XII.

JOHN KAY AND JAMES HARGREAVES.*

WITH the invention of the fly-shuttle-certainly by John Kay-and of the spinning-jenny-almost certainly by James Hargreaves-began that development of the British cotton manufacture which, continuing to our own day, has made Lancashire one of the wealthiest, most populous, and most important counties in the United Kingdom. Without

* Bennett Woodcroft's Brief Biographies of Inventors of Machines for the Manufacture of Textile Fabrics (London, 1863). Richard Guest's Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture, with a Disproval of the Claims of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of its ingenious Machinery (Manchester, 1823); and his British Cotton Manufactures ; a Reply to an Article on the Spinning Machinery, contained in a recent Number of the "Edinburgh Review." Robert Cole, Some Account of Lewis Paul, and his Invention of the Machine for Spinning Cotton and Wool by Rollers, and his Claim to such Invention, to the Exclusion of John Wyatt; a Paper read in section G of the British Association at its meeting held in September 1858, and printed as Appendix No. iv." to Mr Gilbert J. French's Life and Times of Samuel Crompton (second edition, Manchester and London, 1860). Dr Ure's Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, investigated and illustrated (London, 1861). Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture (London. 1835), and History of Lancashire (first edition). John James, History of the Worsted Manufacture in England from the earliest Times (London, 1857). Boswell's Life of Johnson (London, 1860). Defoe's Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain (London, 1738). Abridg ments of Specifications relating to Weaving, and Abridgments of Speci fications for Spinning, published by the Commissioners of Patents. John Dyer, The Fleece, a Poem. Samuel Bamford's Dialect of South Lancashire. Aikin's Description of the Country round Manchester, &c. &c.

Kay there might have been no Hargreaves, or no spinningjenny; without the spinning-jenny no Arkwright and no Crompton.

Before the era of Arkwright, an English cotton-manufacture, in the strict sense of the words, did not exist, or rather, cloth manufactured of cotton solely was not produced in this country. The old-fashioned spinning-wheel, or the venerable distaff, on which the weaver was dependent for his supply of cotton yarn, turned out thread fit only for weft, but not strong or stout enough for warps. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the warp of the fustian and other cloth containing cotton, and woven in Lancashire or elsewhere in England, was for the most part of linen-yarn, supplied from Ireland, as in Humphrey Chetham's day, or from Continental countries under the name of Hamburg yarn, probably because that was the port from which it was mainly shipped. This circumstance ought to be kept in mind all the more sedulously, that from the use, early and late, of the word "cottons," to denote a branch of the woollen manufacture, we are apt to exaggerate the quantity and value of the cotton worked up in England during the first half of the eighteenth century. When we read of the flourishing trade of Manchester and some other Lancashire towns of this period, we must remember that cotton, pure and simple, entered as a small element only into the composition of the manufactures of the county. In Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum, published in 1724, he describes Manchester, from personal observation, as "the largest, most rich, populous, and busy village in England"-village, be it observed, not town. "There are," he says, "about 2400 families. Their trade," he adds, "is incredibly large; consists much in fustians, girthweb, ticking, tapes, &c., which are dispersed all over the kingdom, and to foreign parts."1

1 Baines's Lancashire, ii. 292.

Defoe, in his Tour, the first edition of which appeared in 1727, was actually misled, by Camden's mention of "Manchester cottons," into supposing not only that there was then such a thing as an independent cotton-manufacture, but that it was older than the woollen manufacture. For the rest, he speaks of Manchester as "one of the greatest, if not really the greatest, mere village in England. It is neither a walled town, city, nor corporation; it sends no members to Parliament, and the highest magistrate there is a constable or head-borough." "Here," he says further on, "as at Liverpool, and as at Frome in Somersetshire, the town is extended in a surprising manner; abundance not of new houses only, but of new streets of houses are added, as also a new church, dedicated to St Anne, and they talk of another, and a fine new square, so that the town is almost double to what it was some years ago." "1 Yet if the official returns of the import of cotton-wool into England are to be trusted, it could not have been to the increased use of cotton in the manufactures of the place that the increased size and prosperity of Manchester were due. That import had positively decreased since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1701 the quantity of cotton-wool imported into England was 1,985,868 lbs. ; in 1730 it had fallen to 1,545,472. In 1701 the official value of British cotton-goods (so called) exported of all sorts was £23,253. In 1730 this value had fallen to £13,524.2

One of the causes of the decrease in the import of cotton-wool, and of the decline of the cotton-manufacture, or rather of the manufacture into which cotton entered as an element, is to be found in the commercial legislation of the period. The woollen manufacture—the great staple trade of the kingdom-began by attacking the import of cotton-goods from India; and when it had succeeded in this, 2 Baines's Cotton Manufacture, p. 215.

1 iii. 173.

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it went on to cripple such manufactures at home as aimed at supplying the demand created by a taste for Eastern cottons. It was the boast of the English woollen manufacturers that they could provide clothing for all climates and all countries; and they called on the Legislature to suppress the sale of every, or almost every fabric, which might interfere with their great and time-honoured, their national industry. Nothing," once exclaims Defoe,1 “can answer all the ends of dress but good English broadcloth, fine camblets, serges, and such like; these they "-foreign nations-" must have, with them none but England can supply them. Be their country hot or cold, torrid or frigid, 'tis the same thing; near the equinox or near the pole, the English manufacture clothes them all. Here it covers them warm from the freezing breath of the Northern Bear; and there it shades them and keeps them cool from the scorching beams of a perpendicular sun." With these pretensions the woollen manufacturers were very indignant at the importation by the East India Company of the printed or dyed calicoes of Hindustan into England, where they found a considerable sale. The woollen manufacturers applied for protection to a sympathising legislature, and in 1700 the Act 11 and 12 William III. cap. 10, prohibited the import of the printed or dyed calicoes of India, Persia, and China. Not only, however, was this prohibition followed by an importation from the East of plain calicoes, which could be printed or dyed at home, but the Lancashire men set to work to produce cloth of linen-warp and cotton-weft, which was sent to London to be printed and dyed in imitation of the prohibited Oriental fabrics. The woollen manufacturers discovered that the prohibition of the import of printed and dyed calicoes was of little avail, and that they had thus given a

1 Plan of English Commerce, quoted by James, Worsted Manufacture, p. 187.

stimulus to the domestic production of something resembling the hateful goods which were formerly imported from the East. In 1720 the import of cotton-wool into England nearly touched the amount imported in 1701. Again the woollen manufacturers lifted up their voices, as in the following plaintive passage of a work published about 1719: "The very weavers and sellers of calico will acknowledge that all the mean people-the maid-servants, and indifferently poor persons-who would otherwise clothe themselves, and are usually clothed in their"—the woollen manufacturers'—"stuffs made at Norwich and London, or in cantaloons and crapes, &c., are now clothed in calico or printed linen, moved to it as well for the cheapness as the lightness of the cloth, and gaiety of the colours. The children universally, whose frocks and coats were all either made of tammies worked at Coventry, or of striped thin stuffs made at Spitalfields, appear now in printed calico or printed linen; let any one but cast their eyes among the meaner sort playing in the street, or of the better sort at boarding schools and in our families; the truth is too plain to be denied." 1 Once more the Legislature lent a willing ear to the complaints of the woollen manufacturers. An Act passed in 1721, the 7 George III. cap. 7, imposed a penalty of £5 on every person so much as found wearing any printed or painted or stained calico, whether made at home or abroad. With this stringent enactment the import of cotton-wool into England seems to have begun again to decline.

From the operation of the Act of 1721, muslins, neckcloths, and fustians were exempted. It is even said that after the passing of the Act, the Lancashire manufacturers availed themselves of this exemption to make calicoes (always with linen-warps) which could pretend to be 1 1 James, p. 216-17.