JAMES HAR GREA VES. 1 7 7 



minded man, this honour to humanity, should have been com- 

 pelled, by persecution on account of his religion and politics, 

 to flee his native country." 



JAMES HARGREAVES. 



About a century has elapsed, says a popular writer, since a 

 native of Lancashire, of very humble origin, began to devote 

 his attention to the application of machinery to the preparation 

 and spinning of raw cotton for weft. In the year 1760, or soon 

 after, a ca7-diiig-engine, not very different from that now in 

 use, was contrived by James Hargreaves, an untaught weaver, 

 living near Church, in Lancashire; and in 1767, the spinning- 

 icnny was invented by the same person. This machine, as at 

 first formed, contained eight spindles, which were made to 

 revolve by means of bands from a horizontal wheel. Subse- 

 quent improvements increased the power of the spinning-jenny 

 to eighty spindles, when the saving of labour which it thus 

 occasioned, produced considerable alarm among those persons 

 who had employed the old mode of spinning, and a party of 

 them broke into Hargreaves' house and destroyed his machine. 

 The great advantage of the invention was so apparent, however, 

 that it was soon again brought into use, and nearly superseded 

 the employment of tlie old spinning-machine. A second rising 

 then took place of the persons whose labour was thus super- 

 seded by it. They went through the country destroying, whcrc- 

 ever they could find them, both carding and spinning machines, 

 by which means the manufacture was for a time driven away 

 from Lancashire to Nottingham. 



According to Hargreaves' own account, he derived the idea 

 of the jenny from the following incident : — Seeing a hand-wheel 

 with a single spindle overturned, he remarked that the spindle^ 



