COTTON 17 



THE BEGINNING OF ENGLAND^ GREATEST INDUSTRY 



Our English ancestors, late in taking up the man- 

 ufacture of cotton, even after beginning it allowed 

 the industry to grow slowly. Spinning was done on 

 the distaff, or at best on the one-thread spinning- 

 wheel; and for weaving the hand-loom had known 

 but little improvement since the days of the Caes- 

 ars. Nor was there any kind of co-operation, 

 any division of labor; each individual family at- 

 tempted to carry on the entire process of spinning 

 and weaving the cloth. 



But about 1760 we see the beginnings of a revolu- 

 tion. The Manchester merchants then began to 

 furnish cotton and linen yarn to weavers, paying 

 a fixed price for spinning and weaving the product 

 and so the industry, hitherto primitive and cha- 

 otic, began for the first time to take shape as a defin- 

 ite, well-planned organization. 



Very soon after this the export of English goods 

 began on a small scale, and with surprisingly satis- 

 factory results from the very beginning. Prices 

 were high, and the call for larger supplies insistent. 

 But as the demand grew, the English spinner grew 

 in desperation. Here was a world outside demand- 

 ing that England clothe it; and yet, for two seem- 

 ingly inexorable reasons, England could not. 



In the first place, while she could get yarn enough 

 for the warp of the goods, she could not get enough 

 cotton for the weft. 



And even if she could get cotton enough, she 

 could not find labor enough to spin it. Doing her 

 best with her one-thread wheel, she was spinning 

 only as much as 50,000 of our modern spindles now 

 turn out. 



