recourse to the typewriter and the printer for his letters, his cards, and his advertisements.

To supply the present demand for printed matter with the implements of a hundred years ago, it would be necessary to draw upon and exhaust the supply of labourers in nearly every other occupation. Printing would become the one universal profession.

The roar of the guns at Waterloo and the click of the first power printing press in London were nearly simultaneous. The military Colossus then tumbled, and the Press began to lead mankind. Wars still continue, and will, until men are civilised; but the vanguard of civilisation are the printers, and not the warriors. The marvellous glory of the nineteenth century has proceeded from the intelligence of the people, awakened, stimulated, and guided by the press. But the press itself, and its servitors and messengers, speeding on the wings of electricity, are the children of the inventors.

These inventions have made the book and the news

paper the poor man's University. They are mirrors which throw into his humble home reflections of the scenes of busy life everywhere. By them knowledge is spread, thought aroused, and universal education established.

CHAPTER XVIII

TEXTILES.

Spinning:-A bunch of combed fibre fixed in the forked end of a stick called a distaff, held under the left arm, while with the right forefinger and thumb the housewife or maiden deftly drew out and twisted a thread of yarn of the fibre and wound it upon a stick called a spindle, was the art of spinning that came down to Europe from Ancient Egypt or India without a change through all the centuries to at least the middle of the fourteenth century, and in England to the time of Henry VIII. Then the spinning wheel was introduced, which is said to have also been long in use in India. By the use of the wheel the spindle was no longer held in the hand, but, set upon a frame and connected by a cord or belt to the wheel, was made to whirl by turning the wheel by hand, or by a treadle. The spindle was connected to the bunch of cotton by a cord, or by a single roving of cotton or wool attached to the spindle, which was held between the finger and thumb, and as the spindle revolved the thread was drawn out and twisted and wound by the spindle upon itself.

In the cloth of the ancient East the warp and weft were both of cotton. In England the warp was linen and the weft was cotton. The warp was made by the cloth and linen manufacturers, and the weft yarns furnished by the woman spinsters throughout the country. By both these methods only a single thread

at a time was spun. The principle of the spinning operation, the drawing out and twisting a thread or cord from a bunch or roll of fibre, has remained the same through all time.

The light and delicate work, the pure and soft material, and the beauty and usefulness of raiments produced, have all through time made woman the natural goddess, the priestess, the patroness, and the votary of this art. The object of all modern machinery, however complicated or wonderful, has simply been to increase the speed and efficiency of the ancient mode of operation and to multiply its results. The loom, that antique frame on which the threads were laid in one direction to form the warp, and crossed by the yarns in the opposite direction, carried through the warp by the shuttle thrown by hand, to form the woof, or weft, comprised a device as old as, if not older than, the distaff and spindle.

The ancient and isolated races of Mexico had also learned the art of spinning and weaving. When the Spaniards first entered that country they found the natives clothed in cotton, woven plain, or in many colours.

After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to John Kay of Bury, England, that the weaving process might be improved. In 1733 he had succeeded in inventing the picker motion, " picker peg,' or "fly." This consisted of mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the web by a sudden jerk of a bar-one at each side-operated by pulling a cord. He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by hand-make wider cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men had done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the weavers were continually calling

on the spindlers for more weft yarns. This set the wits of inventors at work to better the spinning

means.

At the same time that Kay was struggling with his invention of the flying shuttle, another poor man, but with less success, had conceived another idea, as to spinning. John Wyatt of Lichfield thought it would be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton or wool between two sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held and fed by one set of rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn by the other set of rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention, although not then used, was patented in 1738 by Lewis Paul, who in time won a fortune by it, while Wyatt died poor, and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt was the true inventor.

About 1764 a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreaves, an English weaver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an invention that was as important as that of Kay. He was studying hard how to get up a machine to meet the weavers' demands for cotton yarns. One day while Hargreaves was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of them upset the spinning wheel, probably in a children's frolic, and after it fell and while lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle in a vertical position, and the wheel and the spindle still running, the idea flashed into Hargreaves' mind that a number of spindles might be placed upright and run from the same power. Thus prompted he commenced work, working in secret and at odd hours, and finally, after two or three years, completed a crude machine, which he called the spinning jenny, some say after his wife, and others that the name came from "gin," the common abbreviated

name of an engine. This machine had eight or ten spindles driven by cords or belts from the same wheel, and operated by hand or foot. The rovings at one end were attached to the spindles and their opposite portions held together and drawn out by a clasp held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently it was wound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus finally were means provided to supply the demand for the weft yarns. One person with one of Hargreaves' machines could in the same time spin as much as twenty or thirty persons with their wheels. But those who were to be most benefited by the invention were the most alarmed, for fear of the destruction of their business, and they arose in their wrath, and demolished Hargreaves' labours. It was a hard time for inventors. The law of England then was that patents were invalid if the invention was made known before the patent was applied for, and part of the public insisted on demolishing the invention if it was so made known, so that to avoid the law and the lawless the harassed inventors kept and worked their inventions in secret as long as they could. Hargreaves fled to Nottingham, where works were soon started with his spinning jennys. The ideas of Kay, Wyatt and Hargreaves are said to have been anticipated in Italy. There were makers of cloths at Florence, and also in Spain and the Netherlands, who were far in advance of the English and French in this art, but the descriptions of machinery employed by them are too vague and scanty to sustain the allegation.

And now the long ice age of hand working was breaking up, and the age of machine production was fast setting in. Hargreaves was in the midst of his