HISTORY OF THE ELAX TBADE. 



279 



Marshall, in partnership with Samuel Fenton, of Leeds, 

 and Ralph Durham, of Knaresborough. This was in 1788 

 or 1789. The wonderful success and large profits attending 

 the introduction of Arkwright's invention into cotton- 

 spinning had about this time attracted general attention to 

 mechanical improvements applied to manufacturing purposes. 

 The spinning of Flax by machinery was a thing much wished 

 for by the linen manufacturers. It attracted the attention, 

 amongst others, of Mr. Marshall, who was so strongly im- 

 pressed with the advantageous field for invention and 

 enterprise offered by Flax-spinning, that he devoted himself 

 entirely to the new enterprise. It appears that some 

 attempts at Flax-spinning had already been made on a small 

 scale at Darlington and some other places, as the first spin- 

 ning machines used at Scotland Mill were on a patent plan 

 of Kendrew and Co., of Darlington. This did not answer ; 

 experiments were made and a patent taken out for a plan of 

 Matthew Murray's, the foreman of mechanics with Mr. Mar- 

 shall. In 1791 a mill was built in Holbeck, Leeds, and at 

 first driven by one of Savery's steam-engines in combination 

 with a water-wheel, but in 1792 one of Bolton and Watt's 

 steam-engines of 28-horse-power was put down. In 1793 

 there were 900 spinning spindles at work. We may take 

 this small item as our first statistical datum of Flax-spinning 

 in Leeds. I may here describe an important difference 

 between the state in which the raw material, Flax, is presented 

 to the spinner, and that in which cotton wool or silk i s 

 found previous to being manufactured. The fibres of cotton 

 wool and silk are supplied by nature already in their purest 

 state of sub-division, they require merely to be straightened 

 and formed into a continuous thread. In raw Flax, on the 

 other hand, the ultimate fibres, which are very fine, are 

 united by a gummy matter into broad strips or ribands, and 

 a very operose process called heckling is required to sub-divide 



