482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for market and transportation to the factory, where it is to be made 

 into cloth. 



This demands the use not only of the cart or wagon, an old but 

 important invention, but the railroad, the car, and the locomotive or 

 the steamship, or perhaps both of them. It is bewildering to think of 

 the inventions involved in these, and I could not even enumerate them 

 in the time I have, if I knew them all. 



When the cotton reaches the factory, an invention stands ready to 

 unload it from the cars and deposit it where it is to be used. The 

 iron bands are removed by some instrument invented for the purpose, 

 and the cotton is released from its confinement. It is submitted to 

 machinery to free it from dirt and restore it to something of its origi- 

 nal light, flocculcnt character, and it then enters a machine which 

 spreads it out into a long sheet like cotton batting. This sheet in turn 

 is stretched out into a long, soft rope, called a roving. Successive 

 machines, four or five in number, I believe, extend the roving and 

 make it smaller, till it is smaller than a common pencil. It then goes 

 on to a spinning-frame and is twisted into a thread leady for weaving. 

 Our two cents' worth of cotton has been drawn out into a fine thread 

 more than 7,000 yards long, each inch of which has more than forty 

 twists in it. 



Shall I stop to tell you what man has achieved in the art of spin- 

 ning ? The art, as you know, is a very old one. Its invention lies 

 back of the records of history. It was practiced a long time in its 

 primitive form as a mere manual operation. The wool or flax or 

 cotton was carried on a distaff. The thread was drawn out and 

 twisted by means of a spindle held in the left hand, by which it was 

 set to whirling while the fibers were drawn out of the mass and guided 

 by the fingers of the right hand. The art was practiced in this crude 

 way for ages, and it is so practiced now in some countries. 



A book which describes this process says it was an obvious im- 

 provement to set the spindle in a frame and set it whirling by a band 

 passed round it, and around a large wheel which was in revolution. 

 But it was not so obvious that anybody, through long years, thought 

 of it till about three hundred and fifty years ago. I believe this im- 

 provement which constituted the common spinning-wheel was invented 

 in Germany. A woman could spin with it much faster than in the old 

 way, but she only kept one spindle employed. A little more than a 

 hundred years ago the spinning-frame was invented in England, in 

 which a number of spindles were set and kept in operation at the same 

 time. At first only eight spindles were used, but now several hundred 

 are lased in one frame. 



There were three leading inventors at this early date who each 

 made important improvements in spinning — Ilargreaves, Arkwright, 

 and Crompton. With a common wheel a woman can draw out a 

 thread about four miles long in a day. On a modern spinning-frame 



