AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 291 



the production of the people's clothing. The automatic manu- 

 facture of wool received an impetus during these years so prodig- 

 ious that we are filled with wonder and astonishment as we record 

 the successive steps in the evolution. 



Richard Arkwright has been called the father of the modern 

 textile industry. This unique fame has securely and justly fallen 

 to the humble barber who earned fortune, knighthood, and im- 

 mortality by the keen, practical insight which combined, util- 

 ized, and perfected the inventions of others. The genesis of auto- 

 matic textile machinery was before his advent, however, and he 

 was the adapter rather than the inventor of the spinning-frame. 

 In 1738 John Wyatt, of Birmingham, a man of education and 

 ingenuity, worked out what he termed a " spinning-engine with- 

 out hands," a machine subsequently improved and patented by 

 Lewis Paul. Probably the two men shared the honor of the in- 

 vention between them, while Paul obtained subsequent patents 

 for spinning. In the specifications attached to Paul's application 

 for a patent, the art of spinning by means of rollers was described 

 for the first time. The cotton or wool being prepared in a rope or 

 sliver of equal thickness, " one end of the sliver " so read his 

 specifications " is put between a pair of rollers, or cylinders, or 

 some such movement, which, being turned round by their motion, 

 draw in the raw mass of wool or cotton to be spun in proportion 

 to the velocity given to the rollers. As the sliver passes regularly 

 through or betwixt these rollers, a succession of other rollers, 

 moving proportionately faster than the first, draw the sliver into 

 any degree of fineness that may be required." 



These rollers are the mechanical substitutes for the thumb 

 and finger. The Rev. John Dyer, in his poem on The Fleece, de- 

 scribes in rhyme the operation of the machine, and our readers 

 may contrast this process with the distaff-spinning described by 

 Catullus in the similar meter already quoted : 



" A circular machine, of new design, 

 In conic shape : it draws and spins a thread 

 Without the tedious toil of needless hands. 

 A wheel, invisible, beneath the floor, 

 To ev'ry member of th' harmonious frame 

 Gives necessary motion. One, intent, 

 O'erlooks the work; the carded wool, he says, 

 Is smoothly lapp'd around those cylinders, 

 Which, gently turning, yield it to yon cirque 

 Of upright spindles, which, with rapid whirl, 

 Spin out in long extent, an even twine." 



About 1701 James Hargreaves, of Lancaster County, devised 

 an ingenious and practical method of mechanical spinning, with- 

 out the use of drawing rollers, which he called the spinning 



