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The Industrial Revolution 187 



A great part of England was turned into sheep farms for the 

 production of wool, and by 1700 the value of woollen goods 

 exported had risen to 3, 000,000. 



At this time the import of raw cotton was only about 

 1 1 million Ibs. 1 To such an extent had the woollen, and, also, 

 the linen, industries been placed under the " protection " 

 of the governing powers that until 1721 it was a penal offence 

 in England to weave or sell calico that is, a fabric consisting 

 entirely of cotton ; and down to 1774 anyone who made or 

 sold a fabric having more than half its threads of cotton was 

 liable to prosecution. Not until 1783 was the prohibition of 

 British-made calicoes removed and the production in this 

 country of all-cotton goods allowed by legislators who had 

 been unduly solicitous of the welfare of British industry. 

 When, in 1776, Adam Smith published his great work on 

 " The Wealth of Nations," he certainly did state that Chris- 

 topher Columbus had brought back from the New World 

 some bales of cotton, and had shown them at the court of 

 Spain ; but he did not think it necessary to mention that a 

 cotton industry had been started here, and was likely to 

 contribute to the wealth of the United Kingdom. 



The imports of raw cotton slowly increased to 2,000,000 

 in 1720, and to 3,000,000 Ibs. in 1751. In 1764, the year in 

 which Hargreaves introduced the spinning jenny, they were 

 still not higher than 4,000,000 Ibs. But the successive in- 

 ventions, during the course of about three decades, alike of 

 Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright and others 

 gave such an impetus to the industry that by 1800 the im- 

 portation of raw cotton (greatly facilitated by the further 

 invention, in 1793, of Eli Whitney's appliance for separating 

 cotton from the cotton seed) had risen to 52,000,000 Ibs., 

 while the value of all kinds of cotton products exported 

 increased between 1765 and 1800 from 800,000 to 5,800,000. 



This rapid progress would not, however, have been possible 

 but for the facilities for obtaining cheap power afforded by 

 the condensing steam-engine of James Watt, who had taken 

 out a patent for his invention in 1769, though it was not 

 till 1776 that he built and sold his first engine, on which he 

 further improved in 1781. Steam-power, of far greater force 



1 The imports of raw cotton into the United Kingdom in 1910 were 

 17,614,860 cwts., or nearly 1973 million Ibs., valued at ^"71,716,808. 



