The following schedule will serve to show the relation of the growth of the cotton industry as measured by consumption of raw cotton to the leading improvements of machinery.
Cotton Imported. Inventions &c. lbs. 1730 1,545,472 1730 Wyatt's roller-spinning (patented 1738). 1738 Kay's fly-shuttle. 1741 1,645,031 1748 Paul's carding-machine (useless until improved by Lees, Arkwright, Wood, 1772-74). 1764 3,870,392 1764 Hargreave's spinning-jenny (patented 1770), for weft only. 1764 Calico-printing introduced into Lancashire. 1768 Arkwright perfects Wyatt's spinning-frame (patented 1769), liberating cotton from dependence on linen warp. 1771 } to } 4,764,589 1771 Arkwright's mill built at Cromford. 1775 } 1775 Arkwright takes patents for carding, drawing, roving, spinning. 1779 Crompton's mule completed (combining jenny and water-frame, producing finer and more even yarn). 1781 5,198,775
1785 18,400,384 1785 Cartwright's power-loom. Watt and Boulton's first engine for cotton-mills. 1792 34,907,497 1792 Whitney's saw-gin. 1813 51,000,000 1813 Horrocks' dressing-machine. 1830 261,200,000 1830 The "Throstle" (almost exclusively used in England for spinning warp). 1832 287,800,000 1832 Roberts' self-acting mule perfected. 1841 489,900,000 1841 Bullough's improved power-loom. Ring spinning (largely used in U.S.A., recently introduced into Lancashire).
From this schedule it is evident that the history of this trade may be divided with tolerable accuracy into four periods.
(1) The preparatory period of experimental inventions of Wyatt, Paul, etc., to the year 1770.
(2) 1770 to 1792 (circa), the age of the great mechanical inventions.
(3) 1792 to 1830, the application of steam power to manufacture and improvements of the great inventions.
(4) 1830 onward, the effect of steam locomotion upon the industry (1830, the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway).
If we measure the operation of these several industrial forces within these several periods, as they are reflected on the growing size of the cotton industry, we shall realise the accumulative character of the great industrial movement, and form some approximately accurate conception of the relative importance of the development of mechanical inventions and of the new motor-power.
Sec. 7. The history of the cotton industry is in its main outlines also the history of other textile industries. We do not possess the same means of measuring statistically the growth of the woollen industries in the period of revolution; but since, on the one hand, many of the spinning and weaving inventions were speedily adapted into the woollen from the cotton industry, while the application of steam to manufacture and the effects of steam locomotion were shared by the older manufacture, the growth of the trade in the main conforms to the same divisions of time. The figures of imported wool are not so valuable a register as in the case of cotton, because no account is taken of home-produce, but the following statistics of foreign and colonial wool imported into England serve to throw light upon the growth of our woollen manufactures.
STATISTICS OF WOOL IMPORTED INTO ENGLAND.
lbs. lbs. 1766 1,926,000 | 1830 32,305,000 1771 1,829,000 | 1840 49,436,000 1780 323,000 | 1850 74,326,000 1790 2,582,000 | 1860 151,218,000 1800 8,609,000 | 1870 263,250,000 1810 10,914,000 | 1880 463,309,000 1820 9,775,000 | 1892 743,046,104
In the silk industry the influence of machinery is complicated by several considerations especially affecting this manufacture. Although the ingenuity and enterprise of the Lombes had introduced complex machinery into silk throwing many years before it was successfully applied to any other branch of textile industry, the trade did not grow as might have been expected, and the successive increments of great mechanical invention were slowly and slightly applied to the silk industry. There are special reasons for this, some of them connected with the intrinsic value of the commodity, others with the social regulation of the trade.
The inherent delicacy of many of the processes, the capricious character of the market for the commodities, the expensive production of which renders them a luxury and especially amenable to the shifts of taste and fashion, have preserved for artistic handicraft the production of many of the finer silk fabrics, or have permitted the application of machinery in a far less degree than in the cotton and woollen industries.