occurred if it had not been averted by the ingenuity of a Kentish clergyman. Edmund Cartwright, a clergyman residing in Kent, happened to be staying at Matlock in the summer of 1784, and to be thrown into the company of some Manchester gentlemen. The conversation turned on Arkwright's machinery, and "one of the company observed that, as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected and so much cotton spun that hands would never be found to weave it." Cartwright replied "that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill." The Manchester gentlemen, however, unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable. Cartwright "controverted the impracticability by remarking that there had been exhibited an automaton figure which played at chess; " it could not be "more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that complicated game." Within three years he had himself proved that the invention was practicable by produc-1 ing the power-loom. Subsequent inventors improved the idea which Cartwright had originated, and within fifty years from the date of his memorable visit to Matlock there were not less than 100,000 power-looms at work in Great Britain alone.1

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

2

In the same year in which Watt and Henry were introducing

1 Baines' "Cotton," pp. 229, 235.

2 Ibid., pp. 247-249.

1

66

the new acid to the bleacher, Bell, a Scotchman, was laying the foundations of a trade in printed calicoes. "The old method of printing was by blocks of sycamore, about 10 inches long by 5 broad, on the surface of which the pattern was cut in relief in the common method of wood engraving." As the block had to be applied to the cloth by hand, no more of it could be printed at once than the block could cover, and a single piece of calico, 28 yards in length, required the application of the block 448 times." This clumsy process was superseded by cylinder printing. "A polished copper cylinder, several feet in length, and 3 or 4 inches in diameter, is engraved with a pattern round its whole circumference and from end to end. It is then placed horizontally in a press, and, as it revolves, the lower part of the circumference passes through the coloring matter, which is again removed from the whole surface of the cylinder, except the engraved pattern, by an elastic steel blade placed in contact with the cylinder, and reduced to so fine and straight an edge as to take off the color without scratching the copper. The color being thus left only in the engraved pattern, the piece of calico or muslin is drawn tightly over the cylinder, which revolves in the same direction, and prints the cloth." The saving of labor "effected by the machine" is "immense; one of the cylinder machines, attended by a man and a boy, is actually capable of producing as much work as could be turned out by one hundred block printers, and as many tear boys.'

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

1 Baines' "Cotton," pp. 264, 265.

2 Ibid., pp. 265, 266.

has enabled them to withstand the competition of those, who buy their cotton, and who, after carrying it 5,000 miles to be manufactured, carry back the goods to them."1

X

If Great Britain entirely monopolized the woollen and the cotton trades, she had done her best, in her own way, to promote the manufacture of linen in Ireland. In 1698 Parliament, while rigorously prohibiting the exportation of Irish woollen goods, sedulously attempted to encourage the linen manufacture in Ireland. Bounties were paid on all linen goods imported into this country from the sister island; and the great linen trade acquired, especially in Ulster, the importance which it still retains. In 1802, 31,978,039 yards of linen were exported from Ireland to Great Britain, and 2,585,829 yards to other countries. In 1815, the export trade had risen to 37,986,359 and 5,496,206 yards respectively. A formidable rival to Ulster was, however, slowly rising in another part of the kingdom. At the close of the great French war Dundee was still an insignificant manufacturing town, but the foundations were already laid of the surprising supremacy which she has since acquired in the linen trade. Some 3,000 tons of flax were imported into the Scotch port in 1814. But the time was rapidly coming when the shipments of linen from this single place were to exceed those from all Ireland, and Dundee was to be spoken of by professed economists as the Manchester of the linen trade.3

The silk manufacturers of Britain have never yet succeeded in acquiring the predominance which the woollen, cotton, and linen factors have virtually obtained. The worm, by which the raw material is produced, has never been acclimatized on a large scale in England; and the trade has naturally flourished chiefly in those countries where the worm could live and spin, or where the raw material could be the most easily procured. Insular prejudice, moreover, should not induce the historian to forget another reason which has materially interfered with the development of this particular trade. The ingenuity of the British was superior to that of every other nation; but the taste of the British was inferior to that of most people. An article which was only worn by the rich, and which was only used for its beauty and delicacy, was naturally produced most successfully by the most artistic people. English woollen goods found their way to every

1 McCulloch's "Commercial Dict.," ad verb. Cotton.

2 McCulloch, ad verb. Linen; Porter's "Progress of the Nation," p. 230.

continental nation; but the wealthy English imported their finest lustrings and à les modes from Italy and France. The silk trade would, in fact, have hardly found a home in England at all had it not been for the folly of a neighboring potentate. Louis XIV., in a disastrous hour for France, revoked the Edict of Nantes; and the French Huguenots, to their eternal honor, preferring their consciences to their country, sought a home amongst a more liberal people. The silk weavers of France settled in Spitalfields, and the British silk trade gained rapidly on its foreign. rivals. Parliament adopted the usual clumsy contrivances to promote an industry whose importance it was no longer possible to ignore. Prohibitory duties, designed to discourage the importation of foreign silk, were imposed by the legislature; monopolies were granted to successful throwsters, and every precaution was taken which the follies of protection could suggest, to perpetuate the supremacy which Great Britain was gradually acquiring in the silk trade. The usual results followed this short-sighted policy. Prohibitory duties encouraged smuggling. Foreign silk found its way into England, and the revenue was defrauded accordingly. The English trade began to decline, and Parliament again interferred to promote its prosperity. In that unhappy period of English history which succeeds the fall of Chatham and the rise of Pitt, Parliament adopted fresh expedients to promote the prosperity of the silk trade. Prohibitory duties were replaced with actual prohibition, and elaborate attempts were made to regulate the wages of the Spitalfields weavers. The natural consequences ensued. Smuggling, which had been created by prohibitive duties, flourished with fresh vitality under the influence of actual prohibition. The capitalists transferred their mills from Spitalfields, where the labors of their workmen were fixed by law, to Macclesfield and other places, where master and workmen were free to make their own terms.

The silk trade was hardly being developed with the same rapidity as the three other textile industries. But silk, like wool, cotton, and linen, was affording a considerable amount of employment to a constantly growing population. The textile industries of this country could not indeed have acquired the importance which they have since obtained, if the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright had not been. supplemented by the labors of explorers in another field. Ma

chinery makes possible what man by manual labor alone would find it impossible to perform. But machinery would be a useless incumbrance were it not for the presence of some motive power. From the earliest ages men have endeavored to supplement the brute force of animals with the more powerful forces which nature has placed at their disposal. The ox was not to be perpetually used to tread out the corn; women were not always to pass their days laboriously grinding at a mill. The movement of the atmosphere, the flow of running water, were to be taken into alliance with man; and the invention of wind-mills and water-mills was to mark an advance in the onward march of civilization. But air and water, mighty forces as they are, proved but fickle and uncertain auxiliaries. When the wind was too low its strength was insufficient to turn the cumbrous sails of the mill; when it was too high it deranged the complicated machinery of the miller. The miller who trusted to water was hardly more fortunate than the man who relied upon air. A summer drought reduced the power of his wheel at the very time when long days and fine weather made him anxious to accomplish the utmost possible amount of work. A flood swept away the dam on which his mill depended for its supply of water. An admirable auxiliary during certain portions of each year, water was occasionally too strong, occasionally too weak, for the purposes of the miller.

The manufacturing industry of the country stood, therefore, in need of a new motive power; and invention, which is supposed by some thinkers to depend like other commodities on the laws of demand and supply, was busily elaborating a new problem, — the use of a novel power, which was to revolutionize the world. The elasticity of hot water had long been noticed, and, for a century and a half before the period of this history, a few advanced thinkers had been speculating on the possibility of utilizing the expansive powers of steam. The Marquis of Worcester had described, in his “ Century of Inventions," "an admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by means of fire." Steam was actually used early in the eighteenth century as a motive power for pumping water from mines; and Newcomen, a blacksmith in Dartmouth, invented a tolerably efficient steam-engine. It was not, however, till 1769, that James Watt, \ a native of Greenock, and a mathematical instrument-maker in Glasgow, obtained his first patent for "methods of lessening the