The epochal transition in the spinning of cotton occurred within the brief compass of a quarter of a century, beginning with the earliest use of Hargreaves' spinning jenny, about 1765, and culminating in the application of steam power in spinning factories. The jenny, relatively small and inexpensive, and operated by hand, was less revolutionary in its effects than was Arkwright's waterframe. The former, like the wheel, was at first extensively used in the home; the latter, run by water power and later by steam, wrought an immediate revolution in the organization as well as in the technique of the spinning industry. The jenny was adapted for the making the finer threads, and the water-frame for the coarser warp yarns. In consequence, there was a fairly distinct field for each machine. But the introduction of Crompton's mule in 1779 and its rapid improvement and general adoption for the spinning of the finer threads soon resulted in the eclipse of the jenny in the cotton industry. The mule, like the jenny, was at first generally operated by hand in the home, instead of by water power in special plants. It was soon improved, however; the number of spindles was increased; and by 1790 mule spinning was being successfully carried on by power in factories.

The success of the factories established by Arkwright and his partners, beginning about 1770, led to the putting up of similar establishments with great rapidity. To trace the course of the transition in detail is impossible. The most definite and extensive information available is for the year 1788. In March of that year, Messrs. Smith, Colquhoun, Whittaker, and Dunlop, claiming to be "delegates from the manufacturers of calicoes and muslins in England and Scotland,” presented to the Board of Trade a paper entitled “An Important Crisis in the Cotton Manufactory of Great Britain Explained.” ings, 289; Fox Bourne, Romance of Trade, 52; Smiles, Men of Invention and Industry, 113-118.

In the following month, under date of April 9, 1788, this paper in slightly altered form was published anonymously under the title “An Important Crisis in the Calico and Muslin Manufactory of Great Britain Explained.' In this document of the manufacturers it is stated that in 1788 there were 143 water-power factories of the Arkwright type for spinning warp thread, 550 mules having as many as 90 spindles each, and 20,070 hand jennies. The distribution of the water-power factories is stated to have been as follows:

The purpose of the manufacturers in publishing this information was to emphasize the importance of the industry and gain support in their appeal to the government for protection against the alleged dumping by the East India Company of cotton goods made in the Far East, the charge being made that the company was using its monopolistic privileges and power in an attempt to ruin the newly developing English cotton industry. The information presented by the manufacturers was therefore not without bias. Their estimate of the number of jennies was obviously no more than a guess. Robert Peel, when asked in 1785 "whether the skill of making Mr. Arkwright's machine is now fully possessed by other

° Board of Trade Papers, 6/140, Docs. 24-26, 41.

people,” replied, “By every joiner in the country.” 10 Knowledge of the relatively simple mechanism of the jenny must have been accessible to all ordinary mechanics; and the small and inexpensive nature of the device unquestionably led to its construction and use in the homes of large numbers of people independently of any factory or any definite arrangement for employment. This fact would indicate a probable under-estimate of the number of jennies in use. There seems, moreover, to be no sufficient reason for believing that the number of mules and water-frames was exaggerated. Evidence of a somewhat later date for particular regions indicates a much larger number of factories. Thus the number of mills assigned to Nottinghamshire in 1788 was only seventeen, whereas a report to the Board of Agriculture in 1794 stated that there were thirty-one in the county, and two others under construction. The number assigned to the entire county of Chester was only eight, whereas Aikin's famous Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, published in 1795 after prolonged labor of compilation, stated that at Stockport alone there were "twenty-three large cotton factories, four of them worked by steam engines,” besides a large number of smaller cotton-spinning “shops.' About the same time it was reported that there were thirty-nine cotton mills operated by water power in Scotland, as compared with nineteen in the statement for 1788.11

The transition to power machines in the spinning of cotton warp was more rapid than in the spinning of weft, but it is certain that before the end of the century

10

Minutes of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the House of Commons, 1785 (on Irish Resolutions), 18.

“Lowe, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Nottingham, 126; Aikin, Description of the Country Round Manchester, 445, 446; McPherson, Annals of Commerce, IV, 528, 529; Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports," in Econ. Jour., XXXIII, 372.

the jennies and hand-operated mules had given place, even in the spinning of weft, very largely to power spinning. Mules too large to be worked by hand like ordinary jennies were operated by streams or by horses, and in one instance frankly avowed, by "the thews and sinews of a stalwart Irishman." 12 It was well after the end of the century that the steam engine gained the ascendancy as the motive power in the spinning industry, but its experimental use in spinning is said to have begun as early as 1783.13

The wide field for the application of mechanical methods in the cotton industry is shown by the variety of processes in addition to spinning. Lord Sheffield in 1785 enumerated twenty-three operations in the manufacture of dyed cotton velverets, and stated that each operation was usually performed in Lancashire by a craftsman of a distinct class. Perhaps this is a uselessly elaborate classification. Robert Peel was asked by a committee of the House of Commons in the same year (1785) as to the different stages in the manufacture of cotton, and he replied that there were four-spinning, weaving, bleaching, and printing. When asked in which of these processes machinery was employed, he replied, “In the process of spinning." 14 Peel obviously meant to include under spinning the preparatory processes such as carding, which had undergone a considerable degree of mechanization.

" A Century of Fine Cotton Spinning, 8, 9.

1 Radcliffe, Origin of Power-loom Weaving, 61-65; Annals of Agriculture, X, 579, 580; Pilkington, View of the Present State of Derbyshire, II, 50-53; Dumas, Étude sur le Traité de Commerce (1786), 153; Aikin, Description of the Country Round Manchester, 458; Factories Inquiry Commission, Suppl. Rep. (1834), Pt. I, 168; Journal and Corresp. of Auckland, I, 517; Daniels, Early English Cotton Industry, 81; Unwin, “Transition to the Factory System,” in Eng. Hist. Rev., XXXVII, 206-218, 383-397; Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports,” in Econ. Jour., XXXIII, 372.

Sheffield, Observations on Ireland, 202, 203; Min. of the Evidence, Com. of H. of C., 1785 (on Irish Resolutions), 18.

16

As for the second stage mentioned by Peel, namely, weaving, it will be remembered that it was Kay's flying shuttle which in 1733 began to disturb the balance between the output of the spinners and that of the weavers. Later devices, the drop-box and the draw-boy, made the looms used in weaving figured and intricate patterns too expensive for ordinary weavers, and the looms in consequence were “mounted for them at great expense, which the employers advanced.” 15 The stocking frame for knitting and the Dutch loom for the weaving of narrow goods met with continued improvement and extended application to the making of cotton goods.16 The use of Cartwright's power loom had a negligible influence on output and industrial organization before the nineteenth century. But under the influence of the general concentration of capital and labor, there was a tendency for weaving factories to be established even before the introduction of the power loom.17

Radical changes in the bleaching of cottons were due • to chemical discoveries more than to the invention of

machines, but the distinction is unimportant: technical improvements of various kinds were manifestations of the same general spirit of progress; and the results of such improvements were similar. The old process of bleaching was unbelievably crude, expensive, and prolonged. It consisted of alternate "bucking” and “crofting”-soaking in lye and other liquids and exposing, after being washed, to the light and air in bleaching fields. The process sometimes required a period of eight months.

1 [Ogden), Description of Manchester, 77 (cited by Chapman, Lancashire Cotton Industry, 22). 19 See above, pp. 74, 75.

McLean (ed.), Local Industries of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, 142, 143; Annual Register, 1792, 47 (Chron.); Heaton, Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, 296, 353-356; Dumbell, “Early Liverpool Cotton Imports,” in Econ. Jour., XXXIII, 371, n. 5, 372; Unwin, Hulme, and Taylor, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights, 98, 110, 200.

17