rifice for the liberties of mankind.

COTTON MANUFACTURE DEVELOPED

A.D. 1774

THOMAS F. HENDERSON

Up to the time when James Hargreaves, an English mechanic, invented
(1767) and brought into use the spinning-jenny--so named after his wife,
Jenny--the spinning of yarn was done altogether by hand. Richard
Arkwright added to the jenny of Hargreaves a much more useful invention,
the cotton-spinning frame, called a "water-frame" because it was driven
by water. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented a still better machine, the
spinning-mule. In this he utilized the principles of the jenny and of
the frame, adding drawing-rollers, and thereby making a machine that
could draw, stretch, and twist yarn at one operation. From this
combination of features the mule received its name. Since the time of
Crompton it has been greatly improved, and the spinning-room of a modern
cotton-mill contains machinery as highly perfected as any that has been
invented.

Spinning by machinery is the foundation of the modern textile industry.
Soon after Arkwright's invention of the spinning-frame, Edmund
Cartwright invented the power-loom, the idea of which came to him while
he was visiting Arkwright's cotton-mills at Cromford. Cartwright took
out his first patent in 1785. Within fifty years from that time there
were at least one hundred thousand power-looms at work in Great Britain.

Arkwright's invention quickly gave a great impetus to the cotton
industry. Both the cultivation and the manufacture of cotton rapidly
increased. Eli Whitney's timely invention of the cotton-gin in 1793
hastened the general introduction of the new manufacturing machinery.
For more than a century the making of cotton goods has been one of the
leading industries of the world.

The first cotton-mill was built by Arkwright and Hargreaves at
Nottingham, England. Not long afterward the earliest cotton-mill in
America was built at Beverly, Massachusetts (1787). To aid the new
industry, the Legislature of that State made a grant of five hundred
dollars. Cotton manufacture rapidly increased in New England, and there
until recently was the centre of the American industry. Within the past
few years, however, many cotton-mills have been built in various
Southern States, and the cotton-belt region bids fair soon to become the
chief seat of manufacture of its own great staple.

Since 1866 the cotton supply of the United States has increased from
somewhat more than two milli