twenty-eight yards long.' 'A single factory in Manchester,' says Mr Guest, writing in 1828, and that not of first rate magnitude, receives the raw cotton, and turns out a web of cloth, varying in width from three quarters of a yard to a yard and a quarter, of forty miles in length every week.' In 1750, it has been calculated that the whole amount of the cotton manufacture of the kingdom did not exceed the annual value of 200,000l.; it is now considered, on good grounds, to amount to fully thirty-six millions of pounds sterling per annum. Sir Richard Arkwright states, in his Case published in 1781, that the capital then invested in buildings and machinery by those engaged in this trade, amounted to 200,000l.; it is calculated to amount now, in Lancashire alone, which possesses about four-fifths of the trade, to 8,000,000l. In the year ending on the 1st of May 1818, 105 millions of yards of cotton cloth of all sorts were manufactured in Glasgow and the neighbourhood, of which the value was about 5,200,0001. Of this about one half was exported. The value of the cotton cloths, twist, and yarn, exported from Great Britain for some years past, has been on an average about 16,000,000l., leaving of course about 20,000,000 worth for home consumption. The export trade in cotton is now fully three times that in woollens, the manufacture of which used to be the great staple of the kingdom. The extraordinary perfection to which every part of t'he cotton manufacture has now been carried is another result for which we are entirely indebted to the introduction of machinery. Especially since the invention of the mule, a compound of the jenny and the water-frame, about the year 1790, the muslins manufactured in England have been every year *Edin. Review, No. 91. † Baines's Lancashire, vol. ii, p. 134. attaining a greater fineness of fabric, and are now rapidly approaching to a rivalry even in this respect with the most exquisite productions of the East. As an illustration of the state of advancement to which the spinning process has been brought, it may be mentioned, that Mr John Pollard, of Manchester, spun, in 1792, on the mule, no fewer than 278 hanks of yarn, forming a thread of 233,520 yards, or upwards of 132 miles in length, from a single pound of raw cotton.'* The diminution in the price of the manufactured article which has been produced by the successive improvements in the cotton machinery is equally extraordinary. Yarn of what is called No. 100, which even in 1786, after its price had been greatly reduced by the cancelling of Arkwright's patent, sold for thirty-eight shillings, has fallen in price every year since that time, and is now to be had for three or four shillings. The raw material is now indeed brought from India, and manufactured into cloths in England, which, after being reexported to that country, are actually sold there cheaper than the produce of the native looms. There can hardly be a more striking proof than this of the triumph of machinery. Finally, it has been calculated that while the number of persons employed in the cotton manufacture in 1767, did not probably amount to 30,000, the number of those now engaged in its different de partments can hardly be less than a million. Yet, in some branches of the business,' it has been stated, the spinning in particular, such is the economy of labour introduced by the use of machinery, that one man and four children will spin as much yarn as was spun by six hundred women and girls fifty years ago.'§ * Edinburgh Review, No. 91, p. 15. § Baines's Lancashire, vol. i, p. 119. CHAPTER XV. Inventions of the Power Loom - Dr Cartwright. W. Edwards. R. Walker. MACHINERY, in addition to being used in the spinning, is now, as we noticed in our last chapter, extensively applied to the weaving of cotton; and we now propose to give a short account of the Reverend Dr CARTWRIGHT, to whose ingenuity our great national manufacture is indebted for the introduction of this crowning improvement. We have been supplied with the materials of the following sketch from a quarter which enables us to supply some original and authentic information. Edmund Cartwright was born in the year 1743, and was the fourth son of William Cartwright, Esq. of Marnham, in Nottinghamshire. One of his elder brothers was the late Major John Cartwright, so well-known for his steady devotion through a long life to what he believed to be the cause of truth and patriotisin, and for many public and private virtues which commanded the respect even of those who differed most widely from him in politics. Being intended for the church, Edmund at the usual age was entered of University College, Oxford, from whence he was subsequently elected a Fellow of Magdalen College. He early distinguished himself by his literary attainments, an evidence of which he gave to the world while yet a young man by the publication of a small volume of Poems, which was very favourably received. About the year 1774, also, he became a contributor to the Monthly Review; for which he continued to write during the following ten For the first forty years of his life he had never given any attention to the subject of mechanics; although, as was recollected long afterwards, his genius for invention in that department had once displayed itself, while at his father's house during one of his college vacations, in some improvements which he made on an agricultural machine which happened to attract his notice. But this exercise of his ingenuity, being out of the line of his pursuits at that time, led to no other attempts of the kind, nor to any further application of his thoughts to such matters. The circumstances which many years after this led him to the invention of his weaving machine, or power-loom, as it is commonly called, cannot be better described than they have been by himself in the following statement, first printed in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Happening,' he says, 'to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Ark wright's spinning-machinery. One of the company observed that as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands would never be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. This brought on a conversation upon the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and in defence of their opinion they adduced arguments which I was certainly incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at the time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing by remarking that there had been lately 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 that shall make all the variety of moves that are required in that complicated game. Some 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 be only three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there could 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 mechanism, either in theory or practice, nor had seen a loom at work, nor 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 laid perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundred weight, 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 simplicity that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th of 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 modes 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 |