amid streams of blood and flame, it attracted the attention of historians, many of whom have apparently yet to learn that bloodshed and battles are merely the incidents of history. The French Revolution also succeeded in giving birth to on of the world's military heroes, and a military hero naturally excites the enthusiasm of the multitude. Yet even the French Revolution was the result of economic causes that had been operating for centuries, and which had had their effect in England four hundred years before, at the time of the Peasants' Revolt. These economic causes have been rather kept in the background by most historians, who have preferred to dwell upon the antics of French politicians and revolutionaries, many of whom have gained a quite undeserved importance; and it was hardly to be expected that writers should recognise the operation of such causes in England, more especially as their effects were not accentuated by political fireworks, but were even partially hidden by subsequent events resulting from these effects. Men were blinded, too, by an increase in the wealth of the richer portion of the nation, not even seeing whence that wealth proceeded, and quite ignoring the fact that it was accompanied by serious poverty among the industrial classes.1 Nor did historians perceive that the worldfamous wars in which England was engaged at the close of the last century, and up to 1815, were necessitated by her endeavour to gain the commercial supremacy of the world, after she had invented the means of supplying the world's markets to overflowing. Economic causes were at the root of them all. We shall discuss later the connection bet ween our foreign politics and our industry; and we must not

1 This is recognised by Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 443, w. remarks, "while the gains of some of the owners of capital were sometimes enormous, the labourers were forced to a lower level of life." Cf. also Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 93.

2 Seeley, Expansion of England, ch. ii., only partially recognises this, though he is pre-eminent for his accurate view of the eighteenth century wars. But he attributes too much weight to colonial expansion, and not enough to industrial and mercantile influences. England was striving almost as much for a market as for colonial power. See Rogers, Economic Interpretation, p. 323, and the chapter (xv.) on colonial trade and markets and wars.

forget that, besides this revolution in manufactures, there was one equally important in agriculture. But with this we must deal afterwards; at present we must adhere to the subject of the development of industry by the great inventors.

§ 203. The Great Inventors.

The transition from the domestic to the factory system was begun by four great inventions. In 1770 James Hargreaves,2 a carpenter and weaver of Standhill, near Blackburn, patented the spinning-jenny, i.e. a frame with a number of spindles side by side, which were fed by machinery, and by which many threads might be spun at once, instead of only one, as had been the case in the old one-thread hand spinning-wheel.3 Hargreaves first used this "jenny" for some time in his own house, and was at once enabled to spin eight times as much yarn as before by using eight spindles; but afterwards 16, then 20 and 30 were used, and even 120.1 In 1771 Arkwright established a successful mill at Cromford on the Derwent, in which he employed his patent spinning machine, or "water-frame," an improvement upon a former invention of Wyatt's, which derived its name from the fact that it was worked by water-power." A few years later (1779) both these inventions were superseded by that of Samuel Crompton, a spinner, but the son of a farmer near Bolton, who added domestic spinning and weaving to agriculture. His machine, the "mule," combined and added to the principles of both the previous inventions, and was called by this name as being the hybrid offspring of its mechanical predecessors. It drew out the roving (i.e. the 1 Below, p. 430.

8

'See Dictionary of National Biography (ed. Leslie Stephen) for a concise life.

The jenny was invented about 1764, but not patented till 12th July 1770 for a description see Baines, Hist. Cotton Manufacture, pp. 157-8.

:

4 Baines, Cotton Manufacture, p. 159.

'See Dict. National Biography (ed. Leslie Stephen).

Baines, Cotton Manufacture, p. 153, and description, pp. 151-153. He first tried horse-power, but it was too expensive,

1 Dict. Nat. Biography, xiii. 148.

8 Baines, Cotton Manf., p. 197.

raw material when it has received its first twist) by an adaptation of the water frame, and then passed it on to be finished and twisted into complete yarn by an adaptation of the spinning-jenny.1 This invention effected an enormous increase in production, for nowadays 12,000 spindles are often worked by it at once and by one spinner. It dates from the year 1779, and was so successful that by 1811 more than four and a half million spindles worked by "mules" were in use in various English factories.3 Like many inventors, Crompton died in poverty in 1827.

2

These three inventions, however, only increased the power of spinning the raw material into yarn. What was now wanted was a machine that would perform a similar service for weaving. This was discovered by Dr Edmund Cartwright, a Kentish clergyman, and was patented as the

power-loom" in April 1785,5 though it had afterwards to undergo many improvements, and did not begin to be much used till 1813. But the principle of it was there, and it was one of the most important factors in the destruction of the old domestic system. For at first only spinning was done by machinery, while the weavers could still do their work by hand in the old methods; and, indeed, they continued to do so till a comparatively recent period, and many aged people in Northern manufacturing districts can still remember the old weaving industry, as carried on in the workmen's own houses." But the improvements on Cartwright's invention ultimately did away with the handweaver, as the others had abolished the hand-spinner, and the old form of industry was doomed.

Its death-blow, however, was yet to come.

1 Baines, Cotton Manufacture, p. 198.

2 Romance of Trade, p. 188.

4 Dict. Nat. Biography, xiii. 150.

Wondrous as

5 Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing, p. 111; Baines, Cotton Manf., 229, 230; Dict. Nat. Biography, ix. 221.

• Cartwright's own attempts to work his invention were unremunerative, and it was not till 1801 that mills were started at Glasgow, where it was worked successfully. Baines, Cotton Manufacture, p. 231; Horrocks of Southport introduced further improvements in 1805 and 1813. Baines, u. s., pp. 234 and 235-237.

7 Cf. previous note on page 341 above.

were the changes introduced by the machines just spoken of, none of them would by themselves alone have revolutionised our manufacturing industries. Power of some kind was needed to work them, and water-power,1 though used at first, was insufficient, and not always available. It was the application of steam to manufacturing processes which finally completed the Industrial Revolution. In 1769, the year in which Wellington and Bonaparte were born, James Watt took out his patent for the steam engine.2 It was first used as an auxiliary in mining operations, but in 1785 it was introduced into factories, a Nottinghamshire cotton-spinner 3 having one set up in his works at Papplewick, which had previously been run only by water-power. Of course the enormous advantages of steam over waterpower soon became apparent; manufacturers, especially in the cotton trade, hastened to make use of the new methods, and in fifteen years (1788-1803) the cotton trade trebled itself.1

It may be here remarked that most of the inventions and improvements were made first in the machinery used for making cotton cloth, and were only subsequently introduced into the woollen manufacture. Thus the spinning jenny, patented in 1770, was not used for woollen clothmaking till 1791 or a little later, though it seems that machinery was used in the woollen cloth trade for some of the preparatory processes, such as carding, and even spinning, about 1793. Moreover, in any trade, the introduction of the new inventions was not either simultaneous or unanimous. Manufactures before the Industrial Revolution were, as we have seen, very widely diffused throughout the country, and consequently in some districts improve

6

1E.g. in Boulton's works at Soho; Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt, p. 130. Horses were even used. Ib.

2 Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (Boulton and Watt), p. 98. 3 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 90.

4 Ib.

5 Spinning jennies were in use at Barnstaple and Ottery St Mary in 1791 (Young, Annals of Agriculture, xv. 494), also machinery at Kendal (ib., xv. 497). Benjamin Gott is said to have first introduced the jenny into the woollen manufacture at Leeds in 1800; Bischoff, Woollen Manufactures, i. 315.

6 Cf. Young, Annals of Agriculture, xxvii. 310. 7 Above, page 338, 339.

}

ments were introduced which did not come into use in others till several years later. Nevertheless the great change proceeded on the whole with remarkable rapidity, and nowhere was it more noticeable than in the cotton trade. The manufacture of cotton cloth is comparatively modern in England, for it was probably not introduced until the early part of the seventeenth century,2 and some confusion is caused in people's minds because "cottons" are heard of before this date,s But the "cottons" of earlier times were made entirely of wool, and must have been only a weak imitation of real cotton cloth. In a work by Lewis Roberts, a well-known writer on trade, published in 1641, we read, however: "The town of Manchester in Lancashire must also be herein remembered, and worthily, for their encouragement commended;

for they buy cotton wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same and perfect it into fustians, vermilions, dimities, and other stuffs, and then return it to London, where the same is vented and sold, and not seldom into foreign parts." Here we have probably the first notice of the making of real cotton cloth; but even in this case only the weft was cotton thread, while the warp consisted of linen yarn, principally imported from Germany and Ireland; for there was no machinery in use fine enough to weave cotton only, nor had English weavers the inherited skill of the Oriental workmen. Hence the cotton manufacturé did not make much progress, and the amount of cotton wool imported annually at the beginning of the eighteenth century was only about a million pounds; while the entire

1 Cunningham also notes this: Growth of Industry, ii. 450.

2 See article Cotton in M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary, ed. 1844, p. 430; also Baines, Cotton Manufacture, pp. 89-112.

Defoe was thus misled into thinking the cotton manufacture earlier than the woollen; Tour, iii. 246.

This is proved by the Act 5 and 6 Edward VI., c. 6 (1552), which was, "for the true making of woollen cloth," and yet includes "the cloths called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottons."

5 Treasure of Traffic (1641), p. 32.

• M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary, Cotton, p. 430.

7 Ib., Table, p. 432.