ELAX-SPINNING TRADE IN LEEDS. 



283 



ceased to be followed, and also better Flax, for the farmers' 

 wives, daughters, and servants having to spin their own 

 Flax, took treble pains in all the various modes of culture, 

 watering, &c, and were no doubt much better skilled in 

 handling it in the time that the same class are now; for 

 the fact of their having to spin it and provide weekly house 

 expenses by the sale of the yarn, and in a great measure all 

 the clothes they wore, made them trebly careful in the 

 preparation of the raw material ; and the farmers' sons having 

 to weave it made them equally anxious to possess well prepared 

 Flax. I recollect that my own father obtained in Dublin 

 £1 2s. 9d. per stone of 16lbs. for Flax that had been prepared 

 in a superior manner. 



The Leeds Flax-spinner, continuing his sketch of the 

 Flax-spinning trade in Yorkshire, says that "the first spin- 

 ning-machine on this plan was put up at the works of Messrs. 

 Hives and Atkinson, of Leeds, and by them and other 

 spinners the whole plan of wet spinning, with the requisite 

 improvements in the preparing processes, was soon perfected 

 and carried out. A very wide horizon for the extension of 

 Flax-spinning was now opened. Yarn could now be spun 

 much finer than before, from 50 up to 200 leas, and also 

 cheaper, so as effectually to exclude hand-spun yarns from the 

 whole range of linen manufacture, except the finest cambrics 

 and lace thread. For a time, large quantities of these wet- 

 spun yarns were sent from Leeds and Lancashire to the north 

 of Ireland and to France. But the new mode of spinning 

 soon spread into Scotland, Ireland, and finally into France, 

 where it is now carried on— under the stimulus of a protective 

 tariff, however — to a large extent. Thus the object of the 

 first Napoleon was at length accomplished, but not in the way 

 that he intended ; the result was a benefit to France, but only 

 as the consequence of a still greater benefit to England. The 

 present Emperor has, not long since, rewarded the descendants 

 of Girard for his invention, the fruits of which were so long 



