Cotton

COTTON, an indigenous product of all intertropical regions, consists of the down or fine cellular hair attached to the seeds of plants belonging to the genus Gcssypium, natural order Malvaceae. The plants which supply the raw material for one of our greatest industries, and for the clothing of all nations, may claim to be ranked amongst the most valuable of nature’s productions. The genus has occasioned no small degree of perplexity to botanists, and the genealogy of the different varieties is still involved in much uncertainty. Linnaeus admitted five species of Gossypium, an estimate which by some subsequent botanists has been more than quadrupled. The investigations of Professor Parlatore, who, in a handsome folio with coloured plates, described the cottons which he had seen cultivated in Laly, led him to the conclusion that there were seven species of cotton only, the rest being merely varieties. These are :—

1. Gossypium arboreum, Linn., found in Ceylon, the Moluccas, Arabia, Senegal, &c.

2. G. herbaceum, Linn., growing in Siam, China, India, Italy, &c.

3. G. saìidwichense, Park, indigenous to the Sandwich Islands.

4. G. hirsutum, Linn., including Siamese, Bourbon, Upland Georgia, and Louisiana cottons.

5. G. barbadense, Linn., comprising Sea Island and Barbadoes cotton, with long staple.

6. G. tahitense, cottons from the Society Islands, Tahiti, &c., in the Pacific.

7. G. religiosum, Linn., including Peruvian and other cottons, principally with seeds in adherent files.

Some authorities have enumerated ten species, and the cultivators of cotton have been still more extravagant in the multiplication of species or varieties. Not regarding the effects produced by soil, climate, or culture, they have given new or provincial names to the different sorts of the same species, and have invented a nomenclature which has only produced additional confusion. In Dr Royle’s exhaustive work entitled The Culture of Cotton ui India the reader will find a trustworthy source of information upon the botanical part of the subject.

The cottons of the New and those of the Old World constitute the two great typical divisions of the kinds most known to commerce—these are the Oriental and the Occidental, the Indian and the American cottons. The botanical characteristics, though slight, are sufficiently marked to prevent the one being mistaken for the other,—the sçed of the Eastern plant is never black or naked, and the curvature at the base of the leaf lobes is compounded of two opposite curves, and not purely heart-shaped as in the case of the Western plant. Numerous varieties of each type are to be found constituting distinct races of the same species, and affording ample scope for experimenters in their efforts for the improvement of the plant.

Oriental, Asiatic, or Indian Cottons.— All these, although the several varieties may be distinguished from one another, belong to the species designated by Linnaeus Gossypium herbaceum. There is one exception, however, to be made, and that is the singular purple-blossomed cotton-tree, the Gossypium arboreum, Linn., held sacred by the Hindus, known also as Gossypium religiosum, grown about the temples in India, which supplies the material for the sacerdotal tripartite thread of the Brahmans, the emblem of their Trinity. The plant has dark-green leaves, bears handsome red-purple blossoms, and produces silky cotton. Attempts have been made to improve its cultivation by hybridizing, and to bring it into general use, but hitherto without success, and it remains almost entirely unknown to commerce. With the exception, then, of this curious species, the numerous varieties of Indian cottons are but different forms of Gossypium herbaceum. One of these is cultivated to a considerable extent in the Levant, and is known in the market as Smyrna cotton. The different kinds of Indian cotton are usually included in the generic term Burats. The principal sorts are Hingunghât, Oomrawuttee, Broaclι, Dhóllera, and Dharwar. The Hingunghât, which may perhaps be said to possess the highest qualities, stands at the head of the different descriptions grown in the Central Provinces and the Berars. The staple is of moderate length and strength, white, soft, and silky, and well adapted for spinning. Dharwar, in the southern part of the Bombay Presidency, is the only district in India where exotic cotton has been successfully cultivated; the variety grown is chiefly acclimatized American cotton, from seed of the New Orleans species, Gossypvwm hirsutum. In the NorthWestern Provinces, Assam, and other parts of India, various kinds of cotton are grown, but none of them is of so much importance to the manufacturer as any of those already enumerated. The cottons produced in China and Central Asia also belong to the same species, but little or no supply is furnished for export to other countries.

The Occidental or American Cottons.— These, which have become known to the civilized world only since the discovery of America, consist of tw o great divisions— the Barbadensian or black-seeded cottons, bearing pure yellow blossoms, with a reddish-purple spot at the base of the petals, and the Hirsute or hairy cotton, more or less covered with a distinct clothing of hairs, bearing white or faintly primrose-coloured blossoms. The two cannot always be distinguished from each other by the appearance of the seed, as the black-seeded cottons are occasionally found with a tuft of short hairs or fuzz at one or both ends, and the hairy, though generally downy all over, are also sometimes found with seeds black or naked. On this account some authorities have concluded that the two kinds belong to the same species—the Barbadensian; but carefully conducted experiments show that the variation in the seeds may be attributed to peculiarities of soil or cultivation, and that the specific characteristics of the two kinds remain unaltered generation after generation The cottons most in demand among manufacturers are those of the Western world, viz., the Sea Island and New Orleans or Uplands, varieties which are altogether unequalled by the products of any other part of the globe. The Sea Island plant in the soft maritime climate of the low-lying islands off the coast of Georgia, where frost is scarcely known, has surpassed all other descriptions of cotton in the strength, length, and beauty of its staple. The “Georgian Uplands” cotton, sometimes called “Boweds,” is the result of attempts to cultivate Sea Island cotton on the uplands of Georgia. Sea Island cotton has also been successfully introduced into Queensland, the Fiji Islands, Tahiti, and Egypt. Of the other great Western cotton, the New Orleans, which is probably of Mexican origin, there are two principal varieties— one with green seeds and hardy constitution, the other with white, tawny, or greyish seeds, longer and more silky in staple. The New Orleans and Boweds cottons constitute the great production of the United States, and are known in English and European markets as “American cottons.” The sowing time is March and April, and the crop is gathered from August to the end of the year, or even later in the absence of frost. There are several forms of this Hirsute or Orleans type, such as the Cuba Vine, a large and showy plant, another bearing yellow or brown stapled cotton used for nankeen cloths, and a third kind, producing the “Bourbon” cotton; but all these are more remarkable than useful. The fine Venezuela and the West Indian green-seeded cottons belong to the same race, the latter differing only by a faint blotch of purple at the base of the pale yellow petals. The black-seeded, long-stapled cottons (G. l>arbadense), though of the Sea Island type, are found in such diversified forms, and so widely spread over the different parts of the globe, that some of them have been classed as separate species. The Peruvian and the Brazilian may be adduced as instances; the latter, known by the name of “kidney” cotton, is remarkable for the curious arrangement of its seeds, eight or ten of which adhere together in compact kidney-shaped masses, but there is little else to distinguish it from other forms of black or naked seeded cottons. The various black-seeded cottons cultivated in Brazil, together with the Peruvian and some other descriptions, constitute the Gossypium, acuminatum of Royle. Colonel Trevor Clarke has made the cotton plant his special study with a view to its improvement by hybridization, and it is to be hoped that ere long he may be induced to publish the results of his investigations.

Cotton Ginning.— The lobes in every boll of cotton contain seeds which, except when covered with down, resemble the coffee-berry, and which have to be separated from the fibre, by a process called “ginning.” When this is done there remains of the bulk, as gathered from the tree, about one-third of clean cotton fit for manufacturing purposes, and two-thirds of seed. The separation of the seed from the lint is accomplished by different methods. The most primitive as well as the most rude and simple machine employed is the churka used by the Chinese and Hindus, and known in Italy under the name of manganello. It consists of two wooden rollers fixed in a frame and revolving in contact, between which the cotton is drawn to the exclusion of the seeds. Though various attempts have been made to increase the efficiency of the churka, which is still extensively used in India, there has been but little real improvement, and it is found impossible to clean cotton rapidly by means of it. Hence ginning establishments .with machines worked by steam power have now been introduced into the principal cotton districts of India. In the year 1792 Eli Whitney, an American, produced his saw gin, the machine which, under various modifications, is still employed for cleaning the greater proportion of the cotton grown in the Southern States. It consists of a series of saws revolving between the interstices of an iron bed upon which the cotton is placed so as to be drawn through whilst the seeds are left behind. As the fibre of the long-stapled cottons was found to be injured by the action of the saws, and to be more or less cut or “nepped,” another more recent American invention, the Macarthy gin, has come into use for cleaning Sea Island, Egyptian, and Brazilian cotton. The fibre is drawn by a leather roller between a metal-plate called the “doctor,” fixed tangential to the roller, and a blade called the beater, which moves up and down in a plane immediately behind and parallel to the fixed plate. As the cotton is drawn through by the roller the seeds are forced out by the action of the movable blade, which in some machines is made to work horizontally instead of vertically. Attempts continue to be made so to improve both the saw gin and the roller gin as in the one case to prevent injury to the staple, and in the other to increase the efficiency or capability of the machine to clean large quantities of cotton quickly. The “needle” saw gin is a recent invention intended to prevent the fibre from being cut. It consists of steel-wire set in block tin with the bottom of the teeth rounded or made smooth. On the other hand the double-action Macarthy gin, with two movable blades or beaters, the “knife-roller” gin, the “lock-jaw” gin, and others have appeared as rivals to the saw gin. The machine which will clean the largest quantity in the shortest space of time is naturally preferred, unless such injury is occasioned as materially to diminish the market value of the cotton,, This has sometimes been the case to the extent of Id. or 2d. per lb, and even more as regards Sea Island or long-stapled cottons. The production, therefore, of the most perfect and efficient cottoncleaning machinery is of importance alike to the planter and the manufacturer, and although considerable improve ment has already been effected, there is still room for further efforts in the same direction. The seed obtained in ginning that is not required for sowing, comprising many thousands of tons, is pressed for oil, which when refined is in some cases used to mix with olive oil, or is converted into cake for feeding cattle, or into a material for making paper, whilst the ultimate residuum, or refuse, is made into soap. Even the stalks of the cotton plant are made to answer some valuable purposes. Besides being used for thatch and baskets, a fibre is obtained that can be converted into gunny and other kinds of cloths, equal to those manufactured from jute. They furnish also a material that can be used for the manufacture of the common kinds of paper. The cotton when cleaned or separ ated from the seed is pressed, chiefly by hydraulic power, into bales varying in weight in different countries, and in this state it is ready for market and for the various pro cesses of manufacture.

Cotton Supply.— The capability of the world to furnish in sufficient abundance the raw material required by the vast and ever-expanding cotton industry has from time to time, and under the pressure of dire necessity, been well ascertained. Happily it has been found possible to cultivate cotton over almost the whole of the intertropical and in many of the temperate portions of the globe, so that if from any cause there should be a deficiency in one part this may be compensated by the superabundance in others. The most ancient cotton-growing country is probably India. For five centuries before the Christian era cotton was largely used in the domestic manufactures of India; and the clothing of the inhabitants then consisted, as now, chiefly of garments made from this vegetable product. More than two thousand years before Europe or England had conceived the idea of applying modern industry to the manufacture of cotton, India had matured a system of hand-spinning, weaving, and dyeing which during that vast period received no recorded improvement. The people, though remarkable for their intelligence whilst Europe was in a state of barbarism, made no approximation to the mechanical operations of modern times, nor was the cultivation of cotton either improved or considerably extended. Possessing soil, climate, and apparently all the requisite elements from nature for the production of cotton to an almost boundless extent, and of a useful and acceptable quality, India for a long series of years did but little towards supplying the manufacturers of other countries with the raw material which they required. Between the years 1788 and 1850 numerous attempts were made by the East India Company to improve the cultivation and to increase the supply of cotton in India, and botanists and American planters were engaged for the purpose. One great object of their experiments was to introduce and acclimatize exotic cottons. Bourbon, New Orleans, Upland Georgia, Sea Island, Pernambuco, Egyptian, &c., were tried but with little permanent success. The result of these and similar attempts, more recently made, has been to establish the conclusion that efforts to improve the indigenous cottons are most likely to be rewarded with success. As will be seen from the table showing the imports of cotton into Great Britain, on a subsequent page, the largest supply obtained from India prior to the American civil war was in 1857, being upwards of 680,000 bales, of the value of £5,458,426; but in 1866, owing to the efforts employed to increase the production of cotton, the import from India had reached a total of 1,847,760 bales, of the value of £25,270,547. The quantity now obtained from India averages something over one million of bales annually, being the largest supply procured from any one country with the exception of America. The cultivation of cotton is not of so remote a date in China as in India. In the accounts of the revenues aud of the arts of China during the period of the celebrated dynasty which commenced about 1100 years before the Christian era, and lasted for some centuries, no mention is made of the cotton plant; nor, indeed, is there any notice of cotton in these records until about 200 years before the Christian era; from which period to the 6th century the cotton cloth, which was either paid in tribute, or offered in presents to the emperors, is always mentioned as a thing rare and precious. The annals record as a singular circumstance that the Emperor Ou-ti, who ascended the throne in 502, had a robe of cotton. In the 7th century we find the cotton plant mentioned, but its cultivation appears to have been then confined to gardens; and the poems and romances of that period are occupied in celebrating the beauty of its flowers. It was in the 11 th century that the cotton plant was first removed from the gardens to the fields, and became an object of common culture; and it is only from this period that we can date the commencement of the manufacture in China. The cotton tree was introduced into that country at the time of its conquest by the Mongol Tartars in the year 1280; after which period every encouragement was given by the Government to the culture and manufacture of cotton. Considerable difficulties, however, were at first encountered through the prejudices of the people and the opposition of those engaged in the manufacture of woollen and linen; and it was not until the year 1368 that they were altogether surmounted. After that date rapid progress was made, and cotton has ever tince supplied the material manufactured for the clothiι g of a large proportion of the population of China. The Chinese, in addition to their own growth of cotton, obtain large imports from India and the Burmese territories. A famine which happened in China about the close of the 18th century induced the Government to direct, by au imperial edict, that a greater portion of the land should be devoted to the cultivation of grain. Since then the importation of cotton from India has been considerable, though but a small part of that which is consumed in their manufactures. China, indeed, was never a source of supply to other countries, excepting to a small extent and for a brief period, when the whole world was ransacked to meet the exigencies of the cotton famine.

Central and South America and the West Indies, though now but comparatively insignificant sources of supply, were formerly of much greater importance. On the conquest of Mexico, in 1519, it is said that Cortes received garments of cotton as presents from the natives of Yucatan, as well as cotton cloths for coverings to his huts; and the clothing of the Mexicans was found to consist chiefly of cotton. In Peru raw cotton and cotton fabrics have long been known to exist, and specimens from the ancien>fc Peruvian tombs were at an early period brought to Europa for exhibition. In the time of the Incas, in 1532, there is evidence that the plant was successfully cultivated; and the tree-cotton of Peru has often attracted attention, and been made the subject of examination for the purpose of determining whether it is the veritable Gossypium, arboreum of Linnaeus. It is represented to be not only exceedingly beautiful, but valuable on account of its abundant crops. It yields largely lor four or five years, and may be maintained for eight or ten years without being renewed. The Gossιjpium peruvianum or aczιminatum, cultivated in the coast valleys of Peru, is an arborescent kind growing to 10 or 15 feet in height. It produces the cotton of Brazil, Pernambuco, Maranhao, Peru, &c. The Anguilla cotton, better known as Sea Island, is represented to be a native of Honduras; it spread thence to the West Indies, and was carried to the United States shortly after the revolution. The West Indies, before the present century, was the chief source from which England derived the cotton then required. The finest ever brought to the English market, or probably ever grown, was raised in the island of Tobago between the years 1789 and 1792 upon the estate of Mr Robley. The West Indian cottons have generally been highly esteemed, but the cultivation has been neglected for the sake of sugar, which was found to be a more profitable crop.

Amongst the countries which in more recent times have become prominent for the supply of cotton, Egypt deserves to be specially mentioned, furnishing a staple which for quality and length holds a high rank and comes next to Sea Island. Cotton was doubtless grown in Egypt at a very remote period, but was cultivated only to a small extent, and chiefly for home consumption, before the early part of the present century, when the inferior indigenous was superseded by the present exotic plant, the produce of which has obtained a high reputation. Its introduction was due to Mahò Bey, who had been governor of Dongola and Sennaar, and had brought seed of the plant with him from Ethiopia. In his garden at Cairo it was discovered about the year 1820, by a Frenchman named Jumel, in the service of Mehemet Ali. That sagacious ruler saw the advantages likely to accrue from the cultivation of a product suited to the soil and climate of the country, and which was in great and growing demand. His measures were carried out with such energy, and upon such a scale, as to enable him so early as 1823 to export to England 5623 bales of this new description of cotton. Jumel, who had resided for some years in America, and had some acquaintance with cotton, after some not very satisfactory first essays in cotton-growing, associated himself with a Cairo merchant, and commenced a small plantation near the obelisk of Heliopolis. His efforts proving highly successful, he was at length entrusted with the control of the viceroy’s cotton plantations, which became immensely profitable under his direction. The new description of Egyptian cotton has since been known by the name “Jumel” in France, and “Mahò,” or “Mako,” in England. Its cultivation has rapidly extended throughout Lower Egypt, the soil as well as the climate being found to be specially favourable. The scantiness of the population, and the difficulty of providing adequate supplies of food, seem the only causes likely to curtail the production of cotton. The thickly populated inverted alluvial delta of the Soudan, between the Blue and the White Nile, is said·to be even more favourable to the growth of cotton than the lower parts of the valley, and to afford room for the plantation of ten times the area obtainable in Egypt proper. It is not, perhaps, too much to say that Egypt is the finest cotton-growing country in the world; it is not surpassed in productiveness even by the Southern States of America. So firmly is the growth of cotton established, and so fully are both the Government and the people alive to its importance and advantages, that there is no reason to apprehend that it will be allowed to decline, or that Egypt will ever lose its position as a source of supply It will be seen from the table of imports on page 486 that the Egyptian supply, which in 1859-60 was only about 100,000 bales, has since become nearly 300,000. The bales, too, have been increasing in size, and now contain six can tars, or about 600 lb each.

The growth of cotton in Turkey, as elsewhere, was greatly stimulated and increased during the time of scarcity, but it has since declined largely on account of the feebleness of the Government and the corruption of its agents, and the expectations once entertained have not been fulfilled. The country possesses, however, splendid cottongrowing capabilities, and might be made a very prolific source of supply. Much of the cotton produced is taken by Continental manufacturers. From Brazil cotton of excellent quality has long been obtained, and in various provinces of that vast empire its cultivation has for many years been a favourite and profitable branch of agriculture. The plant thrives in all the varied climates from Para in the north down to Rio Grande in the south, and requires scarcely any care to guard it either from sun or frost. Owing to the demands occasioned by the cotton famine, cotton was for the first time grown for export in the province of São Paulo; and the experiments commenced in 1861, with some New Orleans seed sent out from England by the Cotton Supply Association, and freely distributed, became the means of procuring from this one province a quantity as large as had been received from the whole of Brazil in any year previous to the American civil war. This cotton, known as “Santos” in the market, has been steadily growing in favour with the manufacturer. The rank which Brazil holds amongst the countries from which cotton is imported may be ascertained by reference to the table already mentioned. From several other sources, such as Italy, the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, and other parts of Africa, Queensland, Australia, Fiji, Tahiti, <fcc., smaller supplies of cotton are obtained, but they are all of minor importance.

These and all others, whether large or small, dwindle into insignificance when compared with America, which is par excellence the great cotton-producing country of the world. About the year 1770 the planters in the Southern

States of the American Union began to turn their attention to the production of cotton; and besides carrying the cultivation to a great extent, they introduced qualities before unknown. The supplies continued to be small up to the end of the century. In 1792 the quantity exported from the United States was only 138,324 lb, but by tho year 1800 it had increased to nearly 18,000,000 lb. At the close of the war in 1815 the revival of trade led to an increased demand, and the progress of cotton cultivation in America became rapid and continuous, until at length about 85 per cent, of the raw material used by English manufacturers was derived from this one source. With a capacity for the production of cotton almost boundless, the crop which was so insignificant when the century began had in 1860 reached the enormous extent of 4,824,000 bales. This great source of supply, when apparently most abundant and secure, was shortly after suddenly cut off, and thousands were for a time deprived of employment and the means of subsistence. In this period of destitution the cotton-growing resources of every part of tho globo were tested to the utmost; a .d in the exhibition of 1862 the representatives of every country from which supplies might be expected met to concert measures for obtaining all that was wanted without the aid of America. Th© colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, including India, seemed well able to grow all the cotton that could bo required, whilst numerous other countries were ready to afford their co-operation. A powerful stimulus was thus given to the growth of cotton in all directions; a degree of activity and enterprise never witnessed before was seen in India, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, Queensland, New South Wales, Peru, Brazil, and in short wherever cotton could be produced; and there seemed no room to doubt that in a short time there would be abundant supplies independently of America. But ten years afterwards, in the exhibition of 1872, which was specially devoted to cotton, a few only of the thirty-five countries which had sent their samples in 1862 again appeared, and these for the most part only to bear witness to disappointment and failure. America had re-entered the field of competition, and was rapidly gaining ground so as to be able to bid defiance to the world. True, the supply from India had been more than doubled, the adulteration once so rife had been checked, and the improved quality and value of the cotton had been fully acknowledged, but still the superiority of the produce of the United States was proved beyond all dispute, and American cotton was again king. Slave labour has disappeared, and under new and more promising auspices a fresh career of progress has been commenced. With a rare combination of facilities and advantages, made available with remarkable skill and enterprise, the production of cotton in America seems likely for a long series of years to continue to increase in magnitude and importance.

Table I. (page 486) shows the quantity of the raw material annually furnished to English manufacturers during the past three-quarters of a century by the chief sources of supply. The table also contains a statement of the exports, the annual consumption, the average prices, and the stocks at the end of each year, as well as details of the American produce, exports, <fcc.

The statement embodied in Table II. (p. 487), issued under the authority of the Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association, shows the total American crop (including Sea Island produce), the stock in the ports, and the total supply from 1826-27 to 1875-76. Table III. gives the appropriation of the American crops.

Table I. Import, Export, and Stocks of Cotton in Great Britain in Thousands of Bales during the present Century; with the Annual Consumption in Millions of lbs., and the Weekly Average in Bales; also the Average Prices, Ac. [table]

Table IL— Total American Crops (in Bales') from 1826-27 to 1875-76. [table]

Table III.— Showing the Appropriation of the entire Crop of Cotton raised in America. [table]

Cotton Manufacture and Trade.

The manufacture of cotton had its origin in the East, where the cotton plant is indigenous, and where the climate renders a light and absorbent fabric a suitable clothing for the people. It has in consequence been long established over every part of Asia, although it was only in India that the fabric was manufactured extensively with a view to foreign exchange.

Arrian mentions cotton cloth among the commodities which the Romans brought from India; but the quantity imported by them was inconsiderable, from the preference which they gave to woollen clothing. The difference between ancient and modern Indian imports appears to have arisen, not from any diversity in the nature of the goods produced in that country, but from variety in the tastes or in the wants of the nations with which it has traded.

The implements used by the Indians in the different processes of the cotton manufacture, from the cleaning of the wool to its conversion into the finest muslin, may be purchased for the value of a few shillings, and are of so rude and simple a construction as to be evidently the invention of a very early period. With the exception of the loom, none of them deserves the name of a machine, or displays the slightest mechanical ingenuity. They spin the yarn upon the distaff; and yet, with all the advantages Which we in this country derive from machinery, we have only recently been able to equal, either in fineness or quality, the yarn which is produced by means of this primitive instrument. The well-managed use of the finger and thumb of the Indian spinner, patiently and carefully applied in the formation of the thread, and the moisture at the same time communicated to it, are found to have tho effect of incorporating the fibres ofthe cotton more perfectly than can be accomplished by our most improved machines.

The loom is composed of a few sticks or reeds, which the Indian carries about with him, and puts up in the fields under the shade of a tree, or at the side of his cottage. He digs a hole large enough to contain his legs and tho lower part of the “geer,” and fastens the balances to somo convenient branch overhead. Two loops underneath tho geer, in which he inserts his great toes, serve as treadles; and he employs the shuttle, formed like a large netting needle, but of a length somewhat exceeding the breadth of the cloth, as “battoon,” using it alternately to draw through the weft and strike it up. The reed is the only part of the weaving apparatus which approaches, in tho perfection of its construction, to the instruments we use. The loom has no beam, and the warp is laid out upon tho ground the whole length of the piece of cloth. The weavers live entirely in villages, as they could not, if shut up in towns, work in this manner.

It is probable that the whole of the implements which have iust been described existed as we now lind them before the people of India were divided into castes. The transmission of the same employment from father to son (which is the invariable practice in India), while it has the effect of conveying unimpaired the knowledge acquired in any art, tends to check its farther advancement. To the same cause, however, which thus prevented improvement in India, is to be attributed that dexterity in his particular employment which the Indian artizan possesses. From the earliest age he learns to spin and weave under the direction of his father; and having no hope or desire of advancement in any other line, he gains, through constant practice, that wonderful skill which may thus be considered almost as a family inheritance. To be able to manage his ill-constructed loom, even in the production of ordinary fabrics, he is obliged to acquire such a sleight of hand, that it is not surprising if, out of the multitude trained in this manner, a few should be found capable of producing those muslins which are said, when spread upon the grass, to appear like the gossamer web. From the superiority of these goods, and from their retaining the beauty of their appearance longer than European muslins, it has been supposed that the cotton of which they are made is of better quality than any known to the European manufacturers. This, however, is a mistake; there is no cotton in India of a quality superior to the best Sea Islands.

As the largest country in the world producing cotton, it was reasonable to expect that India would also at an early period engage in its manufacture, and to such a degree of perfection was this branch of industry carried, that some of the fabrics produced have never been equalled, and have attained a world-wide celebrity. The kind of manufacture for which Manchester is famous bears a name which indicates its Eastern origin, and Calicut has supplied the designation o our English calico. Formerly the East India Company was in the habit of making a great part of its remittances in manufactures, and actually advanced, through its resident, the funds required to enable the workmen to produce the goods. The resident, when not engaged in providing goods for the Company’s investment, was authorized to employ the weavers on his own account. This state of things, which was often attended with abuses, has disappeared, and for a long period British manufactured cottons have been largely imported into India. Common muslins were made in every village throughout the Peninsula. Orme says, “When not near the high road or a principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child is not employed in making a piece of cloth.” The very fine muslins made at Dacca, and which were of such exquisite texture as to be poetically designated “webs of woven wind,” were intended chiefly for the use of the potentates of the country, who kept agents to superintend the workmen employed in the manufacture; but since the assumption by Government of the territories of these Indian princes, the demand has fallen off, and a considerable part of the population have betaken themselves to the cultivation of indigo. The cotton from which the Dacca muslins are woven grows in a district of not more than forty miles in length by three in breadth, and in so limited a quantity as never to have become an article of commerce. Long cloths and fine pullicats were made in the Madras Presidency, coarse piece goods and pullicats in Surat, the finest calicoes at Masulipatam, and table-cloths of a superior quality at Patna.

The apprehension often expressed that the inhabitants of India, in possession of the raw material, would, by the introduction of machinery, and by their cheaper labour and superior manual dexterity, be enabled some day to undersell us so as greatly to injure, if not to ruin, and put an end to the Indian demand for English manufactures, has to some extent been realized. The most important industry in the Bombay Presidency is now the manufacture of cotton cloth and yarn. Whilst this has always existed in nearly every village, it is only in recent years that steam spinning and weaving mills have been introduced. The first factory was started in 1863 at Kurla, Bombay, and in 1874 the number had increased to thirteen in the town and island, employing 60,000 spindles and 848 looms. These, together with other mills at Surat, Broach, and Ahmedabad, with an aggregate of 405,000 spindles and 4500 looms, had furnished employment for 10,000 people. Since then the number has been still further increased both in Bombay and other parts of the country, as well as in the presidencies of Bengal and Madras, and in some of the native states. It is probable that at present there are nearly 1,250,000 spindles and upwards of 10,000 looms employed in the various mills scattered over different parts of the country. Encouraged by the protective import duty on foreign manufactures, the number of mills is constantly on the increase, and the English trade in certain heavy and coarse descriptions of goods has consequently sustained serious injury. The import duty on English manufactures has been repeatedly condemned by Government, and its abolition has been expressly promised, but it is still retained for the convenient season when the Indian treasury shall be able to dispense with this small source of revenue. Meanwhile new mills, supported to a large extent by English capital, and fitted with English machinery, such as that recently established at Nagpore, are constantly springing up, which will doubtless, under all changes, obtain a share of the trade of the country, and will not probably be seriously injured by the free importation of English manufactures. They have an advantage both in their proximity to the raw material and in the cheapness of native labour. The manufacture of cotton cloth has long been diffused all over the Central Provinces, hand-looms may be found at work in every considerable village, and the agricultural and labouring classes have hitherto preferred the home manufactures to any other. The increase of foreign importations, however, has led to a growing taste for English piece-goods, and the productions of Indian mills have materially affected the local industry.

The cotton manufacture in China is of immense extent, and is carried on almost entirely for home consumption. Almost the only cotton goods exported from China are nankeens. Owing to greater encouragement on the part of the Government, and a less rigid adherence to ancient usages by the people, there has been considerable increase in native manufactures in China, and it will be seen from the table of exports that there has been a remarkable increase in the extent and value of English trade with that country during recent years. In this trade we have now to encounter American competition, which, however, is less formidable than it might be, on account of the protective policy of the United States.

In the interior of Africa, Clapperton and Landers found that cotton was not only grown but also spun and made into cloth. It would be interesting to know the methods which the natives have adopted, and from what source they obtained their acquaintance with the art of weaving. The settlers in Liberia appear to have established a communication across the country with Timbuctoo, and to have found there a market for cotton cloths. Increased commercial intercourse with the interior of Africa, and the opening up of markets there for British manufactures, are still objects to be earnestly pursued.

The manufacture of cotton goods in Europe is said to have been first attempted by the commercial states of Italy, before the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. These enterprizing communities were the entrepôts through which the cotton fabrics of India passed to the different markets of the West; and being situated in the neighbourhood of countries where cotton was grown, and familiar with manufacturing processes, it is supposed that they were led to attempt the imitation of articles so much valued, and bringing so high a price. Another account assigns the introduction of the cotton manufacture into Europe to a later date, and gives to the people of the Low Countries the honour of having been the first manufacturers of these articles, in imitation of the cotton fabrics which the Dutch, about the beginning of the 17th century, began to import from India. But this last account cannot be correct: for Guicciardini in 1560, in a very full list which he gives of the different articles annually imported into and exported from Antwerp, then the greatest commercial mart in Europe, specifies fustians and dimities of many fine sorts among the manufactured articles imported from Milan, and mentions cottons generally among those brought from Venice. But in the articles exported from Antwerp, although we find linens sent to almost every country, cotton cloth is not once mentioned. Italy, therefore, at that time had a cotton manufacture, which, it is probable, soon after made its way to the Netherlands; for we know it was brought from the latter country to Britain by Protestant refugees about the close of the 16th or early in the 17 th century.

That this manufacture was carried on in England at a pretty early period of the 17th century we know on good authority. Lewis Roberts, in his Treasures of Traffic, published in the year 1641, says, “The town of Manchester buys linen yarn from the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, returns the same again in linen into Ireland to sell. Neither does her industry rest here; for they buy cotton wool in London that comes from Cyprus and Smyrna, and work the same into fustians, vermilions, and dimities, which they return to London, where they are sold, and from thence not seldom are sent into such foreign parts, where the first material may be more easily had for that manufacture.” These goods were woven chiefly about Bolton, and were purchased there at the weekly market by the Manchester dealers, who afterwards finished them, and either sent them to London for export, or sold them to their customers over the country.

At this period, and for a long time after, the weaver provided his own warp, which was of linen yarn, and the cotton wool for his weft; but as much time was lost in seeking these materials, agents for their sale were established in the different villages by the Manchester purchasers. Each weaver’s cottage formed a separate and independent little factory. The yarn for his warp was bought by him in a prepared state, the wool for his weft was carded and spun by the female part of his family, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the descriptions of cotton goods which, in succession, were brought forward from the commencement of the manufacture. The pattern cards of the principal houses in the trade, which were circulated from time to time through the kingdom, and over the continents of Europe and America, exhibited specimens of nearly two thousand kinds.

For the introduction and after improvement of many of these articles England is indebted to John Wilson of Ainsworth. This gentleman was originally a manufacturer of fustians at Manchester, but had early engaged in the manufacture of cotton velvets. His improvements in the mode of dressing, of finishing, and particularly of dyeing these goods acquired for them so high a character, that both in the home and foreign market his articles sold in preference to those of every other manufacturer. His plan for cleaning off the loose and uneven fibres was by the use of razors. He afterwards successively employed, for this end, singeing by spirits of wine and the -application of a hot iron resembling a weaver’s drying iron. At a later period he effected his object by drawing the goods rapidly over a cylinder of cast-iron heated to redness, by which they were in a superior manner cleared of the down or pile which had been raised upon them in the various operations of weaving, washing, bleaching, or dyeing. Wilson, having a turn for chemical inquiries, investigated the different known processes of dyeing; and by the improvements he introduced in the application of them to his own manufacture, materially advanced that art. The many valuable improvements introduced by Wilson into the different processes connected with the cotton manufacture had the effect not only of establishing it more firmly, but of rapidly enlarging its extent.

A considerable share of the calico-printing business was transferred, about the year 1760, from London to Lancashire, in consequence of the cheaper accommodation for carrying on the work, and the lower wages of the workmen. A fall in prices thereupon took place, which produced an increased demand for calicoes. These goods were at that time made of linen warp and cotton weft, it having been found impracticable, before Sir Richard Arkwright's discovery, to spin cotton warp of sufficient strength.

At this period the dealers from Manchester, in place of buying fustians and calicoes from the weaver, as had been the practice before, began to furnish him with materials for the cloth, and to pay him a fixed price per piece for the work when executed. Along with the portion of linen warp, they gave him out a portion of cotton wool, which he was obliged to get spun into the weft he was to use. But so fast was the manufacture by this time outstripping the process of spinning, that it frequently happened that the sum which the master weaver was allowed by his employer was less than what he found himself obliged to pay to those whom he employed to spin it. He durst not, however, complain, much less abate the spinner’s price, lest his looms should be unemployed. In this state of things, the further progress of the manufacture must have been stopped, if a more productive mode of spinning had not been discovered.

It has been said that the yarn produced at this time in England, by the one-thread wheel, the only spinning machine known, did not exceed in quantity what 50,000 spindles of our present machinery can yield. To have reared and trained hands sufficient to have doubled this quantity, had it been possible, must have been the work of a length of time, and the amount of the manufacture would still have been insignificant. A change in the system, therefore, had become indispensable; and we find that different ingenious individuals had already begun to employ themselves in contriving a better mode of spinning.

When we contrast tho splendid inventions connected with the cotton manufacture, which from this period burst forth in rapid succession, with the passive acquiescence in the use of imperfect machinery during the long period which preceded, we are apt to ascribe these improvements to the circumstance alone of a number of men of genius having at that moment arisen, and to forget that the ultimate cause existed in the times calling their energies into action.

Already, about the year 1750, the fly-shuttle had been invented by Kaye of Bury—one of the most important steps in the progress of the art of weaving; and in the year 1760 improvements had begun to be made in the carding process.

James Hargreaves, a weaver at Stanhill, near Church, in Lancashire, an illiterate man, possessed of no great mechanical knowledge, had adapted the stock cards used in the woollen manufacture to the carding of cotton, and had besides greatly improved them. By his invention a person was able to do double the work, and with more ease than by hand carding. In the stock cards, one of the cards is fixed, whilst the other, being suspended by a cord over a pulley, is worked by the carder; and in this way two or three cards can be applied to the same stock.

This contrivance was soon succeeded by the cylinder cards, or carding engine. It is not ascertained who was the inventor of this valuable machine, but it is known that the father of the late Sir Robert Peel was among the first who used it, and that, so early as 1762, he, with the assistance of Hargreaves, erected a carding engine with cylinders at Blackburn. This machine did not differ materially from that now in use, except that it had no contrivance for detaching the cotton from the cards, an operation which was performed by women with hand cards.

There had been several unsuccessful attempts to improve the mode of spinning before 1767, when Hargreaves invented the “Spinning Jenny,” patented in 1770. The idea of this machine is said to have been suggested to him by seeing a common spinning wheel, which had been accidentally overturned, continue its motion while it lay on the ground. After several unsuccessful attempts to carry into execution the conception he had formed, he succeeded in producing a rudely-constructed “jenny” of eight spindles, turned by bands from a horizontal wheel. In it the eight rovings were passed between two pieces of w ood laid horizontally the breadth of the machine; and these, being grasped in the spinner’s hand, and drawn out by him, formed the rovings into threads. The structure of this jenny was soon afterwards greatly improved, and it was at last brought to work as many as eighty spindles. This machine, although of limited powers when compared with the beautiful inventions which succeeded it, must be considered as the first and leading step in that progress of discovery which carried improvement into every branch of the manufacture. The jenny of Hargreaves was very similar in its mode of working to the present “hand twiner” or mule-doubler, the spindles being mounted on a stationary carriage, and the “slide,” or lock, receding from the spindles during the twisting of the threads, and returning to the spindle again during the winding on of the yarn. These hand twiners are being rapidly replaced by self-acting twiners; but the type of Hargreaves’s remains substantially the same as at first. His principle of drawing the fibre is still in universal use for carded wool.

Hargreaves’s invention occasioned great alarm among those who earned their subsistence by the old mode of spinning, and even produced popular commotion. A mob broke into his house and destroyed his machine; and some time after, when a better knowledge of its advantages had begun to bring his spinning jenny into general use, the people rose a second time, and, scouring the country, broke to pieces every carding and spinning machine they could find. The jenny in a short time put an end to the spinning of cotton by the common wheel; and the whole wefts used in the manufacture continued to be spun upon that machine, until the invention of the “mule jenny,” by which it was in its turn superseded.

While Hargreaves was producing the common jenny, Arkwright w as employed in contriving that wonderful piece of mechanism, the spinning frame, called first the waterframe, and afterwards the throstle, which, when put into motion, performs of itself the whole process of spinning, leaving to the workmen only the office of supplying the roving or prepared material, and of joining or piecing the thread when it breaks. See Arkwright, vol. ii. p. 540. On Arkwright’s removal to Nottingham he obtained from Messrs Wrights, bankers there, and afterwards from Mr Need of Nottingham and Strutt of Derby the assistance necessary to enable him to perfect his inventions and turn them to advantage, and in the year 1769 he obtained his patent for spinning with rollers. In 1772 his patent was contested, but a verdict was given in his favour, and his right to the exclusive use of the discovery remained afterwards undisturbed. Soon after his removal to Cromford, he followed up his first great discovery with other inventions for preparing the cotton for spinning, for which he took out another patent in the year 1775. But in 1781 his right to this patent was disputed; and judgment was finally given against him in November 1785, and the patent cancelled. Arkwright’s inventions for preparing the cotton, which are sometimes spoken of as the most wonderful parts of the process of spinning, do not appear so striking as the first effort of his genius. Although only to have been conceived by an original and fertile mind, they are still but improved arrangements of a machine previously in use, or suitable adaptations of his own spinning machine. But the power of Arkwright’s mind was perhaps marked by nothing more strongly than the judgment with which, although new to business, he conducted the great concerns to which his discovery gave rise, and the systematic order and arrangement which he introduced into every department of his extensive works. His plans of management were universally adopted by others; and after long experience, they have not yet in any material point been improved.

Machinery.

The principal machines used in cotton spinning, taking them in the order in which they are employed, are the following :—The opener, scutcher and lap machine, carding engine, combing machine, drawing frame, slubbing frame, intermediate frame, and roving frame; the throstle, the self-acting mule and hand mule, doubling frame, and mul doublers or twiners. The first two are employed in the process of cleaning the raw cotton, and separating its matted flocks. In the lap machine it is fashioned into flat folds; in the carding machine it is carded and further cleaned and the fibres straightened; and in the drawing frame it is formed into a loose rope the fibres of which are laid parallel. In the slubbing frame it is slightly twisted; and in the intermediate and finishing frames it is still farther twisted, particularly in the higher numbers; but it is not yet yarn. The throstle frame is chiefly used for coarse warps; whilst upon the self-acting and hand mules both coarse and fine yarns are spun.

The Opener. —In this machine the raw cotton is spread uniformly on a feeding table; from this it is taken by a pair of feeding rollers, and by them subjected to the action of a beater. The beater consists of a cylinder bearing at intervals four or six rows of projecting teeth. It is 18 inches in diameter over the teeth, with an average of 40 inches in width, and when in motion makes 1400 revolutions in a minute. By an ingenious contrivance a strong draught of air is made to play through the newly-opened cotton, carrying away the dust and other foreign particles which adhere to it. This machine is capable of opening up about 15,000 Ib of cotton in 56 hours. The cotton is carried forward between two perforated zinc or wire cylinders connected with the draught, the cotton being taken from another pair of feed rollers and a beater with two or three blades, and from this beater the cotton passes through a second pair of perforated cylinders, from which it is taken off by a pair of rollers and delivered to calender rollers, and formed into laps for the scutcher. Various kinds of openers have been patented which differ in some respecte from one another, each claiming to have some epecial advantage; of these Crichton’s may be mentioned, and that of Lord Brothers (see fig. 2), which possesses an arrangement for drawing the cotton by means of a vacuum from places situated at long distances from the blowing room, and claims among other advantages that it will open up 25,000 ïb per week of 56 hours. In this machine an ingenious contrivance presents the cotton to the cylinderby one roller working in a trough formed by a series of weighted levers. These reduce the risk of breaking the fibre, and at the same time by moving a horizontal bar connected with a pair of cones acting upon the feed roller so regulate the supply of the cotton as to dispense with the necessity of weighing it, and make a more uniform lap.

The Scutcher, which has also a lap machine combined with it (fig· 4), in many respects resembles the opener.

In some cases it is fed with cotton in a loose fleece, and in others, instead of the loose cotton, three or four laps are placed upon the feeder, and the beater or beaters are used in place of the cylinder. The cotton is further cleaned and carried forward in the same manner as in the opener making laps for the second or finishing scutcher, which is of similar construction to the first, the laps going from this machine to the carding engine.

The Carding Engine (figs. 5 and 6) consists of one large or main cylinder covered with cards, a smaller one called the doffer, and a still smaller one called the taker in. The main cylinder is surmounted with small ones, called rollers, covered in like manner with cards, by whose revolutions in opposite directions to those of the large cylinder, and with different velocities, the cotton is carded and pu i on e second cylinder or doffer. In some cases the main

¶, r 1S llrn ^ s ^ e d with what are technically termed a ∏∙ ¶ se y ies of flat cards revolving to form an endless lave mg lattice. The third cylinder, or taker in, which is rea y the first to act upon the cotton, is usually covered with a stronger wire; it receives the cotton from a pair of feed-rollers, striking out the heavier part oi e dirt remaining from the scutching, and delivering e cotton to the main cylinder. The cotton is taken rom the doffer in a very light fleece by means of a vibrating comb, and this fleece is drawn together into a funne which forms it into a narrow web; then passing through two pairs of calendar rollers, it is coiled into a can. The carding engines are often made with two main cylinders and a connecting cylinder called the tummer, but in all other respects they resemble those already described. The cans with the slivers are next taken to the Drawing Frame (fig. 8), where the processes of elongation or attenuation are carried on through the successive pairs of rollers with which it is provided. The lower roller of each pair is furrowed or fluted longitudinally, and the upper one is neatly covered with leather to give the two a proper hold of the cotton. There are generally four pairs or rows of rollers in each drawing frame, and three heads, each head containing five or six deliveries. Six ends or slivers are, as a rule, put up to each box, and drawn down into one by each line of rollers going at an accelerated speed, the front roller revolving about six times faster than the back roller. The first doubling being 6 into 1, the next will be 36, and the third 216. Fine spinners will sometimes have four heads of drawings and double 8 ends into 1 at the first head, and 8 into 1 afterwards, which makes the total number of doublings in the drawing frame 4096.

Slubbing Frame (see fig. 9).—The operation which succeeds that of the drawing frame is slubbing, where the sliver has a certain amount of twist imparted to it, and is wound on a bobbin. In this process the end or silver from the last head of the drawing frame is drawn out by means Of three pairs of rollers, and this is twisted as it emerges from the front line of rollers by the action of vertical spindles and flyers, which at the same time wind the ends upon bobb' ’ ιs in successive layers. As the bobbins fill and increase in diameter their rate is gradually made slower at each layer by a very ingenious piece of mechanism known as “the sun and planet motion,” consisting of a large wheel within which two other wheels are made to work, the interior one having a regular motion, and the sun wheel being driven from a pair of cone drums with a rate of speed constantly decreasing. Thus the slabbing frame answers three purposes,—it draws out the cotton, twists it, and winds it upon a bobbin; the first is done by the rollers, the second by the spindles, and the third by the flyers and pressers. Following this is

The Intermediate Frame, of similar construction, but having a larger number of spindles and sometimes smaller-sized bobbins. Instead of having cans put at the back it has what are termed creels, in which the slubbing bobbins are put so as to be drawn off through the rollers of the frame and doubled two into one. It is called intermediate because it comes between the slubbing and roving frames. Spinners of low numbers or counts sometimes omit this fιame, andset the slubbing frame bobbins into the “creels” of the roving frame.

The Loving I rame (fig. 10).—This, which is the last required before the operations of spinning, strictly so called, commence, resembles in principle the slubbing and intermediate frames. It has a greater number of spindles than either, seldom less than 100, and often 164; and these spindles are set closer together, and the bobbins are shorter and smaller than in the intermediate frame.

For medium counts, from 60’s to 100’s, the cans are taken to a lap machine or doubler, where from 80 to 120 ends or slivers are formed into a lap, which is placed at the back of the finisher card; this machine has the main cylinder surmounted with flats (see fig. 5) instead of rollers and clearers. From this finisher card the cans are taken to the drawing frame in the way already described. For the higher numbers this card, the finisher card, is used as a breaker or first card; and from it the cans are taken to the lap machine, where from 15 to 30 ends are formed into a small lap for the combing machine (fig. 7), and the cans from the comber are taken to the drawing frame. The degree of elongation completed by the roving frame is technically described by the number of hanks roving per pound, each hank consisting of 840 yards; for instance, the hank roving usual for the lower counts up to 30’s would be 2⅛ to 4 hanks in the pound. For the medium counts four frames aro generally used to reduce the roving to the necessary degree of fineness, say 12 to 14 hanks roving, for the mule, viz., slubbing, intermediate, roving, and fine jack frames. For the higher counts sometimes a fifth frame is used, called a second roving frame, reducing the finished roving to from 30 to 35 hanks. The first preparation goes to the throstle or to the self-acting mule, the second to the self-acting mule chiefly, and the third or higher numbers to the hand mule.

The Throstle. —The spinning frame, or throstle (see figs. 11 and 12), is made with two sets of drawing rollers, one on each side. Between these the roving bobbins are placed, and the rove is drawn through them to the requisite fineness, and formed into thread by the action of the spindles and flyers, which are placed in front of each set of rollers, at such distances apart from one another as may be required for the different-sized bobbins and counts of yarn to be spun; the latter vary from 6’s up to 60’s. The number of spindles commonly put into the throstle is from 100 to 150 on each side, being a total of between 200 and 300 in a frame. The twist is put into the yarn by the revolutions of the spindles and flyer, and the yarn is wound on to the bobbin by the friction of apiece of woollen cloth extending along the rail upon which the bobbins rest; the amount of friction required for the varying counts of yarn is regulated by the differing weights and the shape of the bottom of the bobbins, and also by the fineness or coarseness of the cloth placed underneath.

An improvement on the throstle, which was thought to be very promising, was made by Mr Danforth, an American spinner of Scotch birth. His object was to obviate the vibration of the spindle (caused by the flyer being placed on the top of it, with nothing to keep it steady), whereby it is prevented from being driven with advantage beyond a certain limited speed. To remedy this, Danforth introduced into his throstle a stationary spindle, on the top of which he fixed an inverted conical cup. In this improved throstle the bobbin revolves on the spindle with great rapidity, and by a transverse motion is raised and depressed so as to be, when at the highest point, entirely within the cup, and when at the lowest entirely below it. The edge of the cup, passing thus along the whole length of the bobbin, builds the yarn equally on every part while it is receiving the necessary twist, and gives also the drag required to wind the yarn upon the bobbin. Danforth’s improvement gives a great increase of quantity, but the waste it causes is such as to form, in the opinion of many spinners, an insuperable objection to its use, though as regards the stronger material of worsted it is still extensively used. The throstle frame is now exclusively used for the production of warps. In the most approved machines of this kind the spindles make 5500 revolutions a minute, each spindle producing twenty-seven hanks per week of 5 G hours when spinning 32’s. The Danforth frame is now entirely out of use except for worsted.

The ring and traveller frame is also an American invention. It was introduced into England under the name of the “Niagara Throstle” by Sharp, Stewart, & Co., but found very little favour amongst English cotton spinners. In America, however, it is very extensively used, and owing to some important recent improvements it is beginning again to attract attention in England. Its peculiarities are that instead of a flyer on the top of the spindle there is a small steel traveller working in a ring placed in a third rail, commonly called the ring rail, and passing over the bobbin, wshich moves up and down the full length of the bobbin; the twist is given by the revolution of the spindle, the drag or winding of the thread on the bobbin (fixed to the spindle and carried round with it) being effected by the friction of the traveller in its revolutions round the ring. The travellers are of varying weights and sizes to suit the different counts of yarn. The spindles generally make about 6000 to 7000 revolutions per minute.

Messrs John Elce & Co. claim to have introduced an improvement in the throstle, in which two tin cylinders are employed instead of one for driving the spindles, whereby a longer band is obtained, and a saving of friction and power is said to be effected.

The Mule (fig. 13).—Probably no inventive contribution has been offered to the cotton trade more important than the mule. Samuel Crompton of Bolton completed in 1775 his invention of the “mule jenny,” in contriving which he had been engaged for several years. But this machine, possessing great merit and advantages, did not come into general use, nor was its value known, until after the expiration of Arkwright’s patent,—the spinner till then being confined to the rove prepared for common jenny spinning, which was unsuitable to the mule jenny.

After the spinner was allowed to make use of Arkwright’s fine process of preparation, by his patent being cancelled, the power of this machine became known; audits introduction forms an important era in the history of the cotton manufacture. Being fitted to supply those counts or “grists” and qualities of yarn which the other machines could not produce, it enabled the manufacturer to enter upon fabrics which otherwise it would have been in vain to attempt. Warps of the finest quality are spun upon the mule; while on the throstle yarn of a finer grist than N o.

40 could not without the combing machine be spun to advantage. Since the introduction of the latter, throstles have been constructed to spin yarns as fine as Nos. 80 or 100. The reason is that the fine thread has not strength to stand the drag required for winding the yarn upon thebobbin, —the difficulty being occasioned by each thread having its own drag regulated separately. In Crompton’s mule and Hargreaves’s jenny this difficulty was avoided by the spinner putting the required tension or drag on the yarn by the “faller,” which operating on all the threads at once, and being controlled by the hand of the spinner, allowed the tension of the yarn during the winding on to be easily governed. All wefts, from the lowest to the highest numbers, are now spun upon Crompton’s machine, the use of Hargreaves’s jenny having been almost entirely superseded by it as regards cotton, though not as regards woollen. It was some time, indeed, after the mule came into use before it was ascertained that the finest yarn required for the manufacture could be produced from it. But in the year 1792, Jonathan Pollard of Manchester succeeded in spinning yarn of 278 hanks to the pound, from cotton wool grown by Mr Robley, in the island of Tobago. This yarn was sold at twenty guineas per pound to the muslin manufacturers of Glasgow.

The mule, in its structure and operation, is a compound of the spinning frame and of Hargreaves’s jenny; from which circumstance it probably received its name. It contains a system of rollers like that belonging to the throstle; but the attenuated roving, as it issues from between the rollers, is twisted by the action of the spindles, which, in the mule, are mounted on a movable carriage that recedes from the rollers a little faster than the roving is delivered by them. The mode of putting the twist in by means of the spindles is exactly the same as in the jenny, and in fact resembles the most ancient method of using a spinning spindle. When a sufficient length of yarn or a “stretch” had been spun the rollers and spindles were stopped, the yarn coiled round the bare spindles was unwound, or “backed off,” as it is technically called, the faller was pubdown by the spinner and the “nose” of the cop, and the spindles turned during the run in of the carriage with sufficient quickness to wind the spun yarn on the top of the yarn already wound on the spindles. When the spindle points have been brought by the running in of the carriage within a short distance of the delivery rollers, the rollers and spindles are again set in motion for another stretch. The manner of backing off and winding the spun yarn on the spindles is exactly the same as that used in Hargreaves’s jenny. Crompton’s great merit consisted in the adaptation of the best features of the throstle and the best principles of Hargreaves’s jenny, so as to obtain from the combination of the two the principal elements of a perfect spinning machine. The motive power being manual, the work was rendered more fatiguing as the mules became longer, and thus the size of the machine was restricted by the strength of the spinner. In spinning the finer counts of yarn it became customary to continue the outward movement of the carriage, and the rotation of the spindles, a short time after the rollers were stopped; the movement of the carriage was then arrested, but the rotation of the spindles continued until the proper amount of twist had been put in the yarn. This last operation resembles that performed by the common jenny, and produces a similar effect.

In 1792 William Kelly of Glasgow, at that time manager of the Lanark mills, obtained a patent for moving the mule by power, in order to relieve the spinner of the most laborious part of his work, and thus enable him to attend to a longer mule and spin the yarn at a reduced cost. Kelly’s machinery was contrived so as to move every part of the mule, even to the returning of the carriage into its place, after the draught was finished. Had it come into full operation, fewer men need have been employed as spinners, and children would have been able to do a great part of the duty required. But, after a short trial, it was discovered that this invention, though intended to bring out the carriage, and return it again during the winding on of the yams, was found to be valuable only for bringing out the carriage. A spinner could, however, serve two mules, the one carriage moving out during the time that the other was returning.

It was next found unnecessary to confine the mule to 144 spindles, the largest number it had till then contained; for, with the assistance of the above mechanical improvement, the spinner could manage two mules of 300 or 400 spindles each. The process of mule spinning continued to be conducted upon this plan till several proprietors of large cotton works restored the part of Kelly’s machinery which returns the carriage into its place after the draught is completed, thus further lessening the fatigue to the spinner. All that is to be done by the spinner in this case is, with a slight touch of the hand, to shift the belt, so as to allow the carriage to be moved back into its resting position, and, as this takes place, to manage the guide for building the cop, regulate the motion of the carriage as it recedes, and govern the speed of the spindle for winding on the yarn.

Some improvements were from time to time made in the headstocks, -which either rendered the mule more automatic or else enabled the spinner to work a larger pair of machines; but notwithstanding the work still required the greatest attention and care, as well as an amount of skill that could only be attained by long practice. Spinners thus became a very important and powerful class, demanding and obtaining a high rate of wages, and sometimes occasioning to their employers more trouble than any other class. This, doubtless, contributed to the introduction of the self-acting mule. At the same time, it must be observed that great improvements were introduced, and still continue to be made, in the construction of the hand mule, perfecting and extending its operative powers, and enabling it to do its t.ork almost automatically with the aid of the most delicate control of the spinner, who has no longer to use his strength to drive the various parts, but is required chiefly to regulate or reduce the velocity of the backing off and winding on, though the same unremitting attention and care are as necessary as before. The hand mule, as it is designated, is therefore quite as complex a machine as the modern self-acting mule.

Self-acting Mule (fig. 14).—In 1818 William Eaton obtained a patent for a self-acting mule, in which the operations ordinarily performed by the spinner were effected by automatic means, and this machine, though not extensively adopted, contained several ingenious arrangements

His faller lock, after a lapse of thirty-six years, was said to be re-invented, and still continues to be the best in use at the present day. His apparatus for governing the formation of the cop was founded on correct principles, and was a beautiful contrivance, much superior to many that have been since introduced. Mr Smith of Deanston, Scotland, was also the author of several valuable inventions, and others might be named who made efforts, more or less successful, to provide the desired machine.

About 1824 Richard Roberts directed his attention to the best means of rendering the hand mule self-acting, and in 1825 a patent was taken out for his invention. In the mule now introduced the governing power was exercised by what was then and has ever since been called a “cam shaft,” by which all the movements were so regulated as to succeed each other in their proper order, the termination of one operation being the initiation of the next. In 1830 Roberts took out another patent for his “quadrant” winding apparatus, and thus completed his self-acting mule, which in its chief essential features remains the same at the present day; for though as regards the headstock there have been improvements, yet the whole combination still bears indelible marks of his genius. Many improvements have of late years been introduced and patented, and the self-acting mule now in use is superior in its manner of working to the one made by Roberts. It is now employed for spinning all sizes of yarns up to 100’s and in a few cases as high as 160’s, and in the manufacture of these numbers a great saving is effected by its use. It has now almost entirely superseded the hand mule, which only retains its position for the production of the finest yarns, and in a few years will undoubtedly have to give place altogether to the self-actor, on which yarn up to 160’s, or even 200’s, has already been successfully spun. Effects of Machinery, <bc., on Production and Cost

About the year 1790 the average product of yam No. 40 was little more than a hank per spindle per day; but by the year 1812 it had advanced to two hanks per day, and in 1830 to 2∣. The effect of this increase of production upon the cost of the article was very great, as will be seen by the following statement of the reduction of the cost of spinning, and in the price of yarn.

We have already noticed that, until the cancelling of Arkwright’s patent, by which the mule spinner became at liberty to use his improved mode of preparation, the few fine wefts required were spun on Hargreaves’s jenny. In the year 1786 this yarn was sold in Glasgow and Paisley at 31s. per pound for No. 90, 7s. per pound being the price of spinning it; the warp, spun upon the water or throstle frame, was sold at 47s. 6d. the pound for No. 90.

It was stated by Crompton that, immediately upon completing his invention of the mule in the year 1775, he obtained 14s. per pound for the spinning and preparation of No. 40; that a short time after he got 25s. per pound for No. 60; and that to show that it was not impossible to spin yarn of so fine a grist, he then manufactured a small quantity of No. 80, for the spinning and preparation of which he got 42s. per pound. For some little time after the mule came into general use, in the year 1786, it was the practice in many places for the spinner to purchase the wool in a prepared state; and separate concerns for preparing cotton were established and carried on. At that time 10s. per pound was paid for spinning No. 100; but soon afterwards the cost for this number was reduced, first to 8s. and then to 6s. 8d. In 1790 the price of spinning No. 100 was 4s. per pound. In 1792 it was brought to 3s. Id., and in 1793 to 2s. 6d., at wshich price it continued till 1795, when, the mule coming to be worked by machinery, and an increase being made in the number of spindles, the spinner was enabled so to extend the quantity of his produce as to admit of another considerable reduction in cost. The price of spinning No. 100 was in the course of a few years brought down to 8d. per pound, and continued so until 1826, when it was further reduced to 6⅛d. per pound. Notwithstanding this extraordinary diminution of the price of spinning, such have been the effects of the improvements in machinery, in the selection and preparation of wool, and in the skill and tact brought to bear on the work, that the spinner is able to earn more money now than he did when the wages were at the highest.

The sale prices of the yarn during this period were as follow s :— [table]

After 1807 the price of yarn underwent various fluctuations; it fell in 1829 to 3s. 2d., and in 1831 to 2s. 1 Id., at wshich price it remained in 1832. Since 1832 the fluctuations have not been extreme, the price never rising above 5s. 6d., at which it stood in 1836, nor falling below 2s. 9d., as in 1842. Prices for No. 100 at the close of 1876 were warp-twist 2s. 10d,, medium 2s. 6d., and weft Is. lOd.

But the benefits of improved machinery have not been confined to the reduction of the cost of the yarn; they have at the same time considerably increased the quantity which a workman can produce in the same hours of labour.

Application of Steam, Power.— During the time that the machines for the different processes of cotton spinning were advancing towards perfection, James Watt had been employed in maturing and reducing to practice his conceptions for extending the powers of the steam-engine.

Among the engines erected by Bolton and Watt in 1785 w as one for Messrs Robinsons, at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire, for spinning cotton,—the first instance of the application of steam to this manufacture. In 1787 they put up one for the Messrs Peel, at Warrington, for cotton spinning, and three others for the same purpose at Nottingham. No rotative engine had yet been erected at Manchester; and it was seven years after Bolton and Watt had received their patent that they constructed for Mr Drinkwater the first engine used there for spinning cotton. In 1790 they erected one for spinning cotton at Nottingham for Sir Richard Arkwright, another at Manchester for Mr Simpson, and a third at Papplewick for Messrs Robinsons. Some time before this Sir Richard Arkwright and others, from an ill-judged economy in the first cost, had introduced into their spinning factory atmospherical or Newcomen’s engines, w ith rotative -motions applied to them. But quickly perceiving their error, they abandoned them;—and Bolton and Watt’s engines soon came to be universally used among cotton spinners and all other manufacturers.

Cotton Supply Improved.— In an account of the means wshich contributed to the fall in the price of spinning we must not overlook the progressive improvement in the cultivation of the raw material which has taken place, and in the application of its different qualities to their most profitable uses. Previous to the year 1793, the cotton used in the coarser articles of the manufacture, w ith the exception of a small quantity imported from India and from the Levant for the fustian trade, was wholly the growth of the British and French West India Islands. That for the better kind of goods was raised in Demerara, Surinam, and Berbice. The wool for fine goods was grown in the Brazils; and that for the few very fine muslins then manufactured, in the isle of Bourbon.

In 1787 the descriptions of cotton imported into Britain appear to have been as follows :— [table]

Had we continued to derive our sole supply of cotton from these countries, the progress of the manufacture would have been greatly retarded, not only from the difficulty of making the production keep pace with the increasing consumption, but from the impossibility of obtaining the qualities suited to the finer descriptions of goods, wshich the improved machinery enabled us to undertake. But as we have already seen, more abundant supplies were procured from America, and of qualities before unknown. It was soon found that the Sea Island cotton grown in the small islands extending along the American coast from Charleston to Savannah was so exquisitely fine, long, and strong in staple as to surpass any cotton previously obtained from any part of the globe. After a succession of trials its superiority was fully admitted, and it soon came into use for the purposes for which Bourbon cotton had been employed before 1796, and in a short time entirely supplanted it.

Progress of Cotton Manufacture in England.

Nottingham, where Arkwright commenced operations, was the seat of the stocking manufacture, in which moreover his partner Need was largely engaged, and the whole produce of his spinning was therefore at first devoted to that industry. The cotton yarn for stockings requires to be particularly smooth and equal; and to secure these qualities, it is spun by a process differing a little from that employed for ordinary twist. Being from two roves in place of one, it is called double-spun twist. The introduction of this article produced a great change in the stocking manufacture. Hand-spun cotton was entirely laid aside; and stockings made of twist were of so superior a quality, that in a short time they wholly supplanted those made from thread.

About the year 1773 Need and Strutt made the important discovery, that the yarn produced by the spinning frame had sufficient strength to fit it for warp, although its firmness and hardness rendered it less suitable for weft. The weft, therefore, continued to be spun by Hargreaves’s jenny; and from this time the calicoes, and other articles in imitation of India goods, which had hitherto been manufactured with linen warp, came to be made wholly of cotton; and the progressive increase of these manufactures, particularly of calicoes, after this time, was unexampled.

After having made a considerable quantity of those goods, Need and Strutt discovered that, when printed, they were subject to double the duty charged upon calicoes woven with linen warp, and that their sale was even prohibited in the home market. After a long and expensive application to the legislature, they succeeded in procuring the repeal of those impolitic laws. Nearly about the same period, calicoes entirely of cotton were begun to be made at Blackbum, and also at Preston,—which places soon became the seat of their manufacture, and for a long time the great market to which the printers from all parts of the kingdom resorted for their supplies. This branch went on increasing for many years in a most extraordinary degree. About the year 1805, it was calculated that the number of pieces sold annually in the Blackburn market was not less than a million; and by that time the manufacture of this article was not confined to the country around Blackburn, but had spread into the north-west district of Yorkshire, principally about Colne and Bradford, from which part of the country 20,000 pieces weekly are said to have been sent to Manchester.

The first attempts to make muslins in Britain commenced simultaneously in Lancashire and at Glasgow about the year 1780, but were without success. There was no yarn fitted for the weft of these goods, except that spun upon Hargreaves’s jenny; and when made of this, it was found they were not of a marketable quality. Recourse was then had to wefts brought from India; and although a better article than the former was by this means produced, it vyas still not of a quality to compete successfully with Indian muslin. As soon, however, as the invention of the mule jenny enabled tħe spinner to produce yams suited to such fabrics, the manufacture of the finest cotton articles became an important branch of trade in this country. That machine, as has been mentioned, came into use at the end of the year 1785, upon Arkwright’s patent being cancelled; and it is from that period we ought to date the commencement of this part of the manufacture. So rapid was its increase, that in 1787 it was computed that 500,000 pieces of muslin were in that year manufactured in Great Britain.

Power Loom, Weaving.— The credit of the invention of the power loom is due to the Rev. E. Cartwright of Hollander House, Kent. The circumstances of his discovery, which will be found fully detailed in the following letter, are curious, and of interest in the history of inventions. Mr Cartwright says—

“Happening to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright’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 never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work and invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and, in defence of their o'pinion, they adduced arguments which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that there had lately been exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess.

“Some little 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 only be three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there would 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 anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had ever seen a loom at work, or 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 placed perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundredweight, 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 ic my great simplicity that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what 1 thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th April 1785. This being done, 1 then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy mode 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 not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent, August 1st of that year.”

But the idea of weaving by machinery was not new, although it had never been carried into practice. About the close of the preceding century, a drawing and a description of a similar loom (a circumstance unknown to Cartwright) had been presented to the Royal Society of London. The movements, too, in both are the same in principle with those of the inch or tape loom, a machine which had long been in use. Cartwright, after obtaining his second patent, erected a weaving factory at Doncaster, which he filled with looms. This concern was unsuccessful, and was at last abandoned. But still the invention was considered so important to the country, that some years after, upon an application from a number of manufacturers at Manchester, Parliament granted Cartwright a sum of money as a remuneration for his ingenuity and trouble. About the year 1790, Grimshaw of Manchester, under a licence from Cartwright, erected a weaving factory, which was to have contained 500 looms, for weaving coarse sacking cloth. He intended also to attempt the weaving of fustians. But after a small part of the machinery had been set agoing, the work was destroyed by fire; and as the concern during the short trial that had been made did not promise to be successful, the mill was not rebuilt. Weaving by power, in fact, could never have succeeded but for the discovery, by Mr Radcliffe of Stockport, of a process for dressing the web before it is put into the loom. The stoppage of the work from time to time for dressing the web made it impossible to do more than attend to one loom; but owing to the introduction of this process, one person was soon enabled to attend to two looms, and can now attend even to four.

The contrivances for “dressing” are very ingenious, the machinery employed in it deriving its movement from the power which gives motion to the looms. The yarn is first wound from the cop upon bobbins by a winding machine. These are then taken to the warping mill and made into warps of such number of ends and such lengths as may be required by the manufacturer. The warp is taken to the beaming machine to be wound on to beams, and then to the dressing machine, and passed through strong starch liquid, &c. Where the manufacturer is also a spinner he can dispense with the warping mill, the bobbins being taken at once to the beaming machine. The warp is then compressed between two rollers, to free it from the moisture it had imbibed with the dressing, and drawn over a succession of tin cylinders heated by steam, to dry it. During the whole of this last part of its progress, it is lightly brushed as it moves along, and fanned by rapidly revolving fanners.

Peter Marsland of Stockport, who for many years had a large factory for weaving cotton cloth of a superior quality, was the inventor of an improvement upon the power-loom, by means of the double crank, for which, about the year 1807, he obtained a patent. The operation of the crank is to make the lathe give a quick blow to the cloth on coming in contact with it, and by that means render it more stout and even.

The weaving of calicoes by power did not succeed in Lancashire so early as it did in Scotland. In 1817, the number of power-looms in Lancashire was estimated to be about 2000, of which only about 1000 were said to be then in employment. The cause of this was that the price paid at the time we refer to for weaving by the hand had been forced down to the very lowest degree by the depressed state of trade, and the pressure of an overgrown population bearing upon the means of employ ment. λVages had fallen below the rate at which the goods could be produced by machinery. This struggle for existence between the two processes terminated, however, as might have been expected. The hand-weavers, finding it impossible to go on with the reduced wages, gradually gave way. Their numbers ceased to increase; and the extraordinary addition to the amount of the manufacture since that time has been the product of the powerloom. Goods of very low and fine qualities are still woven by the hand.

There is a branch of the cotton manufacture yet to be noticed,—a branch not derived from the East, like muslin, but one that has had its origin in England,—namely, the bobbinet or Nottingham lace manufacture, which now furnishes employment for a large amount of labour and capital. See Lace. Cotton Manufacture in Scotland.

Previous to 1778 there were no pure cotton fabrics woven in Scotland, and the only form in which the fibre was used to any considerable extent was in the manufacture of blunks, a coarse kind of handkerchef having linen warp and cotton weft. The first cotton-mill in Scotland was erected at Penicuik, and the second at Rothesay in 1779. These were succeeded by others at Barrhead, Johnstone, and other localities where a suitable supply of water could be obtained, as, excepting horses and oxen, it was at that period the only power available. The name of David Dale is closely associated with the early progress of cotton spinning and weaving in Scotland. In 1785 Dale began, with Arkwright, who that year had been beaten out of his patent rights by the Lancashire spinners, to erect cottonmills at New Lanark. These mills were the most extensive of their period; and they at a later time acquired a very wide notoriety by being made the scene—in conjunction with his establishment at Orbiston in the parish of Bothwell—of the attempt of Robert Owen, Dale’s son-in-law, to commence the regeneration of society by a practical exemplification of the virtues of socialism. Owen’s fidelity to his convictions cost him a princely fortune, and the mills passed in 1827 into the hands of a firm with, perhaps, less lofty but more practical views. By the year 1787 there were nineteen cotton spinning-mills in Scotland.

Although all the great inventions which revolutionized the spinning trade were of English origin, many adaptations which greatly facilitated the working of spinning machinery were devised by the ingenuity of Scotch manufacturers. Cartwright’s power-loom was introduced into Glasgow in 1793, by James Lewis Robertson, who, when on a visit to London, had seen it in operation in the hulks. He obtained and brought away two, which he had fitted up in a cellar in Argyle Street, the motive power being a large Newfoundland dog which walked inside a revolving drum or cylinder. In the following year about forty power-looms were fitted up in a factory at Milton, near Dumbarton, for weaving printing-calicoes, and in 1801 John Monteith erected a factory for the accommodation of 200 looms at Pollokshaws. The looms were subsequently adopted in 1805 by Archibald Buchanan for the Catrine Mills; and as the apparatus improved in efficiency its progress became rapid, new power-loom factories being erected almost every year thereafter in Glasgow, till in 1817 there existed fifteen factories containing 2275 looms.

Glasgow τ and Paisley manufacturers having been from very early times engaged in the linen, cambric, and lawn trade, to which in the latter town in the year 1760 the manufacture of silk gauzes was added, it was natural that on the introduction of cotton spinning the attention of weavers should be directed to the finer and more delicate fabrics into which cotton fibre can be wrought. Muslins, therefore (plain for the most part in Glasgow, and fancy ornamented in Paisley),were among the earliest and principal cotton fabrics produced on the looms of the west of Scotland. About the year 1780 James Monteith, the father of Henry Monteith, the founder of the great printworks at Barrowfield, and of the spinning and weaving mills at'Blantyre, warped a muslin web, the first attempted in Scotland; and he set himself resolutely to try to imitate or excel the famous products of Dacca and other Indian muslin-producing centres. As the yarn which could then be produced was not fine enough for his purposes, he procured a quantity of “bird-nest” Indian yarn, “and employed James Dalziel to weave a 6-4th 12°° book with a handshuttle, for which he paid him 21d. per ell for weaving. It is worthy of remark that the same kind of web is now· wrought at 2 jd. per ell. The second web was wove with a fly shuttle, which was the second used in Scotland. The Indian yarn was so difficult to wind that Christian Gray, wife of Robert Dougall, bellman, got 6s. 9d. for winding each pound of it. When the web was finished Mr Monteith ordered a dress of it to be embroidered with gold, which he presented to Her Majesty Queen Charlotte.”

Once fairly established, the muslin trade and various ether cotton manufactures developed with extraordinary rapidity, and diverged into a great variety of products which were disposed of through equally numerous channels. Among the earliest staples, along with plain book muslins, came mulls, jacconets or nainsooks, and checked and striped muslins. Ginghams and pullicats formed an early and very important trade with the West Indian market, as well as for home consumption. These articles for a long period afforded the chief employment to the hand-loom weavers in the numerous villages around Glasgow and throughout the west of Scotland. The weaving of sprigged or spotted muslins and lappets was subsequently introduced, the latter not having been commenced till 1814. Although the weaving of ordinary grey calico for bleaching or printing purposes has always held and still retains an important place among Glasgow cotton manufactures, it has never been a peculiar feature of the cotton industry; and the very extensive bleaching and print-works of the locality have always been supplied with a proportion of their material from the great cotton manufacturing districts of Lancashire.

About the end of last century the ornamentation of plain muslins with hand-sewed patterns began to be practised as a domestic industry in the west of Scotland; and by rapid degrees it rose into high reputation, many manufacturers having realized large fortunes from the trade during its palmy days. The trade continued to flourish till the great commercial crash of 1857, which compelled many to retire from it, and others thereafter gradually withdrew, till it dwindled down to its present comparatively humble proportions. When in its zenith it afforded home-employment to large numbers of females not only throughout the west of Scotland, but across the Irish Channel. Elaborate and artistic patterns were prepared for embroidering by specially trained designers; these patterns were printed, from engraved cylinders of wood, on the surface of suitable pieces of muslin, on which also was printed the number of the pattern, the length of time allowed for sewing it, and the price to be paid by the agent or manufacturer on the work being satisfactorily performed.

Thread Manufacture, a branch of trade very intimately related to ordinary textiles, is carried on on a large scale in Glasgow, and is the outstanding feature in the industries of Paisley. From that town there are probably sent out a greater length and weight of sewing thread than from all the other thread factories of Great Britain combined. Within a comparatively recent period, what constituted the staple trade of the town from thirty to forty years ago— shawl weaving—has greatly decreased, whilst the manufacture of cotton thread has considerably extended, principally through the almost universal iutroduction of sewing machines for dressmaking and other purposes. These machines, by requiring for the most part double threads, and by increasing the sewed work while lessening the cost of dressmaking, have very greatly increased the demand for thread.

The process of thread-making is so well known that few words are required to describe it. It is chiefly carried on by twisters, who purchase the yarn needed from cottonspinners. To spin from the raw cotton, and twist yarn into thread, in the same factory, would require premises of much greater extent than any hitherto employed; or the spinning and twisting would need to be confined to a small range of numbers. The manufacture of sewing cotton is, therefore, generally understood as confined to the twining or doubling of yarn previously obtained from the spinner. When the yarn is received it is tested by being reeled from the cops, and having a certain length of hank weighed. This is called sizing. The next process is cop-winding—that is, winding it from the cop on bobbins—two or three ply as required. These bobbins are taken to the twisting frame and twisted first two ply, then this is doubled or tripled for four or six cord as required. Each number of yarn has its own twist, that is, the number of turns it gets per inch. When finished the thread is taken from the twisting frames, and according to the size so much of it is wound upon a large bobbin, from which it is reeled into hanks for bleaching or dyeing. After bleaching it is given out in bundles to the hankwinder, who winds it on a large bobbin, and that in its turn is handed to the spooler, who fills the bobbin with a certain length of thread—say 100, 200, or 300 yards, and upwards. The largest portion of thread made is sold on spools, which contain a great variety of lengths. After spooling the bobbins are labelled on each end; they are then arranged in dozens and grosses, papered and stringed, and finished for the market. The qualities principally used are 3, 4, and 6 cord—the greatest portion of the sewing-machine thread being 6-cord. A large quantity of thread is now polished, and is known in the trade as glacis. Of late there has been an increasing demand for crotchet thread, the manufacture of which is somewhat similar to the process for ordinary sewing cotton.

The sloops are made of birch or ash—preferably the former—and the wood is obtained chiefly from the Highlands of Scotland. Finished spools are made in large quantities by wood turners in various localities, particularly in the Lake districts in the north of England, and find their way to those thread manufacturers who are unable to turn the whole of the spools they require. The birch, to be in proper condition, is cut when the sap is out of it, and partially rinded at once to prevent souring. After remaining in stock till perfectly dry it is sawn up into cross sections, from which are blocked out the various diameters of spools wanted. The blocking machines now in use over the whole country were invented at Ferguslie Works, Paisley (Messrs J. & P. Coats), and by their employment a great saving in both wood and labour is effected. These blocks are placed on the self-acting lathe, which turns them out finished spools with great rapidity.

Statistics of Scotch Cotton Trade.— In the year 1787 there were only nineteen cotton mills in the whole of Scotland, of which Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire each possessed four. In the report of Leonard Horner as one of the Factory Commissioners, dated 1834, it is stated that “in Scotland there are 134 cotton mills; with the exception of some large establishments at Aberdeen and one at Stanley near Perth, the cotton manufacture is almost confined to Glasgow and the country immediately adjoining, to a distance of about 25 miles radius; and all these cotton mills, even including the great house at Stanley, are connected with Glasgow houses or the Glasgow trade. In Lanarkshire, in which Glasgow is situated, there are 74 cotton factories; in Renfrewshire, 41; Dumbartonshire, 4; Buteshire, 2; Argyleshire, 1; Perthshire, 1. In these six counties there are 123 cotton mills, nearly 100 of which belong to Glasgow In Lanarkshire there are 74

cotton mills, 2 woollen and 2 silk factories; 78 steam-engines aud 5 w ater wheels; total horse-power, 2914, of which steam 2394, water 520. Total persons employed in factories, 17,969.” In 1838, according to the report on hand-loom weavers by Mr Symons, there were more than 37,000 hand-looms in the west of Scotland directly connected with cotton weaving. According to a Parliamentary return the cotton industries of Lanark, Ayr, and Renfrew in 1850 were distributed in 146 factories, of which 94 were in Lanark, 51 in Renfrew, and 4 in Ayr. These establishments had jointly 1,410,054 spindles and 21,575 power-looms, the whole of which gave occupation to 31,710 persons. In 1861 the same counties possessed 143 factories, with an aggregate of 1,577,584 spindles and 28,085 power-looms, in all employing 36,903 hands. In the year 1875 the three counties possessed 84 cotton factories, in which there were 1,526,980 spinning and doubling spindles and 27,489 power-looms, the whole cotton industry giving occupation to 33,276 individuals. The total number of factories in Scotland in the same year was 96, containing 1,711,214 spindles and 29,171 power-looms, giving employment in all to 35,652 persons, of whom nearly 30,000 were females above thirteen years of age.

It may be gathered from this table that the Glasgow district has still a practical monopoly of the Scotch cotton trade, not more than 10 per cent, of the work being distributed among counties other than the three above named. On the other hand Scotland, taken altogether, does not employ in cotton factories more than one-thirteenth part of the number of operatives in the enormous cotton industries of England, while Scotch spindles are only as one to twenty-five of the English, and power-looms are as one to about fourteen.

In some of the Glasgow establishments the only fabrics manufactured are printers’ cloths, grey calicoes, jacconets, and fancy textures, which are subsequently prepared for the market by calico-printing. In the case of others exclusive attention is bestowed on the weaving of coloured goods, such as ginghams, Oxford and other fancy shirtings, dress stripes, &c., and several devote their attention peculiarly to the weaving of muslins and similar delicate fabrics.

Cotton Manufacture in Ireland.

Little notice has been taken of the cotton manufacture in Ireland, the great seat of the once rival flax manufacture; but it may be observed that cotton has not furnished any considerable employment for capital and labour in that island. Some attempts to introduce the manufacture of cotton goods in Ireland were made as early as 1770, but the manufacture continued on a very limited scale until the year 1790. After this period the progress was more considerable, although out of all comparison with what took place during the same time in Great Britain; indeed, its products have never been such as to enter into competition with those of England.

The chief seat of this manufacture in Ireland is Belfast, and the district of country situated within twenty miles of that town. But a good many calicoes, fustians, and cotton checks 'are made in Dublin, Balbriggan, Bandon, and Cork. All these goods are consigned to factors in Dublin for sale, except a part of the calicoes, which the manufacturers sometimes dispose of to printers on the spot.

The cotton trade of Ireland is, as already indicated, at the present day of limited extent, embracing only 8 factories, and giving employment to about 3000 persons.

Statistics of Progress of the Cotton Manufacture.

The enormous increase which has taken place in the production and consumption of cotton, as shown in the accom panying tables, implies a corresponding increase in the manufacture and consumption of yarn and cloth. It would be difficult to find any trade which has exhibited so rapid a development, or which has attained such vast proportions, as the British cotton manufacture. It has for three quarters of a century gone on extending from year to year, working up all the cotton which the world could supply, and producing goods in enormous quantities, which have found heir way into every part of the globe. At the beginning of the century less than a hundred thousand bales of cotton were sufficient for the requirements of Great Britain, and now about three and a half millions of bales are required. The quantity of yarn and piece goods produced for home and foreign consumption amounted in 1863 to 404,979,000 lb in weight, and in value to £59,795,000; but in 1875, a year of great stagnation in the cotton trade, the production had reached 1,088,890,000 lb in weight, and £95,447,000 in value. Notwithstanding protracted periods of depression, and increased competition on the part of other nations, England at the present time employs more spindles than all the rest of the world combined.

Tables IV. and V. subjoined show the quantities of yarn produced, and the principal markets to which yarn and goods are consigned for the years stated. From Table VI. (page 504) it appears that the value of the production of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain in 1875 exceeded £95,000,000 sterling, of which upwards of £77,000,000 was the value of goods and yarn made for exportation. Table VII. (page 505) presents a synoptical view of tho cotton industry of Great Britain.

In the year 1812, when Crompton applied to Parliament for a remuneration for Lis invention, he found by as accurate an investigation as he could make that the number of mule spindles in the country was between four and five millions; and Kennedy, in his memoir of Crompton, has stated that the number in 1829 had increased to seven millions. In 1817, he estimated the number of persons employed in the spinning of cotton in Great Britain at 110,763, and the number of spindles in motion at 6,645,833, and the quantity of yarn produced at 99,687,500 tt>. The quantity of cotton yarn spun in 1832 was 222,000,000 R), of which 132,000,000 lb was manufactured into cloth, giving employment to 203,373 looms; but in 1853 the yarn spun was 685,440,000.

A tolerably accurate estimate of the capital now invested in the cotton trade and of the persons dependent upon its Table IV.—The quantities of Cotton Yarn spun, and the quantities exported and worked up at home, from 1819 to 1876. [table]

Table V.— This Table, prepared by Messrs Ellison and Co., gives the chief markets to which the cotton yarn and goods produced have been exported in the years quoted (the figures representing millions of yards and pounds). [table]

Table VI.— fin Estimate of the Weight and Value of the Total Production of Cotton Manufactures in Great Britain^ ιυith the Cost of Cotton Consumed, and the Balance remaining for each of the past Ten Years. [table]

prosperity may be formed from the following particulars taken from the reports of the factory inspectors. In 1871 the cost of the buildings and machinery employed in the trade was £57,000,000, whilst the floating capital was not less than £30,000,000, making together at least £87,000,000, sterling. From a Parliamentary return issued in August 1875, it appears that in that year there were in the United Kingdom 2655 factories employed in spinning, weaving, and other industries connected with the manufacture of cotton. Of that number 2542 were in England and Wales, 105 in Scotland, and only 8 in Ireland. These factories contained 71,166 carding machines, 2901 combing machines, 37,515,772 spinning spindles, 4,366,017 doubling spindles, and 463,118 power looms. The total number of persons employed was 479,515,—of these 440,336 being in England, 36,104 in Scotland, and 3075 in Ireland. Of the total number 115,391 were adult males, 258,667 were females above thirteen years of age, 39,557 were males between thirteen and eighteen, and the remainder were halftime boys and girls in about equal numbers. Probably the number of persons directly or indirectly dependent on the cotton trade in the United Kingdom is not much under two millions.

As successive mechanical inventions came to be applied to the manufacture, they changed the principal of production, and made what had been nearly wholly a product of labour become almost entirely a product of capital. Important results flowed from this change. It enabled Great Britain, the principal holder of these machines, to become the furnisher of a commodity which up to that time had been brought at a great expense from India. It further enabled her to reduce its cost, and render what till then had been accessible only to the rich, and of limited sale, an article of general wear. During the long struggle which took place between machinery and hand labour, this country continued to be the nearly exclusive possessor of the machines by which the reduction of cost was effected. Having in consequence, in a great measure, a monopoly of the supply, she was enabled to reap that harvest of prosperity which so unusual a combination of circumstances was Table VII.— A Comparative Statement of the Quantities of Yarns and Piece Goods, and the Aggregate Value of these and other Cotton Products Exported to the various Countries of the World, with the Population of each Country, and the value of British Cotton Products Consumed by each per Head, in the Years 1851, 1861, 1871. [table]

calculated to produce; an improvement in the condition of every class of the community followed the advance of the manufacture.

To preserve the pre-eminence gained by this great branch of British industry against all the competitors which it has had to encounter, has tasked to the utmost the inventive genius and energies of all connected with it. The rival manufacturers in India, Europe, and America have put forth all their resources to impair or destroy the supremacy which England has established in the markets of the world. In almost all cases, not even excluding our own colonies and dependencies, these rivals, in addition to any natural advantages which they might possess, have been aidod by the establishment of high protective tariffs.

Fears have often been expressed that the lower wages for which the labourers of some other countries can work, may ultimately enable them to take the manufacture out of our hands. In reply to this, it may perhaps be sufficient to recall to our readers the small part of the cost of the commodity which now belongs to the labour of the hand, and the daily diminution which is taking place even of that part, by the introduction of new mechanical substitutes. Thus, for example, in 1767 each spindle required a person to work it; but now one man, with the aid of two piecers to take up and join his broken ends, can work two thousand spindles. In speaking on this subject in 1874 Mr Hugh Mason, then president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, endeavoured to reassure some of his timid colleagues by such facts as these, viz., that in 1850 the export from, this country of cotton cloth had attained for the first time the amount of 1,000,000,000 yards; that in 1860 the exports for the first time had reached 2,000,000,000 yards; and that in the year 1870 the export of manufactured cotton goods from this country had amounted for the first time to 3,000,000,000 yards. Although foreign competitors are able in common with ourselves to buy the best machinery that can be made, and have free and cheap imports of the raw material, in addition to any special advantages as to cheaper labour and longer hours or otherwise which they may possess, and although great advances have taken place in the wages of the operatives employed in our factories, while there has been great diminution in the hours of labour during these two decades, and these are now still further reduced, we have still almost undisputed possession of the home trade, and our foreign trade has at the same time increased from 1,000,000,000 yards to 3,000,000,000 yards of our manufactured cotton cloth. The quantity of cotton piece goods exported from the United Kingdom in 1876 exceeds that ever exported before in any one year, and amounts to 3,668,582,100 yards, an average of more than 10,000,000 yards a day.

The following table presents a summary of the cotton industry of Great Britain for the year 1876 :— [table]

The rapid growth and enormous extent of the cotton industry, the numerous vicissitudes through which it has passed, the elasticity which it has shown in periods of deep depression, and the vitality and latent power which, notwithstanding all past development and progress, it still possesses, may well excite astonishment and admiration. It is a proud memorial of the genius, and energy, and enterprise of the men who have conducted it from its small beginnings to its present gigantic proportions. Whilst at home the consumption of cotton goods has been steadily increasing, the export trade with all its fluctuations remains more than double that in any other article of commerce. The free-trade policy of Britain promotes an interchange of commodities with all other countries. We are as ready to purchase what they can offer as we are to sell them our goods, and even in the same branch of manufacture there are often shades of difference in the fabrics produced, upon which taste, or fashion, or caprice has fixed an arbitrary value, which may make the exchange of goods by rivals mutually beneficial. This example and influence are beginning to lead other countries to perceive and understand that isolation and rigid protection can confer but little real benefit even upon themselves, and must eventually injure those who thus stand aloof from the commercial comity of nations.

Cotton Industry on the Continent.

The progress and present state of the cotton industry on the continent of Europe have been carefully ascertained by Messrs Ellison & Co., from their own special correspondents in all the manufacturing centres. The statistics furnished by them, in their review of the cotton trade for the season 1875-76, are as follows :—

Russia and, Poland.— Spindles in Russia, 2,300,000; in Poland, 200,000; total, 2,500,000. Average consumption of cotton 60 Ib per spindle per annum.

Sweaen and Norway.— Spindles in Sweden, 245,000; in Norway, 60,000; total, 305,000. Average consumption of cotton 65 lb per spindle per annum.

Germany.— The estimates vary, but the following is the nearest approximation attainable:— [table]

Some estimates exceed this, and make the total 5,000,000 or 5,200,000. Average consumption of cotton for all Germany about 55 lb per spindle per annum.

Austria.— Spindles in Austria, 1,555,000, including 740,000 in Bohemia, and 500,000 in the Vienna district. Average rate of consumption of cotton 67 lb per spindle per annum.

Switzerland. — According to a recent Government estimate, made in view of negotiations for a new treaty of commerce, the number of spindles is 1,854,091. Average consumption of cotton, used chiefly for the production of fine goods, about 25 Ib per spindle per annum.

Holland.— The estimated number of spindles is 230,000. Average consumption of cotton about 60 Ib per spindle per annum.

Belgium.— Estimated spindles, 800,000. Average consumption of cotton about 501b per spindle per annum.

France.— The total number of spindles is about 5,000,000, and the average consumption of cotton 42 lb per spindle per annum.

Spain.— Estimated number of spindles, 1,750,000. Average consumption of cotton about 46 îb per spindle per annum.

Italy.— The total number of spindles is about 800,000. The consumption of cotton averages 56 Ib per spindle per annum.

The total number of spindles at work in the various manufacturing countries of Europe is 19,440,000, to which must be added 9,500,000 in the United States, and 39,000,000 in Great Britain, making a total of 67,940,000, requiring not less than 7,000,000 bales of cotton of 400 îb each, or at least 2,800,000,000 lb, to keep them in operation.

Cotton Manufacture in the United States.

The Government of the United States at an early period evinced great anxiety to promote the establishment of the cotton manufacture in the northern part of the Union. In tracing the rise of the American cotton manufacture, we shall refer chiefly to the public documents, in which its growth is studiously detailed, and the difficulties it has had to struggle with are anxiously dwelt upon.

Before the year 1791, America possessed no manufacture except for domestic production and family use. But it appears from a report of the secretary to the American treasury, drawn up in 1810, that a cotton-mill was erected in the State of Rhode Island in that year; that another mill was erected in the same State in 1795, and two more in the S t .ate of Massachusetts in 1803 and 1804; that during the three succeeding years ten more were erected in Rhode Island, and one in Connecticut, making together fifteen mills, working about 8000 spindles, and producing about 300,000 pounds of yarn in the year; that by a return which was made at the date of the report, eighty-seven additional mills had been erected by the end of the year 1809, which with others soon to be in operation, would, it was estimated, work more than 80,000 spindles at the commencement of 1811. The capital required to carry on the manufacture was believed to be at the rate of sixty dollars per spindle, each producing annually from forty-five pounds of cotton about thirty-six pounds of yarn, of the average worth of one dollar twelve and a half cents per pound. Eight hundred spindles employed forty persons, viz., five men and thirty-five women and children.

We learn the farther progress of this manufacture from a report of the House of Representatives, presented in the spring session of 1816. The report states that the quantity of cotton manufactured in the year 1815 was 90,000 bales, a quantity nearly equal to that used in the cotton manufacture of France; and that the quantity used in 1810 was 10,000 bales; in 1805, 1000 bales; and in 1800, 500 bales; and gives the following statement of the condition of the cotton industry in the United States:— [table]

At the date of this report the duty upon cotton goods imported into the United States was 15 per cent; bub before charging it, 10 per cent, was added to the invoice, and the duty thus raised to 16∣ per cent. Upon the recommendation of the committee, 10 per cent, more was imposed; and the whole being charged upon £110 for every £100 of net value brought it up to 27∣ per cent. Besides this, it was ordered that all cotton goods below 13⅜d. per yard should be rated at 13⅜d., and the difference added to the amount of the invoice before calculating the duty.

New tariff Acts were successively passed in 1824, 1828, 1832, and 1854, in each of which the duty upon cotton goods imported was declared to be 25 per cent, ad valorem, the coarser fabrics being rated as in 1816.

The manufacture, under this protection against foreign competition, rapidly increased. Power-loom -works were erected; the most approved processes both in spinning and weaving were adopted; and the business was generally successful. The manufacture is no longer confined to tho States of New York and Rhode Island, and the New England States, though in these it has been greatly extended. In other Northern States, such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, and Indiana new mills have been erected; whilst in the Southern States, especially in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, &c., the manufacture as well as the growth of cotton has become an important industry. Tho following statement (Table IX.) shows the progress already made :—∙ [table]

Under the influence of protecting duties the prosperity of the American cotton manufacture has continued to·

Table X.—Showing the kinds and quantities of Cotton Goods manufactured in the United States—From the Financial Review (American.) [table]

increase, until the anticipated condition has at length been reached when the product exceeds the demand for the home consumption. As the surplus could not be disposed of in foreign markets, the manufacturers have had to experience similar distress to that which befell the cotton manufacturers of France in the years from 1827 to 1832.

Owing, however, to the different circumstances of the two countries, this state of things in America may be expected to be of a more temporary character. The depression existing in the cotton industry since the crisis of 1873, has excited the desire for a wider field for American enterprize, a successful competition with other countries in the markets of the world. But all aspirations of this kind must be doomed to disappointment so long as the protectionist policy of the States is upheld—the very means which they adopt to shut out all other manufactures from their markets muet have the effect of shutting out their own from the markets of the world—they cannot sell freely to other nations from which they refuse to buy. Although, therefore, much is from time to time spoken and written by alarmists of the danger to be apprehended by the cottonmanufacturing interests of England from American competition, we believe the fears entertained to be without any real foundation. The addition of 50 per cent., more or less, made by the tariff to the cost of English-made goods would be unnecessary to prevent competition, if the American manufacturer could produce those goods as cheaply as his foreign rival. If America be thought to possess any superiority over England in the greater facility and cheapness with which the raw material can be provided—and even this may be doubtful—such advantage is more than counterbalanced in other respects, and especially as regards labour. Wages in the States have been gradually déclin ing, and are probably now 20 per cent, lower than in 1869, but they are still about 40 per cent, higher than in 1860. The following is a statement of the weekly wages in cotton mills :— [table]

The following is about the present rate of wages paid in English cotton mills :— [table]

The hours of labour (56⅛ per week) are shorter than those in America. If the artificial barriers which are at present kept up to exclude English manufactures from the United States were thrown down, they would probably even there be able to maintain a successful competition, whilst as regards all neutral markets, where they can meet on equal terms, English manufacturers need never be afraid of the issue. Past progress and success furnish the means and the motive for further exertions, both to extend their manufactures and to open out new channels of trade, (ι. w.)