CXC. figs. 6, 6.)

Roving frame.

Roving the cotton, which is the next part of the process of preparation, is an operation similar to that employed for drawing it, only that, to give the rove, in its now reduced thickness, such a degree of tenacity as will make it hold together, a slight twist is given to it, converting it into a soft and loose thread. This is effected by passing it, as it leaves the rollers, into a conical can, which, while receiving it, revolves with considerable velocity. (See Plate CXC. figs. 7, 8, 9.) After this the rove is wound by the hand upon a bobbin by the younger children of the mill, and carried to the spinning frame. The roving frame, as here described, is never used now (1854), having been entirely superseded by the fly frame; but the principle remains unchanged.

Fly frame.

About the year 1817, the fly frame was introduced for preparing rovings for the middle and finer numbers of both warp and weft; and this machine having received considerable improvements since, has superseded the use of the roving frame. Instead of the revolving cans of the roving frame, the fly frame has spindles placed at equal distances from each other, with a fly on the top of each, one of the legs of which is made in the form of a tube, for the purpose of receiving the roving and conveying it to the bobbin. The rollers deliver the roving to the top of the fly, where it passes through a small hole immediately above the centre of the spindle, called the eye of the fly, and from which it descends through the tube to the bobbin, which is fitted loosely on the spindle. The fly revolves rapidly round the bobbin, and winds the roving on it as fast as it is delivered by the rollers. (See Plate CXCH. figs. 1, 2.) The motion of the rollers and spindles is equal and uniform at all times, so that the twist is equally diffused throughout the roving. But to adapt the taking up of the roving to the uniform delivery of the rollers, the speed of the bobbin must be variable and unequal; for, while it increases in diameter, the velocity of its acting circumference will remain the same. The ratio of its accelerating motion, therefore, must be equal to the ratio of its increasing diameter; that is, supposing the bobbin to follow the fly; but sometimes the fly follows the bobbin, in which case the speed of the bobbin must decrease in the same ratio as above. The matured bobbin and fly frame is the most scientific machine now used in cotton-spinning factories. It can be constructed to produce rovings for either coarse or fine spinning, and which can be relied upon for perfect accuracy, whether of one hank or of fifty hanks in the pound.

An improvement in the process of preparation for cotton spinning is the tube frame. It is employed as a finishing frame for coarse numbers. The construction of this machine differs from that of the roving frame in having, instead of cans, revolving horizontal cylinders, parallel with the beam rollers, placed about twelve inches in front of the beam. Its chief advantage lies in the great quantity of roving it can produce in a given time; its excess of production to the fly frame being as 84 to 17; but the rove it produces is inferior in quality, and, having no twist, is extremely soft and tender, and causes a greater quantity of waste than the roves prepared by the fly frame. This frame has also fallen into disuse, in consequence of the great improvements which have been made in the fly frame of late years, which is now (1854) driven with much greater speed than formerly, and produces rovings of a quality so superior that, except for coarse yarns, or where the work is very carelessly performed, the tube frame is never employed.

Spinning frame.

The Spinning Frame or Throstle has the double set of rollers, which have been described in the account given of the drawing and roving frames, and which, operating in the same manner as in those machines, extend the rove, and reduce it to a thread of the required fineness. The twist is given to the thread by the application of the spindle and the fly of the common dax wheel, adopted in the machine for this purpose. (See Plate CXCL fig. 10.)

The yarn produced by this mode of spinning is called water twist, having been, for a long time after its invention, put in motion by water.

The only attempt to extend the principle comprehended in Sir Richard Arkwright's first contrivance, the spinning frame, is to be found in the machine called the Throstle, introduced about the year 1810. In this machine the spinning apparatus is in every respect the same as in Sir Richard Arkwright's frame, but the motion of the spindles is different.

In place of four or six spindles being coupled together, forming what is called a head, with a separate movement by a pulley and drum, as is the case in the frame, the whole rollers and spindles on both sides of the throstle are connected together, and turned by bands from a tin cylinder lying horizontally under the machine. The merit of the invention chiefly lies in the simplification of the moving apparatus just mentioned. The movement is not only rendered lighter, but greater facility is afforded for increasing the speed of the machine, and, consequently, when the nature of the spinning admits it, for obtaining a larger production. The throstle can also, with more ease, and at less expense, be altered to spin the different grits of yarn; only a few movements required to be changed in it to produce this end, while in the spinning frame there are a great number. (See Plate CXCL fig. 11.)

An improvement on the throstle, which was thought to be very Mr Danforth's, was lately made by Mr Danforth, an American spinner. His object was to obviate the vibration of the spindle (caused by throttle, the flyer being placed on the top of it, with nothing to keep it steady), whereby it is prevented from being driven with advantage beyond a certain limited speed. To remedy this, Mr Danforth introduced into his throstle a stationary spindle, on the top of which he fixed an inverted conical cap. In this improved throttle the bobbin revolves on the spindle with great rapidity, and by a transverse motion is raised and lowered so as to be, when at the highest point, entirely within the cap, and when at the lowest entirely below it. The edge of the cap, passing thus along the whole length of the bobbin, builds the yarn equally on every part while it is receiving the necessary twist.

To secure to himself the benefit of this invention, Mr Danforth took out patents in all the different European states. His improvement gives a great increase of quantity, but is accompanied by such an addition of waste as to form, in the opinion of many spinners, an insuperable objection to its use.

The throstle frame is now (1854) almost the only machine in use for the production of warps of low numbers, that is, which do not go higher than 32. In the most approved machines of this kind the spindles make 5000 revolutions in the minute, each spindle producing 27 hanks per week when spinning 32's. The Danforth frame is now entirely out of use.

Probably no inventive contribution, more valuable and Mr Crompton's important to the cotton trade, has been offered to it than the mule invention. Mr Samuel Crompton of Bolton, in 1775, completed his invention of the "mule jenny," in contriving jenny, which he had been engaged for several years. But this machine, possessing great merit and advantages, did not come into general use, nor was its value known, until after the expiration of Arkwright's patent; because till then the spinner was confined to the rove prepared for common jenny spinning, which was unsuitable to the mule jenny.

After the spinner was allowed to make use of Mr Arkwright's fine process of preparation, by his patent being cancelled, the power of this machine became known; and its introduction forms another important era in the history of the cotton manufacture. Being fitted to supply those "grists" and qualities of yarn which the other machines could not produce, the manufacturer was enabled to enter upon fabrics which otherwise it would have been in vain to attempt. Warps of the finest quality are spun upon the mule; while on the throstle yarn of a finer grit than No. 36 cannot be spun to advantage. The reason is that, the fine thread has not strength to stand the pull of the rollers when winding itself on the bobbin of the throstle; a stress which is saved to it in the mule, where the draught takes place only in a slight degree faster than the rove is given out by the rollers. All wefts, from the lowest to the highest numbers, are now spun upon Crompton's machine, the use of Hargreaves' jenny having been almost entirely superseded by it. It was some time, indeed, after the mule came into use, before it was ascertained that the finest yarn required for the manufacture could be produced from it. But in the year 1792, Mr Jonathan Pollard of Manchester succeeded in spinning yarn upon the mule of the fineness of 278 hanks to the pound, from cotton wool grown by Mr Robley, in the island of Tobago. This yarn was sold at twenty guineas per pound to the muslin manufacturers of Glasgow.

The MULE, in its structure and operation, is a compound of the spinning frame and of Hargreaves' jenny; from which circumstance it has probably received its name. It contains a system of rollers like those of the jenny, but arranged in frames so placed that every four of them in separate heads, as is the case in that machine, the whole are coupled together; and the rove being drawn through them, is, in its conversion into thread, received on spindles revolving like those of the jenny. The carriage on which these spindles are placed is moveable, and is made to recede from the rollers a degree faster than the thread is given out. After a certain quantity of the roving has been thus delivered by the rollers, they are stopped; but the carriage continues to recede somewhat farther; and the spindles continuing also to revolve, the thread is drawn out to the fineness required, and then receives its proper portion of twist. This last operation resembles that performed by the common jenny, and produces a similar effect. (See Plate CXCI. fig. 12.)

Mr Crompton took out no patent; but many years after he had given this important invention to his country, he received from parliament a grant of L5,000.

The mule was originally worked by the spinner's hands; but in 1792, Mr William Kelly of Glasgow, at that time manager of the Lanark Mills, obtained a patent for moving it by machinery. Mr Kelly soon saw, however, that in the extended state of the cotton trade, the exclusive possession of this important improvement was not likely to be quietly acquiesced in; and, unwilling to involve himself in the litigation which would have been necessary to defend his privilege, although the undisputed inventor of the process, he allowed every one freely to avail himself of its advantages.

Mr Kelly's machinery was contrived so as to move every part of the mule, even to the returning of the carriage into its place, after the draught was finished. Had his invention come into full operation, the employment of men as spinners would have been thereby rendered unnecessary, and children would have been able to do all the duty required. But, after a short trial, it was discovered that a greater amount of produce could be obtained, and at a cheaper rate, by using the machinery merely to draw out the carriage, and employing the men to return it as formerly. In this way one spinner could serve two mules, the one carriage moving out during the time that he was engaged in returning the other.

Proceeding in this train of discovery, it was next found unnecessary to confine the mule to a hundred and forty-four spindles, the largest number which it had till then contained; for, with the assistance of the above mechanical improvement, the spinner was able to manage two mules of three or four hundred spindles each, and thus to spin on six hundred or even 1000, instead of on only a hundred and forty-four spindles.

The process of mule spinning continued to be conducted upon this plan, till several proprietors of large cotton works restored the part of Mr Kelly's machinery which returns the carriage into its place after the draught is completed. By thus lessening the fatigue to the spinner, they were enabled to employ women in place of men. All that is to be done by the spinner in this case is, with a slight touch of the hand to shift the band, so as to allow the carriage to be moved back into its resting position, and, as this takes place, to manage the guide for building the cop, and regulate the motion of the carriage as it recedes.

An extension of the size of the mule employed in spinning very fine numbers was accidentally suggested to a spinner of Manchester in 1830, and enabled him to reduce 2½ per cent. the wages paid for spinning these numbers. Being desirous to fill a garret-room of his mill with jennies of five hundred spindles each, of the size of those worked in the rooms below, he found, from the contraction of the space, occasioned by the inclination of the roof, that there was not room for a mule of five hundred spindles to stand across the floor. It then occurred to him that, as in spinning those high numbers of yarn, the movement of the carriage in drawing out so slender a thread was of necessity very slow, it might be practicable to work a thousand spindles in one mule, without increasing the breakage of threads; and that, should this be the case, he would then be able to fill his garret by placing these mules lengthwise. The experiment was tried, and the mule of a thousand spindles found to work so well as to admit of the above reduction of the wages of the spinner.

There was introduced in the year 1832 into different self-acting spinning works, a mule, the carriage of which, after having drawn out the thread, is returned by mechanical means, without the aid of the spinner, or the guidance of his hand to secure the uniform building of the cops. The apparatus for accomplishing this can be affixed to the mules now in use without any other alteration. Messrs Sharpe and Roberts took a patent in 1829 for this invention; but the right to the discovery having been disputed, its general adoption was retarded till some time afterwards, when a verdict in their favour was obtained. The machinery for effecting the object being rather complicated, fears have been entertained that it may be liable to get out of order, and cause frequent stoppages of the work, besides occasioning a considerable expense in keeping the machine in repair. The most judicious spinners, however, consider the discovery to be founded upon correct principles; and when such is the case, we may count upon mechanical science being able sooner or later to simplify the movement, and admit of the improvement being brought into general use. The mill proprietors in Lancashire have altered their mules to spin coarse yarns in this manner; and they are able to dispense with the mule spinners, retaining merely the elder piecers to manage them, and children to take up and join the broken ends.

The self-acting mule is now (1854) employed for spinning all sizes of yarns below 50's; and in the manufacture of these low numbers a great saving is effected by its use. Many patents for the improvement of this machine have been taken out of late years, and more or less success has attended these attempts. The hand-mule is still in use for all numbers of yarn, and has undergone no improvement, except in stability and constructive details.

In addition to the process of preparation already described as employed in frame and coarse mule spinning, the cotton stretcher intended for fine mule spinning goes through a further operation. It was found that extending the roves at once to a fine thread, was a reduction of texture too rapid to admit of the production of a good article, and that an intermediate operation was necessary. This gave rise to the process of stretching, which is performed on a mule fitted up for the purpose which draws the rove another degree finer, without communicating to it such an additional twist as might prevent its being extended afterwards into a thread upon the spinning mule; but the stretcher is now in the course of being abandoned, fine rovings of perfect quality, made upon fine bobbin and fly frames, having been substituted for those previously made upon stretchers.

We have now finished our account of the different machines employed in cotton spinning, and have endeavoured to describe the succession of improvements which have been made on them up to this time, so as to give some idea of the progress in their power of production. But it will not be possible, from the nature of the subject, to exhibit in a similar manner the not less important advances made from time to time in the construction of the minute parts of these machines, and in the skill and management of the spinner who works them. By these means a progressive acceleration of their movement was rendered practicable, and even after the machine had long been apparently in a very perfect state, the quantity of produce was more than doubled.

About the year 1790 the average product of the spinner of yarn No. 40 was little more than a hank per spindle per day; but by the year 1812, as appears by Mr Kennedy's table of the comparative cost of the cotton yarn of India and of this country, it had advanced to two hanks per day, and in 1830 to 2½. The effect of this increase of production upon the cost of the article was very great, as will be seen by the following statement of the reduction of the wages of spinning, and of the fall in the sale price of yarn which rapidly succeeded.

We have already noticed that, until the cancelling of Sir Richard Arkwright's patent, by which the mule spinner became at liberty to use his improved mode of preparation, the few fine wefts required were spun on Hargreaves' jenny. In the year 1786 this yarn was sold in Glasgow and Paisley at 3s. per pound for No. 90; 7s. per pound being the price of spinning it. The warp was spun upon the water or throttle frame, and was sold at the same time at 4½d. per pound for No. 90.

We are informed by Mr Crompton, that immediately upon his completing his invention of the mule, in the year 1775, he obtained 1½s. per pound for the spinning and preparation of No. 40; that a short time after he got 2½s. per pound for the spinning and preparation of No. 60; and that he then spun a small quantity of No. 80 to show that it was not impossible to spin yarn of so fine a grist; and for the spinning and preparation of this he got 4½s. per pound. For some little time after the mule came into general use, in the year 1786, it was the practice in many places for the spinner to purchase the wool in a prepared state; and separate concerns for preparing cotton were established and carried on. At that time 10s. per pound were paid for spinning No. 100; but soon afterwards the wages for this number were reduced, first to 8s. and then to 6s. 8d. In 1790 the price of spinning No. 100 was 4s. per pound. In 1792 it was brought to 3s. 1½d., and in 1793 to 2s. 6d., at which price it continued till 1795; when the mule coming to be worked by machinery, and an increase being made in the number of spindles, the spinner was enabled so to extend the quantity of his produce, as to admit of another considerable reduction in wages. The price of spinning No. 100 was in the course of a few years brought down to 8d. per pound, at which price it continued until 1826, when it was further reduced to 6½d. per pound. Notwithstanding this extraordinary diminution of the price of spinning, such have been the effects of the improvements in the plan and construction of the machinery, in the selection and preparation of the wool, and in the spinner's skill and tact in the execution of his work, that he is able to earn more money now than he did when the wages were at the highest.

The sale prices of the yarn during this period were as follows:

| Year | Price | |---------|-------| | 1786 | 3s. | | 1788 | 3½s. | | 1791 | 2¾s. | | 1793 | 1½s. | | 1795 | 1½s. | | 1797 | 1½s. | | 1799 | 1½s. | | 1801 | 1½s. | | 1803 | 1½s. | | 1805 | 1½s. | | 1807 | 1½s. |

Since 1807 the price of yarn, after various fluctuations, fell in 1829 to 3s. 2½d., and in 1831 to 2s. 1½d., at which price it remained in 1832. Since 1832 the fluctuations have not been extreme, the price never rising above 5s. 6½d., at which it stood in 1836, nor falling below 2s. 9½d., as in 1842. In 1846 it was 3s. 2½d. In 1854, warp 100's was 3s. 6½d.; medium 100's, 2s. 6½d.; and weft 100's only 1½s. 9½d.

But the benefit of the improvements we have noticed has not been confined to the reduction of the cost of the yarn. Its quality has been rendered so much superior, that the weaver is enabled, with the same hours of labour, to produce a fourth more of cloth than he was able to do at the beginning of the present century.

During the time that the machines for the different processes of cotton spinning were advancing towards perfection, Mr Watt had been employed in maturing and reducing to practice his conceptions for extending the powers of the steam-engine. His inventions for rendering these machines available to the movements of manufacturing machinery exhibit a beauty of contrivance peculiarly characteristic of his genius, and, to a greater extent than any of the other discoveries which mark this period, have influenced the circumstances of this country and of mankind.

If we had no other means of giving motion to our machinery than by placing it on a stream of water, or employing the power of horses, how comparatively expensive must our operations have been, and how limited their progress! By means of Watt's inventions we are enabled to carry the power at once to the situation where it can be most advantageously used; we can place it in the centre of a population trained to manufacturing habits, and thus bring together the different branches of manufacture, with their numerous subsidiary establishments, all dependent upon or intimately connected with each other, thereby giving facility and effect to their mutual operations.

Some account of the introduction of the steam-engine, therefore, naturally forms a part of the history of the cotton manufacture. In perusing the following detail, obtained from Mr Watt in 1818, the reader, aware of the present extensive employment of this powerful auxiliary to industry, will be surprised at the slowness with which it came into general use.

Mr Watt had early turned his thoughts to the application of the steam-engine to rotary motion, and in the year 1781 had devised the means for accomplishing this end. But at the moment he was taking measures for legally securing to himself the exclusive advantages of his invention, a confidential workman betrayed a part of his plan to other persons, who took a patent for it. In the following year, having substituted a most ingenious contrivance to supply the part of the process which had been stolen from him, he obtained for Messrs Bolton and Watt a patent for his mode of applying this power. They erected their first rotative engine (for we are obliged to use that term to avoid circumlocution) in the year 1782, at Bradley iron-works, and another in the same year at their own manufactory. In 1783 they erected an engine for winding ores out of a mine in Cornwall. In 1784 they erected seven engines, one for an oil mill at Hull, one at Messrs Goodwin and Company's brewery in London; one at Mr Whitbread's, with four others,—including the first engine for that splendid establishment, the London Albion Mills. Among those erected by them in 1785 was one for Messrs Robinsons at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire, for spinning cotton,—the first instance of the application of steam to this manufacture. In the following year they erected a number of their engines for various purposes; and in 1787 one for Messrs Peels, at Warrington, for cotton spinning, and three others for the same purpose at Nottingham. No rotative engine had yet been erected at Manchester; and it was seven years after Bolton and Watt had received their patent that they constructed for Mr Drinkwater the first engine used there for spinning cotton. This engine is still (1854) working admirably. In 1790 they erected one for spinning cotton at Nottingham for Sir Richard Ark- wright, and another at Darlington for spinning flax; a cotton-spinning engine at Manchester for Mr Simpson, and a second at Papplewicke for Messrs Robinsons. Some time before this Sir Richard Arkwright and others, from an ill-judged economy in the first cost, had introduced into their spinning factory atmospherical or Newcomen's engines, with rotative motions applied to them. But quickly perceiving their error, they abandoned them—and Bolton and Watt's engines soon came to be universally used among cotton spinners, and all other manufacturers.

In an account of the means which contributed to that fall in the price of spinning which we have mentioned, we must not omit the progressive improvement in the cultivation of the raw material, and in the application of its different qualities to their most profitable uses. Previous to the year 1753, the cotton used in the coarser articles of the manufacture, with the exception of a small quantity imported from India and from the Levant for the fustian trade, was wholly the growth of our own and of the French West India Islands. That for the better kind of goods was raised in Demerara, Surinam, and Berbice. The wool for fine goods was grown in the Brazils; and that for the few very fine muslins then manufactured, in the Isle of Bourbon.

In 1787 the descriptions of cotton imported into Britain appear to have been as follows:

| Source | Quantity (lbs) | |-------------------------|---------------| | From the British West Indies | 6,800,000 | | From the French and Spanish colonies | 6,000,000 | | From the Dutch | 1,700,000 | | From the Portuguese | 2,500,000 | | From the Isle of Bourbon, by Ostend | 100,000 | | Smyrna and Turkey | 5,700,000 |

Had we continued to derive our sole supply of cotton from these countries, the progress of the manufacture would have been greatly retarded, not only from the difficulty of making the production of the raw material keep pace with the increasing consumption, but from the impossibility of obtaining the qualities of wool suited to the finer descriptions of goods, which the improved machinery enabled us to undertake.

But fortunately, about the year 1770, the planters in the southern states of the American Union began to turn their attention to raising cotton wool; and, besides carrying the cultivation of the article to a great extent, they produced qualities of cotton before unknown. In 1792 the quantity of cotton exported from the United States was only 138,328 lbs, no manufacture of cotton goods having been attempted in America for many years after that period. In 1831 they exported 619,000 bales to Great Britain, 127,000 to France, and 27,000 to other parts. In 1845 the quantity grown in the United States was 2,100,537 bales.

The American cotton wool first brought to this country was very ill cleaned, and in consequence was indiscriminately applied to the manufacture of the coarser species of goods. It was soon, however, perceived that the cotton raised upon the coast, termed sea islands cotton, had a finer and longer staple than that grown farther back in the country, and known by the name of upland cotton. But it was not for several years, and after a succession of trials, that this wool was ascertained to be of a quality in every respect superior to the cotton of the Isle of Bourbon. Indeed, it was only in the year 1796 that the finest description of it was applied to the purposes for which Bourbon wool had till then been used, and which it soon entirely supplanted. The second quality of it about the same time supplanted the Brazil wool in many kinds of goods.

The upland cotton is a different species from the sea island, and is separated with such difficulty from the seed, that the expense of cleaning the wool must have put a stop to its further cultivation, had not a machine, by which the operation of cleaning is easily and successfully accomplished, been invented. This machine was invented in 1795 by Mr Eli Whitney of Massachusetts. There are two qualities of this cotton, the one termed Upland Georgia, grown in the states of Georgia and South Carolina; and the other, of superior quality, raised upon the banks of the Mississippi, and distinguished in the market by the name of New Orleans cotton. A strong prejudice existed for some time against the upland wool, which was thought to be of inferior quality, and not to take a good colour in dyeing; but being found suitable to different coarse fabrics, its cultivation was so rapidly extended, that in 1807 55,018,448 lbs. of upland cotton were exported from the United States.

The cotton of the finest quality ever brought to the English market, or probably ever grown, was that formerly mentioned as having been raised in the island of Tobago between the years 1789 and 1792, upon the estate of Mr Robley. That gentleman carried the cultivation of this article to some extent; but the price of cotton falling very low, and the cultivation of sugar becoming extremely profitable in consequence of the destruction of the sugar plantations in the French islands, he was induced to convert his cotton grounds into a sugar plantation. The production of cotton of this very fine description has hardly ever been attempted by any other person, although it is believed that the price it would yield would amply repay its expense.

Until about the year 1815, it was thought that the cotton wool of India, from the shortness of its staple, could not be spun with advantage upon our machinery; and in consequence, the greater part of the Indian cotton brought to this country was spun upon the common jenny, and used as weft for the coarsest calicoes. It was discovered, however, that by mixing it with the longer stapled wools of other countries, it might be brought into a state fit for the mule and spinning frames.

It was expected that the opening of the trade in 1814 would have led to more care in the cultivation of the article, and would have given rise to the production of cotton of superior quality to any that had previously been obtained from India. This, however, did not take place. It appears, from the evidence before the parliamentary committees in 1830-31, that up to that period there had been no improvement in the quality of the cotton raised in India; that the dependent state of the cultivator, and the constant fiscal interference to which he was subjected, are insurmountable obstacles to the attainment of this object; and that until European skill and capital come to be employed in the cultivation of the cotton, better qualities are not to be looked for. The influence of the impolitic regulations imposed under the Company's monopoly to secure the revenue are particularly felt in the presidency of Bombay. Up to a late period, this was the only part of India in which any considerable quantity of cotton was grown or exported. In the district of Guzerat alone 100,000 heavy bales are annually produced.

The part of the crop which goes to the Company for the rent of the land is delivered by the cultivator to the Company's collector, immediately after the cotton has been

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1 The year 1770 has always been stated as the period at which the planters of the southern states began to turn their attention to the raising of cotton wool. But we happen to know that in 1764, William Rathbone, an extensive American merchant in Liverpool, received from one of his correspondents in the southern states a consignment of eight bags of cotton. This cotton, on its arrival at Liverpool, was seized by the custom-house officers, on the allegation that it could not have been grown in the United States, and that it was liable to seizure under the shipping act, as not being imported in a vessel belonging to the country of its growth. When afterwards released, it lay for many months unsold, in consequence of the spinners doubting whether it could be profitably worked up. picked, but before it has been separated from the seed. This person fixes annually the rent which the cultivator is to pay, the amount of which is always imposed in a specified sum of money, but payable in cotton, rated at a price named by the collector. Its amount upon an average of years is about one-half of the crop. In the payment of this rent the collector refuses to receive any but the best and cleanest part of the cotton, and to this the farmers dare not object. What remains is purchased principally by the Company's commercial resident, who formerly fixed the price he was to pay for it; but in the bargains now made by the officer, he gives the average price received by the cultivators in the surrounding districts.

If the culture of cotton in Guzerat has been able to exist under this oppressive system, what might not be expected were the rent of the lands (as is now the case in the presidency of Bengal) fixed and paid in money, and were the growers at liberty to sell the product to those who would give the best price for it! The rapid increase of cultivation in Bengal since the introduction of this more enlightened system of management, and the acquisition and diffusion of wealth which have been the consequences, present a striking contrast to the impoverished and wretched state of the cultivators in Bombay, and speak a language in political science not to be misunderstood.

Since 1814 attempts have been made to introduce the Bourbon seed into Guzerat. These attempts have failed, but it would be wrong to be discouraged by the ill success of an undertaking carried on under the management which usually belongs to monopoly. A very different result may be looked for when that system and its effects shall have been more completely done away, and improvements come to be conducted by those who are to reap the benefit of them. Were this better system once established throughout the peninsula, it appears not unreasonable to expect, in a country so extensive and of such various soils, not only that all the qualities of cotton wool known to our manufacturers would be produced, but that new varieties might be obtained, possibly of more useful application than any we yet possess.

Egyptian cotton was introduced into this country for the first time in 1823. Among many schemes for calling into action the capabilities of Egypt, all of which were selected with admirable sagacity, Mehemet Ali, the ruler of that country, thought of cotton wool as a product suited to the soil and climate, and the culture of which, from the great and growing demand, was likely to prove a profitable speculation. His measures for prosecuting this object were carried into execution with the energy which characterized all his proceedings, and were upon a scale to enable him, so early as 1823, to export 5623 bales to England.

The following table shows the amount exported annually since that period.

| Year | Bales | |------|-------| | 1823 | 5,623 | | 1824 | 38,022 | | 1825 | 110,000 | | 1826 | 136,000 | | 1827 | 130,000 | | 1828 | 50,000 | | 1829 | 75,000 | | 1830 | 120,000 | | 1831 | 100,000 | | 1832 | 41,183 | | 1833 | 3,893 |

The cotton-wool exported is all long-staple wool, but of two sorts,—one called in Egypt makko, and in England common Egyptian; the other the produce of sea islands seed, called in Egypt Senaar, and in England sea islands Egyptian. Besides these two descriptions of cotton, Egypt raises from 15,000 to 20,000 bales of short-staple cotton, similar in quality to that of Smyrna, and chiefly consumed in the country itself.

The cotton received from Egypt is found to be among the most useful that is grown, and that raised from sea islands seed ranks in quality next to American sea islands.

Having succeeded in the production of cotton, the pasha Cotton thought he might advance another step, and have it spun manufacture into yarn and woven into cloth. He accordingly formed of Egypt establishments for spinning and weaving in Cairo, Bosaco, Rosetta, and other places; and so early as 1826 he had at work sixty-one mills moved by the power of buffaloes. The machinery was supplied from France and England, orders in council having been obtained in the latter country to authorize its export. Power-looms were also sent out, but did not succeed.

A few years later the pasha shipped a thousand bales of yarn to Calcutta for sale; but it was not of a quality to enter into competition with the English yarn, and it was found to be unsaleable, except at a most disadvantageous price. He ordered it therefore to be woven into cloth in Calcutta on his own account, and to be re-shipped to Egypt in a manufactured state.

Clapperton and Landers, on their expeditions to trace the course of the Niger, found the inhabitants everywhere Africa clothed in cotton. They mention that cotton wool is produced in the different districts in the interior, and is spun into cloth on the spot. There exists, therefore, in the heart of Africa an extensive manufacture of cotton cloth. It is to be regretted that they give no information of the way in which the yarn is spun, and no description of the loom employed to weave it. It would be interesting to know the nature of the instruments used by the natives in these processes, as such knowledge might enable us to trace whence the Africans derive their acquaintance with the art of weaving, and thus perhaps throw some light on African history.

It appears that the people of Eboe, and of the countries near the coast, are chiefly clothed in Manchester cotton goods; a circumstance which would lead us to expect, should we succeed in obtaining a commercial intercourse with the interior of Africa, that a valuable market for our manufactures may be found in that country.

Within the last twenty years (1844), the American settlers of Liberia have established a communication across the country to Timbuctoo, and have found there a considerable market for cotton cloths.

We shall now resume our account of the progress of the manufacture in Great Britain.

From Sir Richard Arkwright having commenced his stocking operations at Nottingham, the seat of the stocking manufacture, and from his connection with Mr Need, who was largely engaged in it, the whole produce of his spinning was at first devoted to that trade. The cotton yarn for this manufacture requires to be particularly smooth and equal; and to secure these qualities, it is spun by a process differing a little from that employed for ordinary twist. Being from two roves in place of one, it is called double span twist. The stocking introduction of this article produced a great change upon the stocking manufacture. Hand-spun cotton was entirely laid aside; and stockings made of twist were of so superior a quality, that in a short time they wholly supplanted thread stockings.

The manufacture of cotton stockings in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire, is now of great extent.

About the year 1773, Mr Need and Mr Strutt made the important discovery, that the yarn produced by the spinning frame had sufficient strength to fit it for warp, although its firmness and hardness rendered it less suitable for weft. The weft, therefore, continued to be spun by Hargreaves' jenny; and from this time the calicoes, and other articles in imitation of India goods, which had hitherto been manufactured with linen warp, came to be made wholly of cotton; and the progressive increase of these manufactures, particularly of calicoes, after this time, was unexampled.

After having made a considerable quantity of those goods, Mr Need and Mr Strutt discovered, that, when printed, they were subject to double the duty charged upon calicoes woven with linen warp, and that their sale was even prohibited in the home market. After a long and expensive application to the legislature, they succeeded in procuring the repeal of those impolitic laws. Nearly about the same period, calicoes entirely of cotton were begun to be made at Blackburn, and also at Preston; which places soon became the seat of their manufacture, and for a long time the great market to which the printers from all parts of the kingdom resorted for their supplies. This branch went on increasing for many years in a most extraordinary degree. About the year 1805, it was calculated that the number of pieces sold annually in the Blackburn market was not less than a million; and by that time the manufacture of this article was not confined to the country around Blackburn, but had spread into the north-west district of Yorkshire, principally about Colne and Bradford, from which part of the country 20,000 pieces weekly are said to have been sent to Manchester.

The first attempts to make muslins in this country commenced simultaneously in Lancashire and at Glasgow about the year 1780, but without success. There was no yarn fitted for the weft of these goods, except that spun upon Hargreaves' jenny; and when made of this, it was found they were not of a marketable quality. Recourse was then had to wefts brought from India; and although a better article than the former was by this means produced, it was still not of a quality to compete successfully with Indian muslin. As soon, however, as the invention of the mule jenny enabled the spinner to produce yarns suited to such fabrics, the manufacture of the finest cotton articles became an important branch of trade in this country. That machine, as has been mentioned, came into use at the end of the year 1785, upon Sir Richard Arkwright's patent being cancelled; and it is from that period we ought to date the commencement of this part of the manufacture. So rapid was its progress, that in 1787 it was computed that 500,000 pieces of muslin were in that year manufactured in Great Britain.

Muslin began to be made nearly at the same time at Bolton, at Glasgow and at Paisley, each place adopting the peculiar description of fabric which resembled most those goods it had been accustomed to manufacture; and in consequence of this judicious distribution at first, each place has continued to maintain a superiority in the production of its own article.

Jaconets both coarse and fine, but of a stout fabric, checked and striped muslins, and other articles of the heavier description of this branch, are manufactured in Bolton and in its neighbourhood.

Book, mull, and lino muslins, and jaconets of a lighter fabric than those made in Lancashire, are manufactured in Glasgow. Sewed and tamboured muslins are almost exclusively made there and in Paisley. A machine of most ingenious contrivance for performing the operation of tambouring was in the year 1807 invented by Mr John Duncan of Glasgow, and a patent taken out for the discovery. Each machine contains about forty tambouring needles, and is superintended by a girl, who pieces the thread when it breaks. This beautiful, and, at first, promising piece of mechanism has never come into general use. At present there are only three or four machines kept at work by the Messrs Mitchells of Glasgow, who at an early period became proprietors of the patent.

What are called fancy goods, woven in the loom, were first made at Paisley, which had been the chief seat of the silk gauze manufacture of this country. In the silk trade, which was then beginning to fall into decay, a body of most ingenious workmen had been bred. By employing them, the taste and invention which had produced the varieties displayed in that beautiful article were immediately transferred to the production of similar fabrics of muslin. From this circumstance Paisley for a long time retained the exclusive possession of this branch; but being only seven miles distant from Glasgow, the general seat of the cotton manufacture of Scotland, and the mart to which most purchasers of muslin resort, many of its principal manufacturers have been induced to move their establishments to that city, although the weaving of these muslins continues to be executed in Paisley and its neighbourhood.

There is a curious circumstance to be noticed with regard to the manufacture of the very fine fabrics of muslin in Scotland,—that a great part of the yarn used for them is brought from Manchester, in consequence of the Scotch spinners not having yet been able to produce the very fine numbers of yarn of the best quality. This inferiority does not proceed from a less perfect construction of the machinery employed in Scotland, the mechanics and the machinemakers of Glasgow being admitted to be excellent workmen; neither does it arise from the want of skill in those who conduct the business, or from any difference in the processes employed in the two countries; but it is to be attributed to the same cause which produces the superior yarn of India, namely, an adroitness and mechanical sleight of hand in the operative spinners of Manchester, acquired by a few out of the great multitude bred there.

The manufacture of the thicker cotton fabrics was at the same time rapidly rising in importance. The manufacture of dimities has been exclusively confined to the north of England, all attempts to make them in Scotland having proved unsuccessful.

Balason handkerchiefs were first manufactured about Preston and Chorley, where they still continue to be made. The manufacture of ginghams was for a long time confined to Lancashire, but for many years it has been extensively introduced at Glasgow, although Lancashire continues to be the chief seat of this branch.

Pulicat handkerchiefs were first made about the year 1785 at Glasgow, where the manufacture of them has been carried on to a great extent. They were not made in Lancashire till some time afterwards, and the manufacture of them there has never been to the same amount; Glasgow, therefore, continues to be the principal mart for this article.

Blue and white checks and stripes for exportation were at first of a linen fabric, but were afterwards woven with linen warp and cotton weft; and when Sir Richard Arkwright's discovery enabled the spinner to produce cotton yarn of sufficient strength to be used for warps, a great proportion of these goods came to be made wholly of cotton. This manufacture is carried on in Lancashire and in the county of Fife, and to a small extent at Aberdeen; its chief seat, however, is Carlisle.

The manufacture of cotton cambric was begun about the same period, and was separated into two branches; into cambric to be used as garments in a white or printed state; and into cambric made in imitation of French linen cambric, to be used for the same purposes as that article. The first is made nearly altogether in Lancashire, where the manufacture of it is carried on to a great extent; and the second, of much less amount, wholly at Glasgow. The Scotch manufacturers have never been able to rival the Lancashire in the first, nor the Lancashire manufacturers to rival the Scotch in the last.

Bandana handkerchiefs, and Bandana cloths for garments, were first made by Mr Henry Monteith, at Glasgow, about the year 1802, and are now manufactured there to a considerable amount. The cloth is dyed a bright Turkey red, and the colour is discharged from those parts which form the pattern or figure, by passing a chemical mixture through them. Glasgow still continues to be the chief seat of this manufacture, and there are in that city several large works for carrying it on. The demand for Bandanas, however, has latterly fallen off, while, in consequence of the repeal of the impolitic duty on printed cloths, the consumption of these has greatly increased; and most of the proprietors of the Turkey-red dyeing establishments have therefore been induced to add calico-printing to their former business.

From the circumstance of Glasgow being the seat of a fine manufacture, it was found difficult, as long as hand-weaving continued, to introduce there the weaving of calicoes. The article was made to a limited amount at Perth, but the Scotch calico-printers were obliged to look for the principal part of their supply of cloth to Lancashire. So long as this was the case, it is evident that the Scotch were not on an equal footing with the English printers; and as a great deal of capital had been embarked in the trade by the former, a considerable anxiety was felt by them that this defect in their situation should be remedied. The object was at length attained by the introduction into Scotland, in 1801, of the art of weaving by the power of water or of steam; the machinery and subsidiary processes for which had about that time been so improved, that cloth woven in this way was found to be as cheap, if not cheaper, than if produced by manual labour.

Weaving by power, fifteen years before its introduction into Scotland, had been attempted by the Rev. E. Cartwright of Hollander House, Kent, who invented a loom to be worked by mechanical means. The circumstances of this discovery, which will be found fully detailed in the following letter from Mr Cartwright, are curious, and, in the history of inventions, we think interesting. Mr C. says—

"Happening 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 never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work and invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and, in defence of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen a person weave. I contended, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking, that there had lately been exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess. Now, you will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that difficult game."

"Some little time afterwards, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could only be three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there would be little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such materials as sail-cloth is usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had ever seen a loom at work, or knew anything of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was placed perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundredweight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time. Conceiving in my great simplicity that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th April 1785. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy mode of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made a loom, in its general principles nearly as they are now made; but it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent, August 1st of that year."

But the idea of weaving by machinery was not new. About the close of the preceding century, a drawing and a description of a similar loom (a circumstance unknown to Mr Cartwright) had been presented to the Royal Society of London. The movements, too, in both are the same with those of the inch-loom, a machine which had long been in use.

Mr Cartwright, after obtaining his second patent, erected a weaving factory at Doncaster, which he filled with looms. This concern was unsuccessful, and was at last abandoned. But still the invention was considered so important to the country, that some years after, upon an application from a number of manufacturers at Manchester, parliament granted Mr Cartwright a sum of money as a remuneration for his ingenuity and trouble.

About the year 1790, Mr Grimshaw of Manchester, under a license from Mr Cartwright, erected a weaving factory, which was to have contained five hundred looms, for weaving coarse sacking cloth. He intended also to attempt the weaving of fustians. But after a small part of the machinery had been set going, the work was destroyed by fire; and as the concern during the short trial that had been made did not promise to be successful, the mill was not rebuilt.

About the year 1794, Mr Bell of Glasgow invented another loom, for which also a patent was taken; and a factory of these looms was erected at Milton near Dumfarton. But this concern, although carried on for many years, was not more successful than those which had preceded it.

In 1801 Mr John Monteith of Glasgow erected, in the village of Pollokshaws, a weaving factory, containing two hundred looms. This concern also at first promised ill, but is understood to have afterwards succeeded; and the number of looms was increased to three hundred.

In 1806 a large weaving factory was erected at Catrine in Ayrshire, by Messrs James Finlay and Company, to be carried on in conjunction with their extensive spinning-work at that place; and in 1808 they built another weaving factory at Doune, connected with the spinning-works there, the two containing 462 looms. The quantity of cloth produced in these establishments, in proportion to the number of hands employed in them, is understood to have been greater than had been obtained before in other works, and the undertaking is said to have done well from the outset.

After this period new weaving factories were erected in Glasgow or in its neighbourhood almost every year.

In 1817 there were in Glasgow or belonging to it fifteen weaving factories, containing 2275 looms. There were in 1832 sixty-three factories, containing 14,127 looms.

Weaving by power, however, could never have succeeded if the dressing... but for the discovery of a process for dressing the web before it is put into the loom; which happily was effected by Mr Radcliffe of Stockport. The stoppage of the work from time to time for dressing the web made it impossible to do more than attend to one loom; but by the acquisition of this process, one person can attend to two looms.

The contrivances for "dressing" are very ingenious, the machinery employed in it deriving its movement from the power which gives motion to the looms. The yarn is first wound from the cop upon bobbins by a winding machine, in which operation it is passed through water, to increase its tenacity. The bobbins are then put upon the warping mill, and the web is warped from them upon a beam belonging to the dressing-frame. From the beam, now placed in the dressing-frame, the warp is wound upon the weaving-beam, but, in its progress to it, passes through a strong dressing of starch. It is then compressed between two rollers, to free it from the moisture it had imbibed with the dressing, and drawn over a succession of tin cylinders heated by steam, to dry it. During the whole of this last part of its progress it is lightly brushed as it moves along, and fanned by rapidly revolving fans.

Mr Peter Marsland of Stockport, who for many years had a large factory for weaving cotton cloth of a superior quality, was the inventor of an improvement upon the power-loom, by means of the double crank, for which, about the year 1807, he obtained a patent. The operation of the crank is to make the lathe give a quick blow to the cloth on coming in contact with it, and by that means render it more stout and even.

The weaving of calicoes by power did not succeed in Lancashire so early as it did in Scotland. In 1817, the number of power-looms in Lancashire was estimated to be about two thousand, of which only about one thousand were said to be then in employment. The cause of this was, that the price paid at the time we refer to for weaving by the hand had been forced down to the very lowest degree by the depressed state of trade, and the pressure of an overgrown population bearing upon the means of employment. Wages had fallen below the rate at which the goods could be produced by machinery. This struggle for existence between the two processes terminated, however, as might have been expected. The hand-weavers, finding it impossible to go on with the reduced wages, gradually gave way. Their numbers ceased to increase; and the extraordinary addition to the amount of the manufacture since that time has been the product of the power-loom. Goods of very low and fine qualities are still woven by the hand.

In 1832 there were 80,000 power-looms in Lancashire. The weekly produce of two power-looms, managed by a girl, is from 10 to 11 pieces of cloth, four-fourths wide and twenty-five yards long, woven in 11 reed; and for this she is paid eightpence per piece.

The following table, from Dr Cleland's Statistics of Glasgow, gives the numbers, the age, and sex of the persons employed in twenty of the weaving mills belonging to Glasgow, with the maximum and minimum amount of the weekly wages earned in 1832 by the different sexes, at the different ages.

| Age | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |-----|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | 9 to 10 | 1 | s. d. | 9 | s. d. | | 10 ... 12 | 31 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 2 | 6 | to 3 | 6 | | 12 ... 14 | 38 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 66 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 6 | | 14 ... 16 | 60 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 447 | 4 | 10 | 9 | 0 | | 16 ... 18 | 56 | 8 | 0 | 12 | 538 | 6 | 14 | 10 | 0 | | 18 ... 21 | 56 | 7 | 0 | 25 | 826 | 7 | 0 | 10 | 2 | | 21 upwards | 750 | 16 | 0 | 24 | 1235 | 7 | 0 | 9 | 1 |

Dr Strang, in his Report on the Social Statistics of Glasgow for 1851, gives the following statement of factories and wages:

**Cotton Factories in Lanarkshire.**

| Description | No. of Factories | No. of Spindles | No. of Power-Looms | Total Numbers employed | |-------------|-----------------|----------------|--------------------|------------------------| | Spinning | 31 | 585,230 | ... | Males, Females, M & F | | Weaving | 37 | ... | 12,254 | 2,093, 5,255, 7,388 | | Spinning & Weaving | 17 | 278,858 | 6,557 | 1,522, 5,810, 7,332 | | | 85 | 884,068 | 18,811 | 5,013, 17,450, 22,463 |

The factory wages were as follows:—Power-loom weavers averaged 7s. in 1841, and 7s. 3d. in 1851; spinners 21s. in 1841; and the same in 1851. Both worked 69 hours in 1841, and only 60 in 1851. The increase of wages arises principally from increased product through improvements in machinery.

The total in Scotland are as follows:—Cotton factories 168; spindles 1,683,093; power-looms 23,564; moving power steam 71,005; water 2842; persons employed, males 8797, females 27,528, total 36,325.

There is a branch of the cotton manufacture yet to be noticed; a branch not derived from the East, like muslin, manufacture, but one that has had its origin in this country,—namely, the bobbinet, or Nottingham lace manufacture, which now furnishes employment to a large amount of labour and capital.

That the stocking-frame should have been transferred into a machine for weaving point-lace, a fabric so different in character, was not to have been expected. About the year 1768, however, a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, looking at the lace on his wife's cap, thought he could fabricate a similar article by means of his stocking-frame. He tried, and was, on the first attempt, to a certain degree successful. In 1782 some advance was made in carrying his invention farther; but the design was not finally matured till 1809, when Mr Heathcoat of Loughborough, but afterwards of Tiverton, succeeded in bringing the machine to a perfect state, and took a patent for the discovery. In 1815 steam power began to be applied to the movement of the machine, but did not come into extensive use until 1820. In 1823, on the expiry of Mr Heathcoat's patent, the manufacture increased with extraordinary rapidity. The demand for the goods became immense; and the Nottingham lace-frame was found, in the fabrication of plain nets, to rival the most finished productions of France and the Netherlands. It is proper however to observe, that without the previous possession of the mule jenny, we could not have made the acquisition of the cotton-lace manufacture. Had Mr Crompton not given us the means of obtaining very fine yarn, of the quality required for the delicate texture of lace or bobbinet, fabrics of such beauty must have rested with their conception, for want of a material of sufficient fineness.

Mr Heathcoat's frame, on its introduction, at once took the place of the whole body of pillow-lace workers. After his patent expired, and the trade was thrown open, the eagerness to partake of the great profits produced a most active competition, and new and improved machines were brought forward in rapid succession, each in its turn rendering less profitable, and by degrees displacing, the one which had preceded it.

Again, when latterly the supply of the article came to overtake the demand, and prices were greatly reduced, the frames moved by power began to press hard upon those worked by the hand; and the value of the hand-machines, which when they were first started was as high as £1,200,

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1 It may be assumed that the persons employed therein are altogether dependent on Glasgow. sank to L60. There are now (1854) in the course of being introduced into the manufacture machines possessing such power of production as must supersede the older ones.

The number of lace frames in September 1831 was 4501. Of these, 3501 were hand-machines; and seven hundred of them were held by workmen, who bore the twofold character of manufacturer and weaver, and to whom every fall in the price of the goods resolved itself into a fall of wages, leading to a reduction of the wages paid in the trade generally.

These machines worked up annually 1,600,000 pounds of sea island cotton, which were spun into 1,000,000 pounds of yarn, of the value of L500,000, and gave employment to fifty-five spinning factories at Manchester, containing 860,000 spindles. The lace trade has, however, introduced another important branch of business in doubling the fine single yarn spun upon the mule, as lace or bobbinet requires a twofold thread for its production, and lace thread has therefore become an article of great consumption, not only in the manufacture of lace, but also as a mixture with wool and silk. It is calculated that 208,000 persons receive wages for the labour performed in the different processes of this manufacture—in spinning the yarn at Manchester, weaving the goods in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, and in the embroidery of them, executed in different parts of the kingdom. The product is estimated at 23,400,000 yards, and the value as it comes from the frame at L1,891,875. Of this whole production, about four-eighths are exported in an unembroidered state to the Continent; about three-eighths are sold unembroidered for home consumption; and the remaining eighth is embroidered in this country. The total value of the goods, and of the work performed upon them in this country, has been estimated at L3,417,700.

Having now given a sketch of the progress of the cotton manufacture of this country, from its first introduction to the present time, we shall endeavour to give some idea of its progressive increase, by tabular exhibitions of the quantity of cotton wool imported into Britain at different periods; and which will indicate the increase in mills and machinery in the whole cotton trade of the United Kingdom.

From the year 1716 to 1720, the average annual importation of cotton was 2,173,287 lbs. We have not been able to obtain any account of the cotton imported from that period to the year 1771; but the increase had not been great; for the average annual importation from 1771 to 1775, which commences two years after Hargreaves' and Arkwright's discoveries, and comprehends two years of the time after which calicoes began to be made wholly of cotton, was only 4,764,589 lbs. The importation from 1776 to 1780 was 6,766,613 lbs.; from 1781 to 1785, 10,941,934 lbs.; from 1786 to 1790, 25,448,270 lbs.; from 1791 to 1795, 26,000,000 lbs.; and from 1796 to 1800, 37,364,077 lbs.

The quantity of cotton imported from 1771 to 1775 was 4,764,589 lbs., which gives an average for each of the four years of 1,191,147 lbs. The following table will show in pounds weight the quantity imported from 1781 to 1801, without discriminating the countries whence it was obtained; but it may be understood to have been supplied, in the earlier periods, chiefly by the West Indies, the first importation of American cotton of any consequence having taken place in 1793. (See ante, p. 447, note.)

| Years | American | Brazil | East India | Egyptian | West India &c. | Packages | |-------|----------|--------|------------|---------|----------------|---------| | 1820 | 302,285 | 180,686| 57,923 | ... | 31,247 | 571,651 | | 1830 | 618,527 | 191,468| 35,019 | 14,750 | 11,721 | 871,487 | | 1840 | 1,237,500| 85,200 | 216,400 | 38,000 | 22,300 | 1,599,560| | 1845 | 1,499,600| 110,200| 155,100 | 82,900 | 8,800 | 1,855,700| | 1846 | 932,000 | 84,000 | 49,500 | 59,500 | 9,000 | 1,134,100| | 1847 | 874,100 | 110,200| 222,800 | 20,700 | 4,900 | 1,232,700| | 1848 | 1,375,400| 100,200| 227,500 | 29,000 | 7,900 | 1,740,000| | 1849 | 1,477,700| 163,800| 182,200 | 72,600 | 9,100 | 1,905,400| | 1850 | 1,184,200| 171,500| 307,900 | 79,700 | 5,700 | 1,749,300| | 1851 | 1,393,700| 108,700| 328,800 | 67,400 | 4,900 | 1,903,500| | 1852 | 1,789,100| 144,200| 221,500 | 189,900 | 12,600 | 2,357,300| | 1853 | 1,532,000| 132,400| 483,300 | 105,400 | 9,100 | 2,264,200|

The following Table gives the extreme prices of Cotton Wool at Liverpool on the 31st December, from 1818 to 1853, showing the progressive reduction of the raw material during that time:

| Year | 1818 | 1822 | 1826 | 1828 | 1830 | 1832 | 1834 | 1836 | 1838 | 1840 | |------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | | Sea Island | 13 | 14 | 14 | 10 | 12 | 11 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 14 | | Orleans | 16 | 21 | 7 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 12 | | Upland | 17 | 19 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | | Egyptian | 19 | 21 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | | Perambuco | 22 | 23 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | | Maranham | 20 | 20 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | | Demerara | 19 | 24 | 8 | 11 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | | West India| 17 | 18 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | | Surat | 8 | 14 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |

| Year | 1842 | 1844 | 1846 | 1847 | 1848 | 1849 | 1850 | 1851 | 1852 | 1853 | |------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | d. | | Sea Island | 7 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | | Orleans | 3 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Upland | 3 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Egyptian | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Perambuco | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Maranham | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Demerara | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | | Surat | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | The following Table gives the quantity of Cotton Yarn spun, and the quantities exported and worked up at home, from the year 1818 to 1853:

| Years | Yarn produced | Exported | Consumed at home | Years | Yarn produced | Exported | Consumed at home | |-------|--------------|----------|------------------|-------|--------------|----------|------------------| | 1818 | 98,911,260 | 14,743,615| 80,463,193 | 1836 | 203,061,396 | 88,191,016| 114,870,378 | | 1819 | 98,560,200 | 18,093,410| 91,566,790 | 1837 | 264,031,851 | 103,453,138| 160,578,713 | | 1820 | 105,281,500 | 22,432,235| 83,206,275 | 1838 | 346,880,271 | 114,379,652| 232,840,595 | | 1821 | 116,778,100 | 21,955,783| 96,867,189 | 1839 | 596,522,172 | 120,297,912| 476,224,261 | | 1822 | 120,947,300 | 20,595,529| 110,672,853 | 1840 | 695,060,822 | 136,660,580| 558,389,953 | | 1823 | 138,731,400 | 27,377,782| 131,353,936 | 1841 | 720,618,190 | 142,960,776| 577,657,412 | | 1824 | 148,655,600 | 33,698,491| 123,271,434 | 1842 | 702,991,388 | 136,829,859| 566,452,149 | | 1825 | 150,146,500 | 33,241,604| 116,506,652 | 1843 | 686,672,547 | 130,777,826| 555,894,720 | | 1826 | 150,401,200 | 34,179,321| 119,513,933 | 1844 | 539,877,938 | 124,321,604| 421,022,798 | | 1827 | 156,904,600 | 43,386,162| 108,313,254 | 1845 | 453,561,789 | 122,700,317| 330,861,340 | | 1828 | 156,074,000 | 45,121,562| 111,652,795 | 1846 | 279,290,687 | 97,323,151| 121,047,452 | | 1829 | 157,826,000 | 45,242,882| 112,583,114 | 1847 | 215,290,603 | 80,088,442| 95,098,359 | | 1830 | 212,594,200 | 71,504,134| 371,055,676 | 1848 | 156,490,171 | 60,989,662| 95,954,070 | | 1831 | 222,549,000 | 71,387,894| 371,161,633 | 1849 | 67,211,039 | 69,640,116| 96,784,072 | | 1832 | 214,365,100 | 94,863,110| 131,550,391 | 1850 | 67,067,912 | 64,540,119| 102,867,530 | | 1833 | 211,768,500 | 82,439,284| 115,778,254 | 1851 | 60,096,711 | 74,801,599| 95,187,907 | | 1834 | 185,913,900 | 90,300,166| 112,508,032 | 1852 | 60,253,206 | 75,909,936| 125,385,069 | | 1835 | 181,435,800 | 82,941,938| 109,350,860 | 1853 | 38,085,800 | 124,110,504| 125,265,505 |

The following Table gives the Markets to which the Cotton Yarn spun from 1818 to 1853 was exported:

| Years | Russia and Ports in the Baltic. | Germany, Belgium, and Holland. | France and Bordering Caroline Steam Newspapers | Africa and North & South America. | India and China. | Spain | Portugal and Mexico. | British and Foreign West Ind. | Mauritius, Batavia, New Holland. | Totals | |-------|-------------------------------|---------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|-----------------------------|----------------|--------------|----------------------|------------------------|-------------------------| | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | Lbs. | | 1818 | 9,512,394 | 7,067,329 | 5,837,329 | 14,733,657 | | ... | ... | ... | 18,085,410 | | 1819 | 7,377,544 | 11,246,637 | 14,415,614 | 18,093,410 | | ... | ... | ... | 30,519,856 | | 1820 | 9,604,032 | 11,858,783 | 12,048,720 | 11,053,439 | | ... | ... | ... | 41,009,254 | | 1821 | 6,210,721 | 11,622,510 | 22,738,784 | 12,415,620 | | ... | ... | ... | 59,997,227 | | 1822 | 4,948,000 | 4,813,188 | 12,895,538 | 7,866,976 | | ... | ... | ... | 40,925,488 | | 1823 | 7,718,247 | 16,978,047 | 3,052,155 | 5,784,842 | | ... | ... | ... | 26,597,966 | | 1824 | 12,204,373 | 14,987,501 | 6,124,720 | 2,486,301 | | ... | ... | ... | 28,796,063 | | 1825 | 6,133,128 | 29,721,406 | 5,204,428 | 1,563,911 | | ... | ... | ... | 12,804,485 | | 1826 | 42,346,000 | | 1,872,314 | 12,967,781 | | ... | ... | | 126,647,750 | | 1827 | 28,569,468 | 47,734,672 | 2,677,495 | 12, -118,807 | | ... | ... | | 242,179,521 | | 1828 | 42,881,656 | 58,178,291 | 1,427,612 | 12,608,121 | | ... | ... | | 289,934,254 | | 1829 | 12,355,678 | | 12,651,435 | 14,206,320 | | ... | ... | | | | 1830 | 16,085,171 | | 8,048,337 | 17,467,912 | | ... | ... | | | | 1831 | 12,636,804 | 12,122,622 | 2,973,462 | 70,141 | | ... | ... | | | | 1832 | 28,569,468 | 47,734,672 | 2,677,495 | 12,118,807 | | ... | ... | | | | 1833 | 42,881,656 | 58,178,291 | 1,427,612 | 12,608,121 | | ... | ... | | | | 1834 | 16,085,171 | | 8,048,337 | 17,467,912 | | ... | ... | | | | 1835 | 12,636,804 | 12,122,622 | 2,973,462 | 70,141 | | ... | ... | | | | 1836 | 32,529,648 | | | | | | | | | | 1837 | 36,320,037 | 43,407,321 | | | | | | | | | 1838 | 37,423,038 | 42,657,851 | | | | | | | | | 1839 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1840 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1841 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1842 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1843 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1844 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1845 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1846 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1847 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1848 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1849 | 12,609,762 | | | | | | | | | | 1850 | 12,723,529 | | | | | | | | | | 1851 | 16,085,171 | | | | | | | | | | 1852 | 16,085,171 | | | | | | | | | | 1853 | 16,085,171 | | | | | | | | |

The value of the present annual production of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is estimated at £5,600,000 sterling, of which nearly £2,300,000 is the value of goods and yarn made for exportation. The capital invested in buildings and machinery may be calculated at nearly the same amount of the manufacture, and more than double what it was thirty years ago, while the quantity of goods annually produced is much more than triple; yet, from the improvement of the processes, and consequent diminution of the expense of production, with the reduction which has taken place at the same time in the price of the raw material, this more than tripled quality of the manufactured ar-

This column includes Trieste and the Austrian ports from 1832.

This column includes Turkey, Egypt, and the Levant from 1832.

The article does not represent more capital than was represented by, and required for bringing to market, the lesser amount during the preceding period. In the year 1812, when Mr Crompton applied to parliament for a remuneration for his invention, he found by as accurate an investigation as he could make, that the number of mule spindles in this country was between four and five millions; and Mr Kennedy, in his memoir of Mr Crompton, has stated that the number in 1829 had increased to seven millions. In 1817, he estimated the number of persons employed in the spinning of cotton in Great Britain at 110,763, and the number of spindles in motion at 6,645,833, and the quantity of yarn produced at 99,687,500 lbs. The quantity of cotton yarn spun in 1832 was 222,000,000 lbs., of which 132,000,000 lbs. have been manufactured into cloth, giving employment to 203,373 looms; but in 1853 the yarn spun was 685,440,000 lbs.

No exact estimate of the capital invested in the cotton trade can be given. What is offered above is a mere approximation. The following details, however, possess much interest, and may be relied upon.

In 1888, the total number of cotton factories in Great Britain and Ireland was 1815; thus apportioned:

| England and Wales | 1,599 | | Scotland | 192 | | Ireland | 24 | | **Total** | **1815** |

The total number of hands employed in these factories was 206,061, of whom 114,129 were males, and 145,934 females, thus apportioned:

| England and Wales | Males | Females | |-------------------|-------|---------| | | 101,412 | 118,451 | | Scotland | 10,950 | 24,629 | | Ireland | 1,765 | 2,857 | | **Total** | **114,127** | **145,934** |

There is no return of the number of factories at work in 1846, but the number of persons employed in them is thus given by Mr Burns in his *Statistics of the Cotton Trade*, from which the above particulars are taken:

| England and Wales | Males | Females | |-------------------|-------|---------| | | 129,920 | 153,708 | | Scotland | 9,221 | 25,895 | | Ireland | 1,550 | 2,633 | | **Total** | **134,091** | **182,236** |

Total employed in the United Kingdom, 316,327

According to the census of 1851, the cotton manufacture of Great Britain employs 149,214 men, 143,268 women, 73,398 boys, and 104,437 girls—in all 470,317 persons; besides as cotton and calico printers 13,263 men, dyers 3,024 men, and youths and girls in large numbers.

As the successive mechanical inventions which we have described came to be applied to the manufacture, they changed the principle of production, and made what till then had been nearly wholly a product of labour become almost entirely a product of capital. Important results flowed from this change. It enabled Great Britain, the principal holder of these machines, to become the furnisher of a commodity which up to that time had been brought at a great expense from India. It further enabled her to reduce its cost, and render what till then had been accessible only to the rich, and of limited sale, an article of general wear. During the long struggle which took place between machinery and hand labour, this country continued to be the nearly exclusive possessor of the machines by which the reduction of cost was effected. Having in consequence, in a great measure, a monopoly of the supply, she was enabled to reap that harvest of prosperity which so unusual a combination of circumstances was calculated to produce. An improvement in the condition of every class of the community followed the advance of the manufacture. The progressive extension of the use of machinery, in place of lessening the demand for labour, as was at first dreaded, had the effect of increasing it to an extraordinary degree. There was a constantly growing want of hands to be employed in aid of the new machinery, and in the new branches of manufacture to which it gave birth. The wages of labour in consequence rose, at first moderately, but afterwards extensively; and the rise having prevailed every description of employment, not only gave the whole labouring class in this country a command of the comforts of life, but brought within their reach many little luxuries to which they were formerly unaccustomed. The condition of the higher classes of the community experienced a corresponding advance, the population rapidly increased, and an enlarged consumption of the products of the soil took place, in consequence of the improved circumstances, as well as of the augmented numbers of the people. More grain, more butcher-meat, were used; and an additional quantity of corn was required for the horses employed in the transport of commodities, in the conveyance of passengers, and in the operations of husbandry. All these causes gave a stimulus to agriculture, and produced a change on that important branch of industry, not less remarkable than that which was simultaneously taking place in manufactures.

Previous to the year 1766, the industry, population, and consumption of the country had been for a considerable time stationary. We had, from the want of demand at home, been enabled during the whole of the preceding part of the century to export grain annually to a large amount. From 1766, however, we ceased to be exporters of grain. The improvement in the circumstances of the country had enlarged its power of consumption, which from that time has been so steadily progressive, and so great, that notwithstanding our having, by our improved agriculture, augmented our products threefold, we not only have never been able to bring our home supply to meet our demand, but have been obliged to import largely every year from other countries.

There can be no such satisfactory evidence of the improving condition of a people as a continued increase in their power of consumption; and the facts we have stated afford proofs of a degree of comfort diffused for a length of time over a great population, which we believe to be unexampled, while the influence of the cotton manufactures on the commercial prosperity of the country has been scarcely less striking.

To preserve this pre-eminence in manufacture against the competition of rival states, we have still to look to our economy, our capital, our machinery, and our superior skill in providing a variety of undefinable subsidiary aids to the manufacturing processes. From the European states we have little to fear; and the advantages which America possesses as a cotton-producing country is greatly neutralized by the other drawbacks to which it is subject. The Southern States of the Union, in which the cotton wool is raised, from their local defects, and the character of the lower classes, never can become a manufacturing country. To the Northern States, and to ourselves, the difference of cost of raw material cannot be great, particularly if the East Indies and South America be open for our supply. The high price of labour also renders the cost of production much dearer than in Britain, and operates as a serious bar to the extension of the cotton manufacture in the Northern States. The consequence is, that notwithstanding the great efforts which have been made to naturalize that branch of industry in these provinces, and notwithstanding the well-known energy and intelligence of the people of North America, it has made but slow progress during the last twenty years, compared with the vast expansion which it has undergone in this country, as will be seen from the following table:— It is obvious, from this table, that the home consumption in the United States has always borne a most disproportionate ratio to the entire growth, and that even in the four last years, when it had attained to the highest point which it has yet reached, the quantity reserved for domestic use never exceeded a seventh part of the whole, and generally fell considerably below it. It is deserving of notice, however, that in the period of time which this table comprehends, the internal consumption of the United States has been trebled; but large as this increase may seem in the eyes of a native economist, the conclusions from it will not be satisfactory if the collateral circumstances are not considered; and the chief of these is, that it is an increase upon small quantities, and indicates no more than the gradual growth of an infant trade, which the cotton manufacture was in North America in 1829.

We believe that in this manufacture we have little to fear in the meantime from competition; but we are not equally confident that its prosperity may not be exposed to risk from our ill-judged anxiety to secure a monopoly of its advantages. Our practice of excluding from our markets the manufactures of other countries is not only contrary to sound political principle, but gives rise to a spirit of hostility unfavourable to our interests, and places us in such a state that, when other nations in retaliation exclude our manufactures from their markets, we have no right to complain.

That we may not decide this question rashly, let us examine what is the danger to which we should be exposed if we were to take the opposite system, and open our ports to the manufactures of other countries.

If we can now export annually to the value of about L32,000,000 sterling of cotton goods, which, burdened with freight, charges, and the exporter's profit, we are able to sell in competition with foreign manufacture, can we have anything to fear from a competition with that manufacture in our home market, where the circumstances of the competing parties would be reversed? So far from the introduction of foreign manufacture into our market being an evil, we are inclined to think that it would be advantageous to our interests; and that, in the interchange of various fabrics which would be the result, the sale of our own manufactures would be increased. Commerce being altogether a matter of barter, it is necessary for every country to purchase in order that she may sell; and, fortunately, even in the same branch of manufacture, there is always room for such exchanges. There are shades of difference in the fabric of every article, upon which taste, or fashion, or caprice, never fails to fix an arbitrary value, thereby constituting them into separate commodities capable of being exchanged.

But the view we are taking of this important question does not rest altogether upon theory. Happily we have experience in support of it. No one disputes the advantage resulting from the interchange of commodities between Lancashire and Lanarkshire, or alleges that it would be for the benefit of either to have the manufacture of the other excluded from its market. Yet these two districts have their dependence upon manufactures which in their general features are the same.

It is well known regarding the commercial treaty with France, in which some approach was made to a free trade between the two countries, that while it lasted the sale warehouses of London and Manchester were resorted to by purchasers from the different towns of France, with the same freedom, and in nearly an equal proportion of numbers, as from the towns in England. And although in those warehouses French and English commodities of a similar description were to be found, and our shopkeepers were at the same time daily resorting to France to make purchases, in no period were our manufactures in a state of greater progressive prosperity than during the eight years (from 1786 to 1796) that this treaty existed.

There is no one, we believe, who has taken the trouble to investigate the matter, that will not say that both were benefited by this treaty, and probably exactly in the degree that the exclusive system in both had been departed from.

In addition to this, it may be proper to notice, that Switzerland and Saxony have always been open to the reception of cotton goods free of duty; and that in no other countries on the Continent is the cotton manufacture in a more thriving state. Might it not, therefore, be a wise measure to withdraw our restrictions against the importation of foreign manufactures, since the interference of these with our own products in the home market, supposing no interchange of the two to take place, never could counterbalance the amount of the sale we may be deprived of by following the opposite policy, and thus inducing the exclusion of our own goods from the foreign market?

Fears have been expressed that the lower wages for which the labourers of other countries that compete with us in the manufacture can work, and upon which, from the cheapness of their provisions, they can afford to live, may ultimately enable them to take the manufacture out of our hands. In reply to this, it may perhaps be sufficient to recall to our readers the small part of the cost of the commodity which now belongs to the labour of the hand, and the daily diminution which is taking place even of that part, by the introduction of new mechanical substitutes. Thus, for example, in 1767 each spindle required a person to work it; but now one man, with the aid of a few piecers to take up and join his broken ends, can work a thousand spindles. In Lancashire in 1818 there were not more than 2000 power-looms, and of these not a half in employment; while in 1832, so extensive had been the change from hand-weaving to weaving by power, the number had increased to 80,000.

According to the subjoined table, the cotton industry of Great Britain and Ireland yielded last year about fifty-four millions sterling, and which may be regarded as half the cotton industry of the whole world; but foreign countries, besides taking half of the raw cotton sent to market, receive large supplies of cotton yarns from Great Britain; and in Asia and Africa cotton is still largely spun by hand; hence the world's cotton industry may be valued at 120 millions, which would afford to every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth 2s. 9½d. worth of cotton manufactures, or about fourteen yards per head per annum of excellent calico. ## Cotton Manufacture

### Declared Value of British and Irish Cotton Manufactures and Twist and Yarn exported to the undermentioned Countries in the Year 1853.

| Population of Countries exported | Value per head of exports to each Country | Countries to which Exported | Cotton Manufactures entered by the Year | Declared Value | Total | |---------------------------------|------------------------------------------|----------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------|-------| | 67,000,000 | £0 0 0 0 25 | Russia—Northern Ports | £34,331 | £28,992 | £137,324 | | | | Ports within the Black Sea | 9,462 | 102 | 4,186 | | 2,984,831 | | Norway | 7,145 | 2,176 | 45,286 | | 1,600,000 | | Denmark (including Iceland) | 34,929 | 2,027 | 64,142 | | 2,900,000 | | Prussia | 637 | 200 | 25,508 | | 15,726,820 | | Mecklenburg-Schwerin | | | 27,245 | | 20,000 | | Hanover | | | 60 | | 2,003,200 | | Oldenburg and Kielhausen | | | 60 | | 241,000 | | Hanseatic Towns | 785,335 | 202,208 | 2,976,717 | | 384,000 | | Helleland | | | 3,004,380 | | 2,000 | | Holland | 473,700 | 81,435 | 1,892,043 | | 2,444,550 | | Belgium | 62,170 | 57,800 | 179,976 | | 3,633,638 | | Channel Islands | 95,650 | 1,205 | 106,855 | | 1,453,120 | | France | 65,532 | 46,674 | 43,584 | | 30,876,432 | | Portugal Proper | 611,195 | 10,858 | 42,310 | | 4,530,000 | | Azores | 47,699 | 803 | 1,140 | | 271,416 | | Madeira | 15,945 | 721 | 18 | | 90,000 | | Spain—Continental, and the Balearic Islands | 73,983 | 6,957 | 5,953 | | 14,367,210 | | Canary Islands | 10,833 | 3,003 | 10,833 | | 200,000 | | Gibraltar | 374,289 | 21,928 | 7,455 | | 17,724 | | Italy, &c.—viz. Sardinian Territories | 242,213 | 17,705 | 40,775 | | 4,580,000 | | Duchy of Tuscany | 236,676 | 26,696 | 104,742 | | 1,275,000 | | Papal Territories | 80,423 | 613 | 78,740 | | 2,500,000 | | Naples and Sicily | 148,627 | 13,272 | 109,630 | | 7,532,000 | | Austrian Territories | 200,901 | 6,052 | 20,901 | | 120,000 | | Malta and Geno | 108,445 | 2,009 | 30,447 | | 208,100 | | Ionian Islands | 67,026 | 623 | 15,411 | | 1,000,000 | | Kingdom of Greece | 95,590 | 307 | 12,161 | | 26,100,000 | | Turkish Dominions, exclusive of Wallachia, Moldavia, Serbia, and Egypt | 1,510,622 | 13,529 | 1,638,268 | | 2,000,000 | | Wallachia and Moldavia | 77,469 | 638 | 77,469 | | 15,000,000 | | Syria and Palestine | 242,639 | 601 | 33,439 | | 100,000 | | Egypt—Ports on the Mediterranean | 318,143 | 7,601 | 27,735 | | 10,000,000 | | Tunis | | | 355,529 | | 101,469 | | Algeria | | | 355,529 | | 40,000 | | Morocco | | | 355,529 | | 13,750,000 | | Western Coast of Africa | | | 355,529 | | 10,000,000 | | Eastern Coast of Africa | | | 355,529 | | 150,000,000 | | African Ports on the Red Sea | | | 355,529 | | 5,000,000 | | Cape Verde Islands | | | 355,529 | | 2,500,000 | | Ascension Island and St Helena | | | 355,529 | | 300,000,000 | | Mauritius | | | 355,529 | | 20,000 | | Aden | | | 355,529 | | 25,000 | | Persia | | | 355,529 | | 2,630,000 | | Continental India, with the contiguous Islands—viz. British Territories | 4,447,413 | 64,292 | 1,168,264 | | 5,000,000 | | The Elman Empire | | | 355,529 | | 2,500,000 | | Islands of the Indian Seas—Java | | | 355,529 | | 300,000,000 | | Philippines Islands | | | 355,529 | | 20,000 | | China | | | 355,529 | | 25,000 | | Hong Kong | | | 355,529 | | 2,630,000 | | Japanese Islands | | | 355,529 | | 600,000 | | British Colonies in Australia | | | 355,529 | | 2,456,045 | | British North America | | | 355,529 | | 944,820 | | British West India Islands and British Guiana | | | 355,529 | | 14,000 | | Honduras (British Settlements) | | | 355,529 | | 600,000 | | Foreign West India Islands | | | 355,529 | | 401,200 | | Porto Rico | | | 355,529 | | 135,000 | | Guadeloupe | | | 355,529 | | 31,000 | | Martinique | | | 355,529 | | 8,000 | | Curacao | | | 355,529 | | 226,000 | | St Croix | | | 355,529 | | 860,000 | | St Thomas | | | 355,529 | | 27,000,000 | | French Guiana | | | 355,529 | | 8,000,000 | | Dutch Guiana | | | 355,529 | | 28,000 | | Haiti | | | 355,529 | | 1,267,625 | | United States of America | | | 355,529 | | 500,000 | | California | | | 355,529 | | 6,000,000 | | Mexico | | | 355,529 | | 850,000 | | Central America | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | New Grenada | | | 355,529 | | 1,500,000 | | Venezuela | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Ecuador | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Brazil | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Oriental Republic of Uruguay | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Buenos Ayres, or Argentine Republic | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Chili | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Bolivia | | | 355,529 | | 1,000,000 | | Peru | | | 355,529 | | 12,000 | | Falkland Islands | | | 355,529 | | 20,000 | | Greenland and Davis' Straits | | | 355,529 |

Total: £23,901,940 £1,915,200 £6,895,653 £39,712,802

Estimated consumption of Cotton Manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland: 21,294,494

The amount of British Cotton Manufactures supplied for the whole World: 53,937,206 Steam navigation has brought out the full benefit of our insular position. It has brought Bristol, Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast, and Glasgow, into constant and intimate relation; and the celerity and certainty belonging to the conveyance render this means of transport for our finer commodities invaluable. Suppose that a person in Glasgow receives an order for goods to be shipped by the first vessel for New York, and there is no vessel to sail immediately from the Clyde, but he knows that one of the packet ships from Liverpool will sail for New York in four days from that time; he puts his goods into the steam-boat from Glasgow to Liverpool, and they are on board of the packet for New York in three days after receipt of the order.

The railway, again, between Manchester and Liverpool, with its steam conveyances, has not only reduced the cost of carriage between these places, but has had the effect of bringing together these two immense manufacturing and trading communities, overlapping, as it were, space and time, in the rapidity of the communication. A manufacturer in Manchester can leave his house in the morning, purchase a supply of cotton at Liverpool, and have it delivered at his work in Manchester the same day.

The more perfect division of labour and separation of employment which takes place as the use of machinery advances, and the consequent limitation of the worker's attention to a single object, check the expansion of the faculties, and prevent that growth of intelligence in this class which under a more general employment of their powers might be expected. Another evil of a similar nature, but attended perhaps with more serious consequences, is produced by manufactures when they have arrived at this state, namely, the employment of children in factories, by which these young creatures are withdrawn from their parents and homes before they have received the elements of education, or can have acquired domestic or moral habits.

In noticing these evils, however, we must recollect that the state of manufacture which gives birth to them is not an optional one, not the production of regulation or institution, but has grown up in the progress of the arts of industry, prosecuted by an intelligent people. Although, therefore, it is our duty, in as far as we can, to correct their effects, we must lay our account with being exposed to them, so long as men are allowed to pursue their individual interest, by whatever fair means they conceive likely to accomplish their object.

To remedy in as far as possible the interruption to education, schools have been established in many of the factories, in which the children are instructed gratis in reading and writing. An institution of this kind we consider it to be the interest of the proprietor of every work to provide. The expense cannot be great, and will be amply repaid in the superior description of workers it will be the means of rearing. In the meantime, something is done to supply the deficiency of this provision by Sunday Schools, which have been generally established in most of the manufacturing towns. In these, the children are not only taught to read, but are also instructed in the principles of religion, and in a knowledge of their moral duties.

In the year 1800, a course of lectures was given for the first time in Glasgow, in the Andersonian Institution, to the mechanics and working classes, with the view of affording them instruction in the science of their different employments. In the supplement to a former edition of this work, we thought it important to give an account of these lectures, in order to call public attention generally to the benefit which had been derived from them; but this account we think it unnecessary to repeat, as the "Mechanics' Institutions," which began soon after to be formed in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds, on the principles of this course, have since spread into every quarter of the kingdom. These establishments are calculated to counteract in a great degree the effects which we have noticed as arising from the minute division of employment, and confinement of attention to one object, in great manufactories.

So important does this species of instruction appear to us in the circumstances of this country, where so much depends on our being able to keep the lead which we have got in mechanical invention and discovery, that we think it worthy of consideration in a national point of view, whether, in the appointment of our parochial schoolmasters, it might not be declared indispensable that they should be qualified to teach the first principles of mechanics and chemistry.

With the stores of the raw material of machinery which we possess, might we not, with a proper training of our people, become machine-makers for all the nations who are less favourably circumstanced? The advantage of being able to occupy such ground would be incalculable.

In Ireland some attempts to introduce the manufacture of cotton goods were made so early as 1770, but the manufacture continued on a very limited scale until the year 1790, tare in Ireland. After this period the progress was considerable, although far short of what took place during the same time in this country; indeed, its products have never been such as to enter into competition with those of Britain, or to become articles of general foreign sale. This probably arises from the high price of fuel, rendering the concentration of the processes by means of the power of steam, and the consequent saving in labour, in many situations impossible.

The chief seat of this manufacture in Ireland is Belfast, and the district of country situated within twenty miles of that town. But there are a good many calicoes, fustians, and cotton checks made in Dublin, Balbriggan, Bandon, and Cork. All these goods are consigned to factors in Dublin for sale; except a part of the calicoes, which the manufacturers are sometimes enabled to dispose of to printers on the spot.

Some of the spinners weave the whole of their yarn, while others do not weave any; but in either case, the weaving is carried on by capitalists, who give out the yarn to be woven, and pay the weaver wages for his work. The greater part of this business is carried on in the same district with the linen manufacture, in which the weaver is the sole manufacturer, buying the yarn for his web, and selling the cloth when he has finished it. Perhaps the difference in the manner in which these manufacturing processes are conducted, may proceed from the different way in which the yarns made use of in the two branches are produced. The yarn for the linen manufacture is spun by individuals scattered over the country. This, in the infancy of the business, and while little capital had been accumulated, may have led to the manufacturing process being carried on in a like detached manner; the weaver purchasing the yarn from his neighbour the spinner, and, after converting it into cloth, selling the web at the nearest market to the merchant. The cotton manufacture in Ireland did not grow up thus from small beginnings, but was introduced into that country at once from England, and with spinning establishments upon comparatively a large scale. It was in consequence necessary that the weaving should from the first take off the produce of those establishments; and there being no way of effecting this with certainty, but by employing the weavers upon wages to work up the yarn, the manufacture was begun, and has been prosecuted upon this plan ever since; while the linen manufacture, carried on in the same district, continues to be conducted upon the opposite system.

Large quantities of cotton yarn are sent from Britain to Ireland to be woven by the hand-weavers in that country; and several Glasgow houses have agents at Belfast for giving out their yarns, to be woven in that neighbourhood, and The manufacture furnishes in this case employment to English capital and Irish labour.

The cotton trade of Ireland, which is centred almost wholly in Belfast and its neighbourhood, has of late years exhibited a tendency to improve. It now gives employment to nearly 5000 persons.

The government of the United States has evinced great anxiety to promote the establishment of the cotton manufacture in the northern part of the union, but without considering that manufactures are only valuable to a country in so far as by their means the people can be supplied with the article cheaper than they are able to procure it elsewhere. When a manufacturer requires the support of bounties, or of laws prohibiting the importation of similar articles, a part of the national wealth is consumed in fostering a branch of industry incapable of maintaining itself. There is no greater error in policy than this; and yet we see it every day committed by young nations, when they endeavour to force manufactures before the circumstances of the country admit of such undertakings; and by old nations, when they persist in the manufacture of articles which, from natural disadvantages, they cannot produce at so low a price as that at which they might purchase them from others.

A manufacture, to attain a permanently profitable establishment in a country, must grow up in it naturally. It must be to a certain degree indigenous, or there must exist circumstances affording special advantages and facilities for carrying it on. Manufactures may indeed be forced, in the same manner that grain may be made to grow on soils not congenial to its culture; but in both cases the application of capital will be unprofitable. Where industry is left to follow its natural course, every country will betake itself to the production of those articles which circumstances enable it most advantageously to supply; and the consumers, in consequence, will be furnished with the articles they require at the lowest possible cost. Every man's means of consumption will, to the degree in which the cost is reduced, be enlarged, and his command of the comforts and enjoyments of life be extended.

The favourite system of a country supplying everything within itself, is alike adverse to individual advantage and to the increase of national riches. A division of employment among nations, founded upon existing local or accidental circumstances, is as much in unison with the principles of sound political science, and as much calculated to promote the general benefit, as is the division of labour and of employments among individuals. It is not by manufacturing everything it consumes that a nation becomes rich, but by its people being profitably employed.

If these principles be just, it must be a misapplication of American capital and industry, to withdraw them from the cultivation of the soil and the circulation of its products,—undertakings found to be highly profitable, and of boundless extent,—and to force them into manufactures supported by monopolies and bounties.

There cannot be a doubt, that sooner or later the American legislators will be compelled to relinquish the system they are pursuing. Even were they to continue to shut their eyes to its injurious operation, they would find it impracticable, in a community composed of federated states, with different local interests, to prosecute branches of industry which require to be protected against foreign competition. A federal compact, like a mercantile copartnery of individuals, presumes a perfect equality and community of interests among all the parties concerned; and, as in the case of a mercantile company, if any attempt were made to render the interests of certain of the partners subservient to those of the others, the concern would be immediately broken up, we may presume that, under like circumstances, the result will be similar with the federal compact of the United States. It would not be in the ordinary course of human affairs were the people of the southern states to continue to purchase articles required for their consumption at an advanced price, merely for the purpose of enabling the people of the northern states to manufacture them. Free trade then, we conceive, must accompany federated communities, wherever they are established; and we hail with satisfaction the prospect now opening of the attainment of this object in the western world, in every quarter of which the people appear to be revolving themselves into federal governments. The benefits of unrestricted intercourse between man and man, and between nation and nation, likely to be exhibited by these countries on so extended a scale, will open men's eyes everywhere to its advantages; and the period, we think, is not distant, when we shall look back with astonishment upon the wars we have carried on, the blood and treasure we have wasted, and the heavy burdens with which we have saddled ourselves, to acquire or retain colonial or commercial monopolies.

In the account we are to give of the rise of the American cotton manufacture, we shall chiefly refer to the public documents, in which its growth is studiously detailed, and the difficulties it has had to struggle with anxiously dwelt upon.

Before the year 1791, America possessed no manufacture except for domestic production and family use. But in that year a cotton mill was erected in the state of Rhode Island, as appears from a report of the secretary to the American treasury, drawn up in 1810.

This report further informs us, that another mill was erected in the same state in 1795, and two more in the state of Massachusetts in 1803 and 1804; that during the three succeeding years ten more were erected in Rhode Island, and one in Connecticut, making together fifteen mills, working about 8000 spindles, and producing about 300,000 pounds of yarn a-year; that by a return which was made at the date of the report, eighty-seven additional mills had been erected in the end of the year 1809, sixty-two of which (forty-eight water and fourteen house mills) were then in operation, and worked 31,000 spindles; and that the other twenty-five mills were expected to be in operation in the course of the year 1810, and, together with the former ones (all of which are increasing their machinery), would, by the estimate received, work more than 80,000 spindles at the commencement of the year 1811.

The capital required to carry on the manufacture on the best terms is estimated at the rate of a hundred dollars per spindle; but it is believed that not more than at the rate of sixty dollars is generally employed. Each spindle produces annually about thirty-six pounds of yarn from forty-five pounds of cotton, and the value of the yarn may be averaged as worth one dollar twelve and a-half cents per pound. Eight hundred spindles employ forty persons, viz. five men and thirty-five women and children.

We learn the farther progress of this manufacture from a report of the house of representatives, presented in the spring session of 1816. The report states—

"That the quantity of cotton manufactured in the year 1815 was 90,000 bales, a quantity nearly equal to that used in the cotton manufacture of France.—That the quantity used in 1810 was 10,000 bales; in 1805, 1000 bales; and in 1800, 500 bales." This statement the committee say they have no reason to doubt, nor have they any to question the truth of the following succinct statement of the capital which is employed, of the labour which it commands, and of the products of that labour.

| Capital employed | 40,000,000 dollars | |------------------|-------------------| | Males employed from the age of seventeen and upwards | 10,000 | | Women and female children | 66,000 | | Boys under seventeen years of age | 24,000 | | Cotton manufactured, 90,000 bales | 27,000,000 lbs. | | Cotton cloth of various kinds manufactured | 81,000,000 yards. | | Cost | 24,000,000 dollars. | The report proceeds to say, "that the manufacturers of cotton, in making application to the national government for encouragement, have been induced to do so for many reasons. They know that their establishments are new, and in their infancy; and that they have to encounter competition with foreign establishments that have arrived at maturity, which are supported by a large capital, and have from the government every protection that can be required."

At the date of this report the duty upon cotton goods imported into the United States was 15 per cent.; but before charging it, 10 per cent. was added to the invoice, and the duty thus raised to 16½ per cent. Upon the recommendation of the committee, 10 per cent. more was imposed; and the whole being charged upon L.110 for every L.100 of net value, brought it up to 27½ per cent.

Besides this, all cotton goods below 13½d. per yard, were ordered to be rated at 13½d., and the difference added to the amount of the invoice before calculating the duty.

New tariff acts were successively passed in 1824, 1828, 1832, and 1834; in each of which the duty upon cotton goods imported was declared to be 25 per cent. ad valorem, rating the coarser fabrics in the same manner as in 1816.

The manufacture, under this protection against foreign competition, rapidly increased. Power-loom works were erected; the most approved processes both in spinning and weaving were adopted; and the business was generally successful. The manufacture, however, is still almost wholly confined to the states of New York, Rhode Island, and to the New England states. In the former of these it is very extensive; and in the neighbourhood of the city of New York nine new mills have been erected in the course of the last twelve months. Within the same period, 500,000 spindles are supposed to have been added to the cotton manufacture of the States. In both the spinning and weaving departments, the processes are conducted on the most approved principles, and there seems only to be wanting that skill and sleight of hand in the execution of the operations, which is indispensable to securing either excellence of quality in the article, or largeness of quantity in the product. These are not to be obtained until the manufacturer acquires such a command of labourers as will enable him to enforce the early and attentive training of the workers.

The following returns, based partly on the official census, show the number of mills and spindles in each of the New England states using cotton wholly, leaving out all of those engaged in the manufacture of warps for satins, merino shirts, mousseline-de-laines, and shawls of mixed materials, of which it forms a component part:

| Mills, Spindles, and Looms in New England | |------------------------------------------| | Maine .................................. | 15 | 3,439 | 113,900 | 29,736 | | New Hampshire ......................... | 40 | 12,462 | 440,401 | 193,717 | | Massachusetts ....................... | 165 | 32,655 | 1,268,923 | 665,085 | | Vermont ................................ | 12 | 345 | 31,736 | 7,254 | | Rhode Island ......................... | 166 | 28,283 | 624,138 | 518,817 | | Connecticut .......................... | 109 | 6,506 | 232,812 | 181,319 | | Total .................................. | 507 | 82,640 | 2,754,078 | 1,997,394 |

If the protecting duties can be maintained, the prosperity of the American cotton manufacture will continue until its product exceeds the demand for the home consumption. If the surplus cannot then be disposed of in foreign markets, the manufacturers must experience similar distress to that of the cotton manufacturers of France from the year 1827 to 1832. The circumstances, however, giving rise to this state of things in the two countries are different. In America they are of a temporary character, and will quickly pass away. Possessed of the natural advantages for a successful prosecution of this description of employment, the northern states of the union only require population to become the seat of extensive manufacture. They have coal and iron, the want of the first of which in France, and the consequent high price of their iron, must prove an obstacle to the successful prosecution in that country of every branch of industry in which machinery is largely used.

Much has been spoken and written by alarmists of the danger to which the cotton-manufacturing interests of this country are exposed from the competition of America and the continental states of Europe. These fears we believe to be in the meantime utterly without any real foundation. So overwhelming is the superiority of this country in machinery and manufacturing skill, and so completely does Britain command the market, that in 1850 the cotton exports of America, the most formidable of these rivals, only amounted to about L.1,000,000 sterling, of which it is believed that more than a half must stand for the value of raw material exported.

The sole superiority which America at this moment possesses over England is the greater facility and cheapness with which she can provide herself with the raw material, and even this advantage is almost counterbalanced by the higher rate of wages for which alone Americans can be found to work. Still less than America can the central states of Europe withstand the competition of British capitalists. They are obliged to obtain their supplies of the cotton-wool from some of the great seaports of northern and southern Europe, such as Hamburg, Genoa, or Marseilles; and even with the present improved means of communication, a bale of cotton can be conveyed more cheaply from South Carolina to England than from any of the seaports in question to Switzerland, Saxony, or central Europe.

Another great disadvantage under which these inland states labour, is the want of coal, which necessitates the employment of water as a moving power. As every available stream in these countries is said to be now occupied, their manufactures may be considered as having already attained their acme. In France alone is the cotton manufacture progressing in a satisfactory or healthy way. It was found that in the interval which elapsed from 1812 to 1826, the French cotton manufactures had advanced at a ratio of 310 per cent.; while during the same period those of our own country had only increased 270 per cent. This, however, was easily to be accounted for. Previous to the first of these dates, it had been almost impossible for French capitalists to introduce the raw material into their country. When peace was proclaimed, however, and government fostered French at the expense of foreign manufactures, it was natural that factories should multiply so as nearly to supply the immediate demand. After the supply, however, came nearly to equal the demand, the extent of the manufactures began considerably to diminish. The ratio of progress is still very satisfactory, though now quite inferior to what it was in the years already mentioned, as also to the present ratio of British progress. The only department of this branch of industry in which we are outstripped by the continental states is that of dyeing; but even in the oriental markets, where brilliancy of colour is especially looked for, the sober-coloured cotton goods of Britain are, from their cheapness, gradually supplanting the brighter colours of other states.

These and other considerations lead us to think that England, differing in this from the central states of Europe, has not yet by any means reached the full development of the resources laid open to her by her cotton manufactures. Great as her progress within the last twenty years has been, it is in reality greater than appears from the foregoing statements; inasmuch as her capitalists are now to a greater extent than before directing their efforts to the production of a finer and more valuable class of goods, leaving the trade in inferior wares to her competition.