1 88 History of Inland Transport 



and utility, and capable of being produced anywhere, thus 

 took the place of the water-power, only available alongside 

 streams, on which, as we have seen, the earlier success of 

 the woollen industry, especially as carried on among the hills 

 of Yorkshire, had been established. It was by water-power 

 that the spinning machine so recently introduced by Sir 

 Richard Arkwright was operated until James Watt had 

 shown that steam could be used to better advantage. Then 

 the setting up at Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, in 1785, of 

 a steam-engine for the operation of cotton machinery marked, 

 also, the decline of domestic manufactures and the advent of 

 that factory system which was to bring about a complete 

 transformation in the industrial conditions of the United 

 Kingdom. 



Yet just as the improvements in cotton production would 

 have been incomplete without the steam-engine, so, also, 

 would the invention even of the steam-engine have been 

 of little service but for an abundant supply of coal, and but, 

 also, for the possession of a ready and economical means of 

 moving the coal from the localities where it was to be found 

 to those where it was wanted for the purposes of the " steam 

 age " that was about to open. 



The greater demand for fuel and the increased facilities 

 for supplying it led to the greater development of various 

 inland coal-fields, in addition to those already long in opera- 

 tion in the Newcastle district, and having there the advantages 

 of river and sea as an aid to distribution. The need, also, 

 of coal for the operation of the steam-engine in the countless 

 number of new industries or new works that followed on 

 James Watt's improvements had an important influence on 

 fixing the location of fresh industrial centres. 



Coal-mining, again, was powerfully accelerated in the same 

 period by the iron industry, which itself was undergoing 

 developments no less remarkable than those attending the 

 expansion of the cotton industries, and having no less a 

 bearing on the problem of efficient inland transport. 



Down to the year 1740 the smelting of iron-ores an 

 industry carried on here from very early days in our history 

 was done entirely with wood charcoal. For this reason the 

 early seat of the iron industry was in the forests that, as 

 already told, once covered so large an area in Sussex, Kent 



