1 7 8 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



which was before horizontal, was then vertical ; and as it con- 

 tinued to revolve, he drew the roving of wool towards him into 

 a thread. It then seemed to Hargreaves plausible that, if 

 something could be applied to hold the rovings as the finger 

 and thumb did, and that contrivance to travel backwards on 

 wheels, six, or eight, or even twelve threads, from so many 

 spindles, might be spun at once. This was done, and suc- 

 ceeded ; but Hargreaves, driven by mobs, as we have described, 

 to Nottingham, unable to bear up against such ill-treatment? 

 there died in obscurity and distress. Before his death, he 

 gave the property of his jenny to the Strutts, who thereupon 

 laid the foundation of their industrial success and opulence. 



JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. 



Few men have laboured with such success to elevate and 

 refine their art as Josiah Wedgwood, " the Father of the 

 Potteries," as he has been called, and the first of a long line of 

 Staffordshire potters who have applied the highest science and 

 the purest art to the improvement of their commercial 

 enterprise. 



Wedgwood was born on the 12th of July, 1730, at Burslern 

 in Staffordshire, and was the younger son of a potter. He 

 received a very limited education, for scarcely any person in 

 Burslem learned more than mere reading and writing, until 

 about 1750, when some benevolent persons endowed the free 

 school for instructing youth to read the Bible, write a fair hand, 

 and know the primary rules of arithmetic. On his father's 

 death, his property, consisting chiefly of a small entailed estate, 

 descended to the eldest son, and Josiah was left at an early 

 period of life to lay the foundation of his own fortune. This 

 he did most substantially by applying his attention to the 



