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COTTON SPINNING.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Importance of the English or modern system of cotton spinning.— Cotton; origin of its manufacture; the distaff; the spinning wheel; imperfect development of the Hindoo faculty of inventiveness. -Confinement of the ancient system to India; the domestic wheel; the flax wheel.—Kay's inventions; Hargreaves'; Arkwright's; influence of these upon other textile industries.-Development of the new system. --Its extension to the United States; the Continent of Europe; Asia; other parts of the world.—Its present magnitude. —Abundance and cheapness of its products. Its early influence upon Lancashire; rapid growth; decline of the value of its products.-Present condition; official returns, 1880; inadequacy of these to express its importance.-Location and future prospects of the trade. Magnitude as compared with other leading industries.

OF

F the many industrial arts whose products minister to the welfare and happiness of mankind, few have acquired a more important position than the English, or modern, system of cotton manufacturing, or have had a greater influence upon the progress of civilization. The inventions which inaugurated the present epoch of mechanical discovery, occurred in connection with it; and this example in succession spreading to all the other great industries, has, during the past century and a half, revolutionized the condition of civilized society, and made its influence felt throughout the world.

Cotton, the raw material with which the manufacture deals, is the fibrous covering of the seed of the Gossypium

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herbaceum and kindred plants, which flourish in a state of nature over the tropical and temperate zones of the earth's surface. In India and China the plant has been cultivated for ages, and its fibre utilized in the manufacture of clothing, and also in several other eastern countries. More recently it has attracted attention for the same purpose into the West Indies, the Southern States of the American Union, Brazil, Egypt, and other lands deemed suitable for its cultivation. To many of these it has proved a source of great wealth, and its growth is daily extending, especially in the United States.

The best evidence yet obtained points to India as the birth-place of the manufacture. In that country mechanical appliances appear to have been first invented in order to aid in the manufacture of the fibre. At a very early period the art became a prevalent domestic industry, and extended over almost the entire peninsula; at one time being so general as to employ, more or less entirely, almost half the population. Cotton was grown in the precincts of every village; cleaned, spun, and woven on the spot; each little community producing enough for its own consumption. A rudely-constructed roller gin separated the seed from the fibre, and the latter was cleansed from leaf, sand, dirt, and knots by the bow. The cotton as left by this instrument in a light fleecy mass, was then taken, with little further preparation, and spun by women. coarsest yarns were made upon a heavy, clumsily-constructed, one-thread wheel, evidently the progenitor of the domestic wheel long in use in this country, and the Saxony wheel of a later date. This was unsuited, however, for the production of the fine yarns used in the manufacture of the exquisitely beautiful muslins of the country, which were therefore spun by means of the spindle that had been in use from time immemorial. A distaff was sometimes employed, though quite as often the process was conducted without. This spindle in the earliest times was composed of a straight piece of wood, weighted at one end with a

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bit of clay. Subsequently an iron spindle was substituted, though at what date we are without information. It is also equally impossible now to discover at what period the crude wheel just mentioned was invented, though doubtless it was subsequent to the invention of the spindle. It is strange that the inventive skill of the Hindoo races never produced anything beyond these rude appliances, whilst they attained such a high degree of technical skill in their use. But such is undeniably the fact, for from the day when these simple devices left the inventor's hands, they scarcely appear to have been touched, though ages have passed away since that time, during which they have been in constant use in the hands of millions of workers. The same sterility characterized their efforts in dealing with the machinery they invented for weaving: nothing mechanical of theirs ever grew by a succession of improvements to a condition approximately perfect, as in this country has been the case in almost every instance. It would appear that the epoch of mechanical invention was not destined to be inaugurated by or amongst these peoples.

Cotton manufacturing does not seem to have spread far from the place of its origin, or to have risen to any degree of excellence anywhere out of India until quite recent times. The distaff and spindle, and the rude wheel before referred to, continued the only instruments by which yarn was produced. About the year 1530 the domestic hand spinning-wheel appears to have been invented, and for a long time was the only improvement made. This was succeeded towards the close of the century by the Saxony wheel, which, though a great advance upon the preceding, was a long time in displacing it. This wheel was supplied with a "flyer," by means of which the twist was put into the yarn, and the latter wound upon a bobbin. A traverse movement was afterwards added, enabling the yarn to be run upon the barrel in even layers. A second spindle was subsequently adapted to this wheel, which ob

tained for it the denomination of the "two-handed wheel," an expert spinner being thus enabled to spin two threads at a time. This constituted the climax of hand spinning.

In the fourth decade of the eighteenth century the elder Kay, of Bury, in Lancashire, invented the picking-stick for the hand loom, added boxes to its sley, and improved the shuttle, enabling one weaver to operate a loom where two were formerly required, the single operative also doubling the production of cloth as compared with the amount obtained before. This was the beginning of the modern epoch of invention, and its first practical result. The demand for yarn, which was a consequence of the general adoption of Kay's improvement, greatly stimulated invention, but a considerable time elapsed before any further real progress was made. Hargreaves, the Black

burn weaver, was the first to succeed with his spinningjenny in 1767, Arkwright following closely after with his water-frame. On these well-known inventions it is not necessary to dilate here, as the principles embodied in them will come under review subsequently. It must suffice to remark that they form the base of the modern system of cotton manufacturing, and the important results that have sprung therefrom. The influence exerted upon all the textile industries by the successful application of machinery to the performance of the delicate processes of the manufacture of cotton, and the adaptation of cotton machinery to the manufacture of wool, silk, and flax, is a tale which must be relegated to the historian for narration, as also must be the story of the far-reaching influence of these examples upon other industries. Industry has put on a new face, and social conditions have been revolutionized. With philosophers and statesmen, however, may be left the solution of the great politico-economical and social problems that have arisen from the stimulus given to invention by these successes, and the consequent universal application of machinery to industrial purposes, resulting, as it has largely

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