ENGLAND. 



757 



: : ton trade spread t almost all the places in Lancashire, 

 """"V"" in which it is at present carried on ; among the rest, it 

 spread to Bury, where it was in 1796, and is yet car- 

 ried on, in conjunction with the manufacture of flan- 

 nels, &c. The works of Sir Robert Peel, at this place, 

 have been already noticed : they embraced nearly all the 

 stages and processes of the cotton manufacture, spin- 

 ning, weaving, bleaching, and printing. The first spe- 

 cies of cotton goods manufactured at Blackburn, were 

 what were denominated Blackburn greys : these were 

 plains of linen, warp shot with cotton. In 17.95, this 

 town had gone very extensively into the making of 

 calicoes, and the fields in its vicinity were whitened 

 with the materials lying to bleach. Haslingdean has al- 

 ready been noticed, under the head of the woollen 

 manufactures, as being a place in which woollen yarn 

 is made : in 1 795, twist for warps was spun in several 

 of the factories in its neighbourhood, the cotton trade 

 having been there lately introduced. We may here ob- 

 serve, that wherever the cotton trade gained a footing, 

 (with very few and inconsiderable exceptions,) it pre- 

 served and extended itself: this most certainly is the 

 case in nearly all the places in which, or in the vicinity 

 of which, the manufacture of woollens is carried on, as 

 in those parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, border- 

 ing on Lancashire. One of the most obvious and power- 

 ful causes of this is, that the workmen can with little 

 difficulty turn themselves to the woollen trade, if the 

 cotton should suffer a partial or temporary depression. 

 Our remarks respecting the prevalence of the cotton 

 over the woollen manufacture, is further confirmed by 

 what had taken place about this period at Colne in Lan- 

 cashire, where the manufacture of calicoes and dimities 

 had, in a great measure, superseded the original and long 

 established trade of making woollen and worsted goods. 

 But Or Aikin's account of the places near Man- 

 chester, is principally interesting and important in 

 relation to our subject, from the account which it gives 

 of Preston ; we shall afterwards have occasion to notice 

 this town as one of the most flourishing seats of the 

 cotton manufacture : but it was only a short time be- 

 fore 1705 that it had gained a footing here; probably 

 the general disposition and habits of its inhabitants, (for 

 it was long known under the name of proud Preston,) 

 presented a more formidable barrier to the introduction 

 of the cotton trade, than would have bren offered by 

 any long-established manufacture. There had been 

 here, however, a large mart for the sale of Lancashire 

 linens; a species of manufacture wl.icli we may remark 

 the cotton trade has nearly rooted out of Lancashire, 

 or at least out of those parts where it has gained a foot- 

 ing 



In 1795, Chorley was already known for its cotton 

 factories and its bleaching and printing grounds ; and 

 this favourite anil flourishing trade had established it- 

 self at Wigan, notwithstanding the opposition of its ori- 

 ginal and celebrated manufacture of checks. But no 

 place in the vicinity of Manchester perhaps exhibited, 

 though on a small scale, such a picture of the extension 

 of this trade, as a small village in the parish of Leigh. 

 In 1 780, there were only two farm houses, and eight 

 or nine cottages; in the year 1795, there were 142 

 houses, and ffj(j inhabitants, who employed 325 looms 

 in the cotton manufactures, as murseilk's quillings, di- 

 mities, corduroys, &c. and this rapid increase had by 

 no means reached its utmost limits. At Warrington, 

 Dr Aikin remarks, there had been a curious alternate 

 reverse in the state of the staple manufacture of the 

 place, sail-cloth, and the manufacture of cotton. After 



the termination of the American war, the demand for Statistics 

 the former necessarily ceasing in a great degree, several S *"""Y~ >>1 ' 

 of the manufacturers introduced the cotton branches; and 

 as the cotton goods made were principally of the coarse 

 kind, the sail-cloth weavers found no difficulty in turn- 

 ing themselves to the new manufacture ; but when the 

 French war broke out, the demand for sail-cloth again 

 becoming extensive and pressing, the original trade re- 

 gained its footing. 



The cotton manufacture, which, as we have seen, had in Cheshire, 

 its original seat at Bolton, and thence extended itself 

 not only some way into the north of Lancashire, but 

 also to its southern extremity, passed easily from the 

 last into Cheshire. The place where it seems first to 

 have fixed itself, was Stockport ; and it is not impro- 

 bable that the circumstance of there being here mills 

 for winding and throwing silk, which were unemploy- 

 ed, by a decline of this trade, contributed to establish 

 the cotton manufacture at Stockport; for there mills 

 were applied to cotton spinning. Perhaps no town in 

 the whole cotton district of England exhibits more of 

 the active and enterprizing spirit of trade than Stock- 

 port : at first the inhabitants engaged in the spinning 

 of reeled weft, then in weaving checks, and lastly in 

 fustians ; and scarcely had the invention of mules pro- 

 duced a thread sufficiently fine and soft, than they be- 

 gan the muslin trade, which in 1795 was as flourishing 

 as the circumstances of the times would admit of; 

 the present state of the latter trade in this town, we 

 shall afterwards notice. In 179,5, besides a large num- 

 ber of cotton-spinning shops, there were 23 large cot- 

 ton factories, four of which were worked by steam en- 

 gines. At this period the cotton trade had been intro- 

 duced into several other places in Cheshire, adjoining 

 to Lancashire, among the rest into Macclesfield, Mot- 

 tram, where there were 12 large machines worked by 

 water, besides a great number of smaller ones turned 

 by horses, and Duckinfield. In this last place, the 

 pernicious effects of the cotton factories on the health 

 and longevity of the inhabitants, were particularly 

 striking ; while the trade had afforded employment to 

 all ages, it had debilitated the constitution, and retarded 

 the growth of many, and made an alarming increase in 

 the mortality. This effect was principally attributed 

 to the custom of making the children in the mills work 

 night and day, one set getting out of bed, when ano- 

 ther went into the same ; thus never allowing the rooms 

 to be well ventilated. Before we conclude this sketch 

 of the state of the cotton trade in Cheshire in 1 795, we 

 shall mention one decided and striking proof of its ra- 

 pid advancement; in 1788, as we have already seen, 

 there were only eight water-mills in the whole county ; 

 in 1795, in Stockport alone, there were 23 large cot- 

 ton factories, besides a great number of spinning shops. 



Derbyshire also, at the latter period, had entered j n D CT ], V . 

 pretty considerably into the cotton trade, not only in shire, 

 and near the county town, but also at Glossop, Cha- 

 ple-le-Frith, Bakewell parish, (into part of which the 

 manufacture of muslins had been introduced) ; Crom- 

 ford, the residence of Sir Richard Arkwright, and the 

 first place in this' county in which he established his 

 works ; Chesterfield, where a cotton mill had then been 

 very lately erected ; and other places. 



From these details, a pretty accurate view of the cot- 

 ton trade in 1795 will be gathered; and when it is re- 

 collected, that at this period mules had not been in- 

 vented much more than 15 years, and water-mills not 

 28, and that prior to the invention of the latter there 

 could not properly be said to be any such .trade as tin- 



