MANUFACTURE OF TEXTILES 



when I compared their easy modes of operation with 

 mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, 

 I made a loom, in its general principles nearly as they 

 are now made. But it was not till the year 1787 that 

 I completed my invention, when I took out my last 

 weaving-patent, August ist, of that year." 



A VERSATILE INVENTOR 



Naturally the man who could make one such revo- 

 lutionary invention could not stop at that, and Doctor 

 Cartwright followed up his first invention with many 

 others. Patent packings for steam-engine pistons, 

 combining-machines, bread-making, brick-making, and 

 rope-making machines followed quickly. None of 

 these served such useful purposes as his first great 

 effort, and they netted him in the end a vast amount of 

 profitless unhappiness, his patents being constantly 

 infringed. For the spirit of opposition to mechanical 

 contrivances for lessening labor still remained as domi- 

 nant among British workmen as it had in the time of 

 Kay and Hargreaves, and when in 1791 Cartwright 

 succeeded in finding an honest manufacturer willing 

 to use his looms and pay a royalty, the factory con- 

 taining the machines was burned and destroyed by 

 an incendiary. Meanwhile, his patents of all kinds 

 were infringed without redress everywhere, and though 

 late in life he received a grant of 10,000 from Par- 

 liament, this was small recompense for the money he 

 had spent, to say nothing of his years of labor and 

 struggle. 



[47] 



