COTTON 303 



onous roar, gloomy and melancholy as the north 

 wind itself, may yet be heard on wintry days in 

 many a humble home of the rural South: if one 

 cares to study the question further, let him read 

 Thomas Buchanan Read's famous poem, "The 

 Closing Scene." Of course the work of this hand 

 spinning wheel was and is slow and laborious, 

 and it followed naturally that the product should 

 be relatively expensive, and the wage of the laborer 

 small indeed. 



THE COMING OF IMPROVED INVENTIONS 



The inauguration of the new scheme in manu- 

 facturing was bound to work to its advantage, and 

 hasten its development. It was no longer an 

 individual concern. It now became a community 

 interest, so governed, controlled and directed. 



Singular indeed is it that just at this critical 

 period a number of improved inventions should be 

 made, following one another just as men most 

 needed them, and covering too, such widely differ- 

 ent fields of human activity. Even the schoolboy 

 has heard of the epoch making spinning- jenny of 

 Hargreaves; spinning-frame of Arkwright; power 

 loom of Cartwright; Watt's steam engine and 

 Whitney's cotton gin. 



First the spinning- jenny came in 1767, enabling 

 from 16 to 30 threads to be spun with the same 

 facility as one had been spun previously to that 

 time, and it was subsequently brought to such 

 perfection that a little girl was enabled to work 

 from 80 to 100 spindles. 



While this invention itself marked a great 

 advance, it did not go far enough, since the jenny 

 then in use was applicable only to the spinning of 



